MAGIC-DML

Welcome to our blog series, “Let’s Talk Science,” where we break down the science behind our team’s work. Over the past couple weeks, we’ve talk about how our team uses satellites and clues on the ground to create the maps of Antarctica. Today, we will look at some of those maps! Has it been a while since you’ve read the other posts? No worries! Use the links in the article to go back and refresh your memory. --- We use remote sensing images to see the ice from a bird’s eye v

Welcome to our blog series, “Let’s Talk Science,” where we break down the science behind our team’s work. Last week, we talked about nunataks (rock that is exposed when the ice moves). This week, we’re sharing one way the ice moves and allows those nunataks to become exposed. --- In some places, glaciers move and change really slowly. In other places, the ice moves much, much faster. The fast-moving areas of ice within an ice sheet are called ice streams. Ice streams move fas

Welcome to our blog series, “Let’s Talk Science,” where we break down the science behind our team’s work. Last week, we talked about how we look for certain things in the ice to improve our mapping and eventually begin measuring how the ice has changed. But how do we find those clues? One way to find clues is to find nunataks! --- Nunataks, besides being really fun to say, are areas of rock that have peaked out from under the ice. When you look out over a wide expanse of ice,

In our last article, we began explaining how remote sensing helps us with our mapping, the first “M” of our acronym. We use this to begin to create geomorphological maps (maps that show the landscape features on the Earth’s surface produced by geological processes). The next strategy we use is field mapping and verification. --- Not all the mapping of ice and rock surface features we need can be done through our satellites. Some of it needs to be done hands on “in the field”

Remote sensing uses satellites to help us see a big chunk of land from a bird’s-eye-view. When the sun shines on the land, radiation bounces

On January 21st we headed out for our first major fieldwork in Milorgfjella (pronounced "Mee-lorg-feeyella") about 240 km SSE of the research station Wasa. We set out early in the morning with our two trusty Arctic Trucks packed to the gills with fieldwork equipment, food, camping gear, and the many bits and pieces that are needed for remote fieldwork in Antarctica. For example, we have lots of electronic equipment (GPS, rock drills, rugged computers and tablets) that needs

Antarctica is covered by a vast ice sheet (Picture 1). The colours of the ice sheet indicate thickness, with blues showing thinner ice and reds, thicker ice. The image is from http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2011/06/Antarctic_ice_sheet. Beneath the ice sheet, hidden from view (Picture 2), lies a landscape similar to that of the other continents on Earth, with mountains, hills, valleys and plains. The ice sheet colours in The thickness and extent of the ice sheet chang