A tidewater glacier landform assemblage in Belcher Inlet, Canadian Arctic
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Publication Date
2016Journal Title
Geological Society of London, Memoirs
ISSN
0435-4052
Publisher
Geological Society of London
Volume
46
Pages
155-158
Language
English
Type
Article
This Version
AM
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Batchelor, C., Dowdeswell, J., Dowdeswell, E., Todd, B., Sharp, M., & Bell, T. (2016). A tidewater glacier landform assemblage in Belcher Inlet, Canadian Arctic. Geological Society of London, Memoirs, 46 155-158. https://doi.org/10.1144/M46.146
Abstract
Belcher Glacier, a 35 km-long tidewater outlet glacier of the 12,000 km² ice cap on Devon Island (Dowdeswell et al. 2004), is one of the fastest-flowing glaciers in the Canadian Arctic (Van Wychen et al. 2014) (Fig. 1). Belcher Glacier and neighbouring Fitzroy Glacier to the southeast account for about 55% of the iceberg calving loss from the Devon Ice Cap (Van Wychen et al. 2014). The terminus of Belcher Glacier remained relatively stable between the 1960s (light blue dashed line in Fig. 1a) and 2000 (Landsat 7 satellite image in Fig. 1a). In contrast, the unnamed glacier immediately to the north retreated 2 km during this period (Fig. 1a). Belcher Glacier and the unnamed glacier retreated around 500 m and 250 m, respectively, between 2000 and 2014 (dark blue dashed line in Fig. 1a). The bed topography of Belcher Glacier, which is around 250 m below sea level at the present-day glacier margin (Fig. 1c) and remains below sea level in the lower 11 km of the glacier, suggests that its terminus region may become unstable in the event of future retreat. Seafloor mapping of Belcher Inlet beyond the termini of Belcher Glacier and the unnamed glacier (Fig. 1a), together with sub-bottom profiling, provide information about the dynamic behaviour of tidewater glaciers.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1144/M46.146
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/253395
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