This week (January 23) Professor Luke Zoet of Geosciences will speak to us of “The Mysteries of Glacial Slip and Landform Development.” Here’s how Luke describes his talk:
Glaciers flow downhill like slow motion rivers but unlike a river a glacier “slips” at its base. Glacier slip accounts for most of the motion of fast-moving glaciers and is the root cause for the construction of many of the landforms that glaciers leave behind once they melt.
We can study modern-day glaciers as well as landforms left behind to help understand how the slipping process occurs. I will show results from the various project in Canada, Switzerland, and Wisconsin where we have studied glacial landforms to better understand glacial slip.