EPSS Colloquium fall-2021

Many fast-moving glaciers sit atop a bed made of unconsolidated sediment that can deform in response to the stress applied by overriding ice. This deformation has ramifications for both glaciology and glacial geomorphology as its strain accounts for much of the glacier’s forward motion and produces some of the most iconic glacial landforms. In this lecture, I will talk about how we constrain this deformation using a novel cryosphere ring shear device capable of sliding a ring of temperate ice over an unconsolidated till bed at a range of realistic effective stresses and sliding velocities, while continuously monitoring sediment deformation.