CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
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Author : Burgess, D.O.; and Demuth, M.N.
Date : 2009.
Title : The mass balance of Canadian glaciers and ice caps – observations, links to climate, and the variation of related water fluxes.
Publication : MOCA-09, Our Warming Planet. Joint Assembly of the IAMAS, IAPSO and IACS. July 19-29, 2009. Montreal, Quebec.
Issue :
Page(s) :
Abstract
Canada’s geography supports a wide diversity of glacier-climate regimes that control the flow and form of the Earth’s largest non-polar and polar ice fields outside of those of Greenland and Antarctica. Land ice in Canada plays a significant role in relative sea level rise, water re source s, and ecosystem functioning thus, knowledge of changes to this component of the cryosphere is of national and international concern. The application of a coupled in-situ – remote sensing strategy, and numerous government, university and international partnerships i s currently being exploited to provide more comprehensive information on water fluxes from these features, which to date have been based on rudimentary data alone. In the western and northern Cordillera, formal observations began in association with interests in hydrology and the International Hydrological Decade 1965-1975. Advances in understanding the past changes in climate across this region was fuelled primarily by morphostratigraphic evidence left behind from Holocene glacier-climate fluctuations, and by a very limited number of ice cores. The inception of formal mass balance observations in the eastern Arctic Islands began in the late 1950s with perspectives on past changes being largely derived from ice core analysis. This talk will provide an overview of these monitoring programs, and conclude by highlighting the application of repeat altimetry, ice penetrating radar and interferometric surveys currently used to provide assessments that augment in-situ observations.
Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology