ABSTRACT
Professor Martin Truffer, Glaciers Group, University of Alaska, USA

Taku Glacier is one of only a few advancing glaciers in the world. The advance of the glacier can be understood in terms of the tidewater glacier cycle, which can lead to glacier behavior that is temporarily decoupled from climate forcing. The advancing ice provides us with a natural laboratory to study the ice and sediment dynamics at and near an active glacier front. The glacier advances over marine sediments, uplifting them to above sea level, and actively deforming them. Behind the glacier terminus, the ice excavates sediments at rates of up to 3 m/yr. Sediment excavation is mainly a glaciofluvial process and is episodic and seasonal. Velocity measurements and ice flow models also imply that sediment deformation is highly seasonal and the near terminus ice switches between compressional flow with higher basal stresses in winter to block flow with low basal stresses in summer.