Evolution of Greenland’s surface drainage from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle surveys

During the melt-season, extensive networks of supraglacial channels and lakes develop in the ablation area of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) as a consequence of surface melting. These drainage elements are important since they have the potential to transmit large volumes of water to the ice bed via moulins where it can impact on ice flow rates. However, how quickly these drainage elements evolve, and thus the efficiency with which water can be transited across and into the GrIS, is largely unknown, as to date, there have been no studies of sufficiently high temporal and spatial resolution to determine this. This proposal seeks to be the first to explore and quantify the nature of such drainage evolution, and will do so by building very high resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) from multiple optical images gathered from repeat Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) surveys, and through the deployment of Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques. In this way, we will explore changes at the surface that take place over the course of a melt season. In detail, the aims of this project are:
• To gather hundreds of optical images from multiple separate UAV surveys over a portion of the south-western part of the GrIS over the course of a melt-season.
• To use Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques to build very high resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) and orthomosaics of the ice surface.
• To devise methods to automatically map drainage evolution.
• To quantify the changes that take place over the course of a melt season.
• To explore the controlling mechanisms behind relative drainage stability or dynamics.

It is the intention to relate the high resolution record of evolving supraglacial drainage that will result to meteorological variables and an assessment of ice dynamics (via links with a White Rose Consortium that involves both supervisors two external advisors).