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Icy Bay, Yahtse Glacier and Mount Saint Elias

Icy Bay Project

We have begun a multidisciplinary study of glacier-generated seismicity in Icy Bay. This 3 year project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF grant number EAR-0810313), and includes a large-scale field campaign that has deployed seismometers, GPS, and time-lapse cameras on and around the Yahtse Glacier.  Using multiple geophysical approaches, the study will attempt to understand the sources and mechanisms underlying glacier-generated seismicity. Specifically, the focus is on the relationships between ice velocity variations, iceberg calving and glacier generated seismic events. This project was preceded by a pilot study on the Bering Glacier (see here for results, and here for a project description).

Click here for a map of the seismic, GPS and timelapse camera installations.

Preliminary results from GPS trackers on the lower glacier show ice speeds of 16.5 meters per day (click here for data).

Click on the image below for time lapse sequences from the summer of 2009 covering about 3 months of glacier motion and calving.

Click on the images below for some videos of iceberg calving and seiches in the fiord.

Click on the images below for videos of GPS basestation and timelapse camera installations.

About Icy Bay and its tidewater glaciers:

Icy Bay did not exist 100 years ago, rather it was completely filled with a tidewater glacier which has since retreated over 25 miles (see Barclay et al., 2006). This process continues today, most noticeably with the terminus of the Guyot Glacier rapidly thinning and retreating. One of the greatest topographic reliefs in the world exists here, with Mount Saint Elias rising to 18,008 ft less than 12 miles from tidewater. Five tidewater glaciers have termini within Icy Bay: Tyndall, Yahtse, Guyot, and two within Tsaa fjord. Yahtse, Guyot and Tsaa Glaciers are all particularly dynamic, with exceptionally steep surface slopes, rapid iceberg calving and high rates of ice flux. While Guyot has been steadily retreating recently, both Yahtse and Tsaa have advanced while rapidly thinning (see here for Yahtse, and here or here for Tsaa). Advancing while thinning is unusual in the tidewater glacier cycle. More pictures of Icy Bay can be found here and here.