Overview

Melting glaciers are one of the iconic images of climate change in the 21st century. The patterns and speed at which mountain glaciers shrink (and sometimes grow) is referred to as the glacier mass balance. Having accurate measurements of glacier mass balance is important for understanding how quickly they are melting and for understanding the downstream impacts (like sea level rise, fresh water availability, and ecosystem changes). 

As part of my master's research I worked with the USGS Benchmark Glacier Project to develop new ways of measuring the changes in mass balance on Wolverine Glacier through a combination of remote sensing, geophysics, and direct observations. We were able to measure snow accumulation and snow/ice melt across the entire glacier surface at 10-meter scale. These observations revealed novel insights on how the patterns of accumulation and melt are fundamentally different, and showed how conventional mass-balance measurement approaches can cause errors when estimating total glacier mass loss.

Read more about this work and the USGS Benchmark Glacier Project using the links below! 

Publications

Zeller, L., D. McGrath, S. O'Neel, L. Sass, C. McNeil, E. Baker. 2023. Beyond glacier-wide mass balances: parsing seasonal elevation change into spatially-resolved patterns of accumulation and ablation at Wolverine Glacier, Alaska. Journal of Glaciology. (https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2022.46) 

Presentations

Zeller, L., D. McGrath, S. O’Neel, L. Sass, C. McNeil. 2020. Investigating seasonal surface elevation changes of Wolverine Glacier, Alaska, using high‑resolution geodetic surveys, ground‑penetrating radar, and firn modeling. Poster: AGU Fall Meeting 2020

Zeller, L., D. McGrath, S. O’Neel, L. Sass. 2020. Coupling radar and repeat lidar surveys to constrain vertical ice velocities of Wolverine Glacier, Alaska. Extended Abstract: GPR 2020

Related Links

USGS Benchmark Glacier Project: https://www2.usgs.gov/landresources/lcs/glacierstudies/benchmark.asp