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G 080 M: Rapid landscape change in Garwood Valley: Monitoring buried glacier melt and exploring “Péwé’s Lost Lake”

Start date:
January
Locations:
Garwood Valley
Principle Investigator:
Dr Joseph Levy
Organisation:
Portland State University
State
Oregon
Field season overview:
A four-person team will deploy to Garwood Valley during January 2012 to establish a tent camp for about one month. The camp will serve as a base for installing station instruments, collecting soil samples and shallow ice cores, conducting surface mapping, and conducting day trips via helicopter to proximal coastal sites to map paleo-ice flow paths based on geological evidence. In addition, an autonomous meteorological station will be deployed and maintained throughout the duration of the project, including over winter.
The objectives of the field work are to conduct an inventory of the origin and composition of buried ice present in the Garwood Valley, quantify the current rate of buried ice loss, and map and sample the sedimentary sequence overlying the buried ice. The work entails extensive mapping and sampling activities throughout the valley and neighboring coastal sites. Objective 1. Researchers will develop a buried ice inventory by comprehensively mapping and sampling the buried ice record present in Garwood Valley in three spatial dimensions, distinguishing buried glacier ice from interbedded river ice. Objective 2. Researchers will quantify the current rate of buried ice removal where ice is exposed, being eroded by the Garwood River, or being removed through thermokarst formation. Objective 3. Researchers will map the sedimentary sequence overlying the buried ice, and extract datable material for environmental change rate calculations.