Announcements

JANUARY 28 - A few odds and ends:

Information on exploring subglacial lakes in Antarctica (thank you Jeremy!): Endurance explorations of Lake Bonney; Exploration of Lake Vostok (has a great map of subglacial lakes and rivers).

Information on Iceland: According to Aber (2006) about 10% of Iceland is covered by ice. This image, taken in September 2002, shows Icelands larger icecaps. The largest ice cap (middle right) is Vatnajokull which has an average thickness of 400-500 meters and which sits atop two large volcanic centers and about five other smaller volcanically active spots (Iceland on the Web). Heat from these volcanoes occasionally results in major outburst floods. The middle top ice cap is Hofsjokull, the left-most ice cap is Langjokull, and the one at the bottom of the image is Myrdalsjokull.
Image credit: NASA Visible Earth. http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=4701

Information on Antarctic ice stream flow velocities: Here's an image showing flow velocities for the Lambert Glacier in Antarctica, which isn't an ice stream, but the velocities are quite impressive. Yellow represents either stationary ice or exposed land. Data from Ice Streams E and E near the Ross Ice Shelf indicate average flow velocities of 120 m/year on Upper Ice Stream D (Bindschadler et al, 1996), 182 m/year on Lower Ice Stream D (Bindschadler et al, 1996), 219 m/year on Upper Ice Stream E (Bindschadler et al, 1996), and 399 m/year on Lower Ice Stream E (Bindschadler et al, 1996).
Image credit: NASA Visible Earth; Image courtesy Canadian Space Agency/NASA/Ohio State University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Alaska SAR facility.
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1618

Some cool images: Here's a great panaroma of the glacial landscape surrounding the Matterhorn, Switzerland. Here's a really awesome image of Mount Everest and the glaciers surrounding it. The Mount Everest image is from the World Atlas of Panoramic Aerial Maps by W. Bowen.