CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
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Author : Fastook, J.L.
Date : 2003.
Title : Embedded ice sheet models: application to Maritime Canada.
Publication : Joint Annual Meeting of the Canadian Quaternary Association and the Canadian Geomorphology Research Group. Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 8-12, 2003.
Issue :
Page(s) :
Abstract
Atmospheric modellers have had considerable success with high-resolution regional models whose boundary conditions are defined and controlled by the output of a lower-resolution global circulation model. This sort of embedded model allows for resolutions that would not be feasible if the entire domain were digitized at high resolution. A similar problem exists for ice sheet modeling. Important dynamic features such as ice streams are poorly resolved at the low resolutions (20-100 km grid spacing) necessary to include an entire ice sheet, and yet migrating ice divides and changing catchment areas make modeling of a whole ice sheet necessary to capture large-scale changes which must have occurred during the LGM and the ice sheet's subsequent collapse to its present configuration. Current Antarctic databases such as BEDMAP (Lythe 2000) offer 5 km resolution of the bed, while surface DEMs are approaching 200 m resolution (Liu 2001). Bed-topographic DEMs on which Northern Hemisphere paleo-ice sheets are reconstructed are available at similar resolutions (ETOPO2 2001). Details of implementing such an embedded model are described and an application of the embedded model to Maritime Canada, with particular attention to the distribution of basal water and consequent sliding and ice streaming, is discussed.
Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology