Geomorphological impacts of a glacier lake outburst flood in the high arctic Zackenberg River, NE Greenland

Reconstructing glacial outburst floods (jökulhlaups) from geomorphology: Challenges, solutions, and an enhanced interpretive framework

“…Each jökulhlaup landform or depositional sequence is the product of a unique set of hydraulic and environmental conditions that are controlled by a complex array of interdependent factors, including flood stream power, triggering mechanism, hydrograph shape, dam characteristics, sediment availability, drainage route topography and lithology, base level, and channel geometry. These parameters can vary significantly over the course of a single flood and between different flood events (Carrivick, 2011; Carrivick et al, 2013a; Cenderelli and Wohl, 2003; Clague and Evans, 2000; Kershaw et al, 2005; Korup and Tweed, 2007; Maizels, 1997; Marren, 2005, 2016; Roberts, 2005; Rushmer, 2006; Russell et al, 2005; Tomczyk et al, 2020; Tweed and Russell, 1999). Thus, jökulhlaups can generate some, all, or none of the same landforms, even if floods have similar hydraulic conditions or drain across the same landscape (Clague et al, 2021; Herget, 2005).…”

“…At a more local scale, photogrammetry methods such as Structure-from-Motion and Terrestrial Laser Scanning are ideal for generating centimeter-scale DEMs or three-dimensional models of individual landforms (Chandler et al, 2018; Westoby et al, 2012; Wilson et al, 2019). Notable examples include mapping sandur evolution after jökulhlaups from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull subglacial eruption in south Iceland (Dunning et al, 2013; Harrison et al, 2019) and river channel changes from glacial outburst floods in the Nepal Himalayas (Cook et al, 2018) and northeast Greenland (Tomczyk et al, 2020). Additionally, these imaging tools can be mounted on drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide a relatively affordable, portable, self-operable, and spatially tailored mode of data collection (Chandler et al, 2018; Tomczyk and Ewertowski, 2020).…”

Glacio-Nival Regime Creates Complex Relationships between Discharge and Climatic Trends of Zackenberg River, Greenland (1996–2019)

“…active layer thickness of the particular season [35]. There is still no agreement whether climate warming will raise the probability of GLOFs and their intensity due to melting glaciers [53] or whether increasing temperature will not impact the frequency, magnitude and timing of GLOFs as long as the glaciers exist [35].…”

Evaluation of the Influence of Processing Parameters in Structure-from-Motion Software on the Quality of Digital Elevation Models and Orthomosaics in the Context of Studies on Earth Surface Dynamics

“…These dynamics are important to studies of the landscape evolution as well as studies of processes which may pose threats to human life and infrastructure. Therefore, landscape dynamics have been studied in a number of contexts that include the following: (a) the possibility of the occurrence of landslides and areas susceptible to their formation [1][2][3]; (b) to observe areas at risk of snow avalanches [4]; (c) to monitor land surface changes due to mining activities [5,6]; and (d) to assess the dynamics of aeolian processes [7] or changes to riverscapes [8][9][10][11][12]. One example of areas characterized by particularly high dynamics of the surface is proglacial areas [13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…Moreover, proglacial areas are an important storage of water (in the form of dead-ice) and sediments, which can be relatively easy to mobilize [20,25,26]. For example, meltwaters often have a significant erosive potential and can cause large transformations both in the immediate foreland of the glaciers and in the areas further away, through glacier lake outburst floods or debris flows [11,[27][28][29][30][31]. For this reason, proglacial areas are currently the subject of research by many scientists who use modern research techniques to monitor and collect data on land surface characteristics and landform dynamics in front of retreating glaciers worldwide [17].…”