Source-to-sink dynamics and palaeo-environment reconstruction from a dynamically evolving glacial foreland

“冰川融水的路径，从表面消融到冰前排放，是理解水文学作用及其对冰川动力学影响的关键组成部分。这种融水的轨迹和体积对冰速度既有长期影响，也有短期影响，而冰速度反过来又在冰川质量平衡制度中发挥重要作用。该项目将调查冰岛的Breidameryokull冰川及其前陆。这是一个冰川，目前正在经历快速的冰缘退缩，卫星记录很好地捕捉到了这一点。这为记录冰下融水系统如何过渡到前冰系统以及在这一演变过程中占主导地位的过程提供了一个极好的机会。在这个项目中，学生将接触到一套地质和地球物理方法，以了解冰川在过去是如何演变的，以及这与理解正在进行和未来的环境变化有什么关系。从布雷达的一个前冰川湖收集的沉积岩心将与地貌记录的绘图结合使用，地貌记录将与反复的探地雷达调查相结合，这些调查将根据沉积学记录进行校准。结合这些方法并考虑冰川系统的源-汇动力学，将使学生对研究区域的环境变化有一个全面的了解，并有可能将这种理解提升到目前表面融水产量增加的其他冰块，如格陵兰岛类似的出口冰川。这一记录将有助于对历史和当代的变化进行比较。这些变化可以一起考虑，以完善我们对冰缘退缩期间演变的不同冰川学和地貌过程的理解，以及相邻潮汐影响水体的影响。这些观测对于帮助校准和测试地球系统数值模型至关重要，这些模型试图预测全球空气和海洋温度上升所带来的未来冰川环境变化的影响。该项目将提供将沉积物分析、地球物理和遥感应用于可到达地点的培训机会。对气候变化方面的冰川过程的兴趣从未像现在这样大，因此这项工作将对研究地点和其他地方具有很高的研究影响。”

"The pathways of glacial meltwater, from surface ablation through to proglacial discharge, are a key component in understanding the role of hydrology and its influence on glacier dynamics. The trajectory and volume of this meltwater can have both long- and short-term impacts on ice velocity, which in turn play an important role in glacier mass balance regimes. This project will investigate the Breidameryokull ('Breida") glacier and its foreland in Iceland. This is a glacier that is currently experiencing rapid ice margin retreat that is well-captured in satellite records. This provides an excellent opportunity for documenting how subglacial meltwater systems transition into proglacial systems and what processes dominate during this evolution. In this project the student will be exposed to a suite of geological and geophysical methods to understand how the glacier has evolved in the past and what relevance this might have to understanding ongoing and future environmental changes. Sedimentary cores collected from a proglacial lake at Breida will be utilised in unison with the mapping of landform records that will be integrated with repeated ground-penetrating radar surveys that will be calibrated against sedimentological records. Combining these methods and considering the source-to-sink dynamics of the glacial system will provide the student with a holistic understanding of environmental changes in the study area, with the potential to upscale this understanding to other ice masses currently experiencing increases in surface meltwater production, such as analogous outlet glaciers in Greenland. This record will allow a comparison between historical and contemporary changes. These changes can be considered together to refine our understanding of different glaciological and geomorphological processes that evolve during ice margin retreat as well as the impact of an adjacent tidally-influenced water body. Such observations are crucial for helping to calibrate and test numerical Earth-system models that seek to project the implications of future environmental change in glacierised settings brought about by rising global air and ocean temperatures.The project will provide training opportunities in sediment analysis, geophysics and remote sensing applied to an accessible location. Interest in glacial processes with regard to climate change has never been greater, such that this work will have high research impact applicable to the study location and beyond."