Climate scientists use drone data to monitor glacier lake flooding impact on Alaskan communities
Worldwide impacts of climate change have been clearly outlined and forecasted in general. But on the ground, in specific locations, the way changing temperatures play out presents complex challenges. In Alaska, for example, teams of researchers monitor glacier changes, as well as avalanche and permafrost issues that lead to a range of impacts on communities.
Gabriel Wolken is a research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbank’s Climate Adaptation Science Center and manager of the State of Alaska’s Climate and Cryosphere Hazards Program. One of the big projects his research team is working on now involves using drone data to visualize and predict a glacial lake’s activities. Specifically, they need to know how its seasonal flux impacts a nearby community and its vital infrastructure.
They’ve been working since 2015 through challenging conditions with various aerial survey methods, and in 2019 Wolken learned about WingtraOne. He immediately recognized it as a new opportunity for more frequent, high-accuracy data capture.
- Glacier monitoring
- United States
WingtraOne provided an interesting option for us for many of our research objectives. Its VTOL allowed us to operate from the glacier and from one of the rock ledges. Since it’s also a fixed-wing, we could fly higher, longer, and with a payload that gave us the outputs we needed to achieve.
Gabriel Wolken
Research professor, University of Alaska Fairbank’s Climate Adaptation Center
The research teams use orthophoto and digital elevation model outputs (pictured) from WingtraOne data to assess the changes to ice levels atop Suicide Basin (to the right-hand side of the outputs) which indicates the status of the water level and how it interacts with the Mendenhall Glacier (left-hand side of outputs).
How could big, slow glaciers flood a community?
Just outside Juneau, Alaska, sits the Mendenhall Glacier, a massive body of ice stretching 21 km (13 mi). It was once connected to another body of ice, called Suicide Glacier. But over the past 80 years, Suicide Glacier has retreated. In the wake of this movement, it left a piece of itself in a deep basin. Beneath this remnant ice, the “Suicide Basin” reservoir fills with water. All of this is held in place by the Mendenhall Glacier, which is still sitting right next to it.
This point—where the basin and Mendenhall Glacier meet—is the target area where the team is conducting many lines of remote sensing to detect the change in the lake level, Wolken said.
“The main issue is that it’s ice covered so we can’t really see the water as it fills up the basin on a seasonal basis,” he explained. “WingtraOne covers a large area, efficiently and provides data that is high quality in terms of visualization and location accuracy.”
Key to all of this is how Mendenhall Glacier functions as a dam that contains the water in the basin. When the water gets too high, it either flows over it or pushes it up from below due to massive amounts of hydraulic pressure that builds up. “And then, in a catastrophic event, the water drains,” Wolken explained. “The entire lake drains over about a day and a half, and floods the infrastructure and community down below.”
