| 1. |
- Booth, Adam D., et al.
(författare)
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A comparison of seismic and radar methods to establish the thickness and density of glacier snow cover
- 2013
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Ingår i: Annals of Glaciology. - 0260-3055 .- 1727-5644. ; 54:64, s. 73-82
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We show that geophysical methods offer an effective means of quantifying snow thickness and density. Opportunistic (efficient but non-optimized) seismic refraction and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys were performed on Storglaciaren, Sweden, co-located with a snow pit that shows the snowpack to be 1.73 m thick, with density increasing from similar to 120 to similar to 500 kg m(-3) (with a +50 kg m(-3) anomaly between 0.73 and 0.83 m depth). Depths estimated for two detectable GPR reflectors, 0.76 +/- 0.02 and 1.71 +/- 0.03 m, correlate extremely well with ground-truth observations. Refraction seismic predicts an interface at 1.90 +/- 0.31 m depth, with a refraction velocity (3730 +/- 190 m s(-1)) indicative of underlying glacier ice. For density estimates, several standard velocity-density relationships are trialled. In the best case, GPR delivers an excellent density estimate for the upper snow layer (observed = 321 +/- 74 kg m(-3), estimated = 319 +/- 10 kg m(-3)) but overestimates the density of the lower layer by 20%. Refraction seismic delivers a bulk density of 404 +/- 22 kg m(-3) compared with a ground-truth average of 356 +/- 22 kg m(-3). We suggest that geophysical surveys are an effective complement to mass-balance measurements (particularly for controlling estimates of snow thickness between pits) but should always be validated against ground-truth observations.
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| 2. |
- Gusmeroli, Alessio, et al.
(författare)
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Vertical seismic profiling of glaciers : appraising multi-phase mixing models
- 2013
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Ingår i: Annals of Glaciology. - 0260-3055 .- 1727-5644. ; 54:64, s. 115-123
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have investigated the speed of compressional waves in a polythermal glacier by, first, predicting them from a simple three-phase (ice, air, water) model derived from a published ground-penetrating radar study, and then comparing them with field data from four orthogonally orientated walkaway vertical seismic profiles (VSPs) acquired in an 80 m deep borehole drilled in the ablation area of Storglaciaren, northern Sweden. The model predicts that the P-wave speed increases gradually with depth from 3700 m s(-1) at the surface to 3760 m s(-1) at 80 m depth, and this change is almost wholly caused by a reduction in air content from 3% at the surface to <0.5% at depth. Changes in P-wave speed due to water content variations are small (<10 m s(-1)); the model's seismic cold-temperate transition surface (CTS) is characterized by a 0.3% decrease downwards in P-wave speed (about ten times smaller than the radar CTS). This lack of sensitivity, and the small contrast at the CTS, makes seismically derived water content estimation very challenging. Nevertheless, for down-going direct-wave first arrivals for zero- and near-offset VSP shots, we find that the model-predicted travel times and field observations agree to within 0.2 ms, i.e. less than the observational uncertainties.
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