Michael N. Demuth

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• Professor (Adjunct) at University of Victoria

Broadband microwave Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar measurements were made during the spring of 2005 and 2006, at the CryoSat validation site on Devon Ice Cap, Nunavut, Canada. Metal reflector experiments were performed by inserting a large metal plate into a snowpit, parallel to visually identified layer transitions. This allowed...

Maps of glacier area in western Canada have recently been generated for 1985 and 2005 (Bolch et al., 2010), providing the first complete inventory of glacier cover in Alberta and British Columbia. Western Canada lost about 11% of its glacier area over this period, with area loss exceeding 20% on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies. Glacier a...

The three ice cores recovered on , or near Mt Logan at 3 , 4.3 and 5.4 km above sea level (kasl), together with a high resolution lake record at 0.8 km asl cover variously 500 to 30000 years . The stable isotopic (18O/16 O, and D/H) records in particular are compared for the most recent 500 years that they all share. This suite of records offers a...

As a result of global climate change, glacial melt occurs worldwide. Major impacts are expected on the dynamics of aquifers and rivers in and downstream of mountain ranges. This study aims at quantifying the melt water input fluxes into the watersheds draining the Canadian Rocky Mountains and improving our knowledge about the fate of meltwater with...

In the mid-20th Century, the Park and Front ranges of the Canadian Rocky Mountains contained approximately 1,500 individual glaciers whose melt water drains into the Nelson River system, which flows eastwards and empties into Hudson’s Bay. Using contemporary optical data obtained from space-based imaging sensors, we determined late 20th Century gla...

Glacier mass balance models are needed at sites with scarce long-term observations to reconstruct past glacier mass balance and assess its sensitivity to future climate change. In this study, North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data were used to force a physically based, distributed glacier mass balance model of Saskatchewan Glacier for the h...

This paper presents hydrometeorological, glaciological and geospatial data from the Peyto Glacier Research Basin (PGRB) in the Canadian Rockies. Peyto Glacier has been of interest to glaciological and hydrological researchers since the 1960s, when it was chosen as one of five glacier basins in Canada for the study of mass and water balance during t...

Glacier mass balance models are needed at sites with scarce long-term observations to reconstruct past glacier mass balance and assess its sensitivity to future climate change. In this study North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data are used to force a physically-based, distributed glacier mass balance model of Saskatchewan Glacier for the his...

The interior of western Canada, like many similar cold mid- to high-latitude regions worldwide, is undergoing extensive and rapid climate and environmental change, which may accelerate in the coming decades. Understanding and predicting changes in coupled climate–land–hydrological systems are crucial to society yet limited by lack of understanding...

Summary: Geological Survey of Canada Open File 8401 presents an analysis of recently documented glacier area changes in the Ragged Range, NT and Nahanni National Park Reserve to illustrate decadal trends as controlled by size and situation in the topography. It has been determined that approximately 110 km2 of glacier cover has been lost over the l...

Status of the Journal Terra Glacialis

Terra Glacialis 12-Special Issue Preface

Terra Glacialis 12-Special Issue Contents

Terra Glacialis 12-Special Issue Communication

This paper presents hydrometeorological, glaciological and geospatial data of the Peyto Glacier Research Basin (PGRB) in the Canadian Rockies. Peyto Glacier has been of interest to glaciological and hydrological researchers since the 1960s, when it was chosen as one of five glacier basins in Canada for the study of mass and water balance during the...

Citation: Demuth, M.N., V. Pinard and P.Wilson, 2018. On-line Supplementary Information for: Demuth et al., 2016 Global Land Ice Measurements from Space - Chapter 16 and Demuth et al., 2008 Terra Glacialis Special Issue. 7 pp. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10431.20645 Summary The work presented below provides on-line supplementary material that has become...

Geological Survey of Canada Open File 8229 presents an analysis of recently documented glacier volume and longitudinal profile changes to illustrate the decadal-centenary variability of mass change for a broad sample of study glaciers in Jasper National Park including those in the Columbia Icefield region, Alberta, Canada. The results generally ref...

Glaciers are found in many of Canada’s Arctic and alpine regions. Short and long-term changes in their mass play a significant role in regional and global sea-level change; and modulate mountain runoff that impacts natural and human system functioning. Many of Canada’s glaciers lay within protected areas such as National Parks and Reserves and Prov...

Observations show that glaciers around the world are in retreat and losing mass. Internationally coordinated for over a century, glacier monitoring activities provide an unprecedented dataset of glacier observations from ground, air and space. Glacier studies generally select specific parts of these datasets to obtain optimal assessments of the mas...

We show that the CryoSat-2 radar altimeter can provide useful estimates of surface elevation change on a variety of Arctic ice caps, on both monthly and yearly timescales. Changing conditions, however, can lead to a varying bias between the elevation estimated from the radar altimeter and the physical surface due to changes in the ratio of subsurfa...

We show that the CryoSat-2 radar altimeter can provide useful estimates of surface elevation change on a variety of Arctic ice caps, on both monthly and yearly time scales. Changing conditions, however, can lead to a varying bias between the elevation estimated from the radar altimeter and the physical surface due to changes in the contribution of...

as used in: Demuth, M.N., and A. Pietroniro. 2003. The impact of climate change on the glaciers of the Canadian Rocky Mountain eastern slopes and implications for water resource adaptation in the Canadian prairies. CCAF - Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, Final Report Project P55, plus Technical Appendices,162 pp.

as used in: Demuth, M.N., V. Pinard, A. Pietroniro, B.H. Luckman, C. Hopkinson, P. Dornes and L.Comeau, 2008. Recent and past-century variations in the glacier resources of the Canadian Rocky Mountains – Nelson River system. Terra Glacialis – Special Issue: Mountain Glaciers and Climate Changes of the Last Century, 27-52.

as used in: Demuth, M.N., V. Pinard, A. Pietroniro, B.H. Luckman, C. Hopkinson, P. Dornes and L.Comeau, 2008. Recent and past-century variations in the glacier resources of the Canadian Rocky Mountains – Nelson River system. Terra Glacialis – Special Issue: Mountain Glaciers and Climate Changes of the Last Century, 27-52.

Demuth, M.N., V. Pinard, A. Pietroniro, B.H. Luckman, C. Hopkinson, P. Dornes and L.Comeau, 2008. Recent and past-century variations in the glacier resources of the Canadian Rocky Mountains – Nelson River system. Terra Glacialis – Special Issue: Mountain Glaciers and Climate Changes of the Last Century, 27-52.

A new glacier inventory was developed for the Ragged Range, an area only recently added to Nahanni National Park Reserve, Northwest Territories. Federal mapping from aerial photography in 1982 was compared with Landsat satellite imagery from 2008. Glacier cover decreased in area by 30 % over that period; the greatest percentage loss was in glaciers...

CANADA’S CLIMATE IS CHANGING, WITH OBSERVED CHANGES IN AIR TEMPERATURE, PRECIPITATION, SNOW AND ICE COVER AND OTHER INDICATORS. FURTHER CHANGES IN CLIMATE ARE INEVITABLE.

A major achievement in research supported by the Kluane Lake Research Station was the recovery, in 2001 – 02, of a suite of cores from the icefields of the central St. Elias Mountains, Yukon, by teams of researchers from Canada, the United States, and Japan. This project led to the development of parallel, long (103 – 104 year) ice-core records of...

Glacial mass balance estimated through the geodetic method requires glacial surface coordinate observations from historical and contemporary sources. Contemporary observations and historical topographic maps are typically referenced to separate horizontal and vertical datums and observed with different sampling intervals. This research demonstrates...

The study of the Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets is of tremendous importance as their fluctuation has consequences on sea-level, river flow, ecosystem functioning, ocean circulation and climate stability. Recent studies have shown that the Earth’s small glaciers are in measurable decline on account of secular atmospheric warming (Kaser et al., 2007...

Multi-temporal photogrammetric and LiDAR-based DEMs collected over the Peyto Glacier (1949, 1966, 1993, 2000, 2010) were analysed to quantify rates of glacial and periglacial volumetric change. During this time, exposed glacier ice area has reduced by 18% from 14.2 to 11.6 km2, while the actively downwasting lateral moraine area has increased by 70...

Becoming Water takes the reader on a tour of Canada’s glaciers, describing the stories they tell and educating the reader about how glaciers came to be, how they work and what their future holds in our warming world. By visiting Canada’s high and low Arctic and the mountain West, the reader will learn how varied and complex our glaciers really are,...

Recognizing that climate influences both annual tree-ring growth and glacier mass balance, changes in the mass balance of Place Glacier, British Columbia, were documented from increment core records. Annually resolved ring-width (RW), maximum (MXD), and mean density (MD) chronologies were developed from Engelmann spruce and Douglas-fir trees sample...

In the first week of September 2010, international experts on glacier monitoring convened in Zermatt, Switzerland, for two separate but related meetings. They discussed glacier data compiled over the past 150 years and how to improve this dataset to meet the challenges of the 21st century, pre-sented latest results from in situ and remotely sensed...

Recent surface elevation changes of Kaskawulsh Glacier, Yukon, Canada, are quantified by comparing an air-photo derived DEM from 1977 and airborne lidar measurements from 1995, 2000 and 2007. Surface-area changes are assessed using historical aerial photography from 1956 and satellite imagery from 1977 to 2007. Combined, these measurements provide...

A high-resolution, 8000 year-long ice core record from the Mt. Logan summit plateau (5300 m asl) reveals the initiation of trans-Pacific lead (Pb) pollution by ca. 1730, and a >10-fold increase in Pb concentration (1981-1998 mean = 68.9 ng/l) above natural background (5.6 ng/l) attributed to rising anthropogenic Pb emissions from Asia. The largest...

Due to access difficulties in active alpine moraine environments, it can be challenging to accurately map and quantify debris cover and ice-core extent. To aid in identifying the presence and extent of ice-cored moraine, a non-invasive method of mapping spatial and temporal moraine temperature patterns using a light detection and ranging (lidar) di...

The influence of DEM resolution on simulated glacier melt was quantified by running a GIS energy balance model over the Peyto Glacier in the Canadian Rockies. DEMs were generated at eight scales ranging from 1m to 1000m grid cell resolutions from airborne lidar data collected in August 2002. Modelled melt values over the glacier terminus were valid...

The influence of digital elevation model (DEM) resolution to modelled glacier melt during peak melt production was evaluated by performing a clear sky GIS radiation simulation over the Peyto Glacier in the Canadian Rockies. DEMs were generated at eight resolutions ranging from 1 m to 1000 m grid spacing from airborne lidar data. When applied to the...

In August 2008, reactivation of the Little Salmon Lake landslide occurred. During this event, hundreds of conical mounds of variable size and composition formed in the deposition zone. The characteristics of these landforms are described and a potential mechanism for their formation is proposed. A preliminary slope stability analysis of the 2007 Mo...

As the Earth's glaciers and ice sheets are subjected to the effects of recent and predicted warming, the distribution of their glaciological facies zones will alter. Percolation and wet snow facies zones will, in general, move upwards; encroaching upon, for some glacier configurations, regions of dry snow facies. Meltwater percolation and internal...

Estimating annual accumulation rates on polar ice sheets is important for mass balance studies, ice sheet modeling, and ice core interpretation. While most areas of the ice sheets have small variations in topography, spatial variations in annual net accumulation can be significant at the 10 m scale due to wind, microtopography (i.e. sastrugi), and...

“No country on Earth has such contrasts of drought and water plenty as Canada. None has so much water ready and available for use. But Canada is learning that national statistics do not begin to portray the complexity of its relationship with its most vital resource. .. a new reality is emerging. It is a reality in which water is in increasingly sh...

The hydrological model WATFLOOD and a separate volume–area scaling relationship are applied to estimate glacier wastage and seasonal Melt contribution to the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers originating in the Canadian Rocky Mountains (1975–1998). Wastage is the ice melt volume that exceeds the volume of snow accumulation into the glacier system...

As glacier extents in the Canadian Rockies diminish, the influence of groundwater and other baseflow inputs to headwater river systems will gradually take on a more important role in terms of their contribution to the available water resource. It is believed that commensurate with decreasing exposed ice extents there is a volumetric increase in the...

This study describes results from measurements of variations in snow accumulation across Belcher Glacier, Devon Ice Cap. Profiles from a 500 MHz GPR system are validated with avalanche probe, neutron probe (density) and visual core stratigraphy to show how snow accumulation varies spatially across the Belcher Glacier basin. This enables quantificat...

A large rock and ice avalanche occurred on the north face of Mount Steele, southwest Yukon Territory, Canada, on July 24, 2007. In the days and weeks preceding the landslide, several smaller avalanches initiated from the same slope. The ice and rock debris traveled a maximum horizontal distance 5.76km with a maximum vertical descent of 2,160m, leav...

Interpretation of ice mass elevation changes observed by satellite altimetry demands quantification of the proportion of elevation change which is attributable to variations in firn densification. Detailed stratigraphic logging of snowpack structure and density was carried out at ∼1 km intervals along a 47 km transect on Devon Ice Cap, Canada, in s...

1] A high-resolution, 8000 year-long ice core record from the Mt. Logan summit plateau (5300 m asl) reveals the initiation of trans-Pacific lead (Pb) pollution by ca. 1730, and a >10-fold increase in Pb concentration (1981 – 1998 mean = 68.9 ng/l) above natural background (5.6 ng/l) attributed to rising anthropogenic Pb emissions from Asia. The lar...

The ice core recovered from Prospector Russell Col on Mt Logan (5.4 km a.s.l.), in the Yukon spans over 20 000 years. This unique record offers a Pacific view of the stable isotope and chemical record from the Lateglacial to the present. The timescale is based on seasonal counted years, the largest known volcanic acid signatures and the major shift...

Results from this conference paper were published as: Bell, C.; D. Mair, D. Burgess, M. Sharp, M. Demuth, F. Cawkwell, R. Bingham and J. Wadham (2008) Spatial and temporal variability in the snowpack of a High Arctic ice cap: implications for mass‐change measurements. Annals of Glaciology, 48, 159‐170, doi: 10.3189/172756408784700725.

Three ice cores were recovered on or near Mount Logan, Yukon, Canada, at 3017, 4135 and 5340 m a.s.l. in 2002. Prior to ice-core drilling, we collected snow-pit and shallow core samples from Mount Logan in 2001 to study seasonal and spatial variations of snow chemistry. We dug snow pits at six sites between 2420 and 5340 m a.s.l. before the beginni...

Abstract Knowledge of the changing dimensions of alpine glacier surfaces is critical from both a water resources and climate change ,indication perspective. With the development ,of airborne lidar (Light Detection And Ranging) technologies with the capability to rapidly map large areas of topography at high resolutions, there is a need to assess th...

The variation of the seasonal and net mass balance time series of Peyto Glacier, 1966-1995, is described. Analysis reveals that the winter balance played a dominant role in the evolution of the net balance for this period. A major shift in the winter balance is identified to have taken place after 1976, exhibiting a quasi-step change of approximate...

In 1996, the Peyto Glacier 100th Anniversary Workshop was held in conjunction with the Canadian Geophysical Union - Hydrology Section Annual Meeting at Banff, Alberta, Canada. The original idea for this workshop stemmed from the need to assemble, into one forum, the knowledge thus far gained from one of the most extensively studied glaciers in Nort...

Monopulse (1.25 to 5 MHz) RADAR measurements of ice thickness on Peyto Glacier were first made in August 1983 (Holdsworth et al., 1983). Additional measurements were made in 1984, 1985 and 1986 to cover the upper basin and connect with the measurements made in 1970 (Goodman, 1975). In most cases, the assumed basal reflections were clear and general...

As the Earth’s coldest regions undergo marked changes due to atmospheric warming, so will the surface facies configurations of its glaciers and ice sheets. Their percolation and wet snow zones will expand upwards and occupy more area. The inherent stratigraphic complexity of these zones will then impart greater uncertainty in glacier and ice sheet...

Shortwave (SW) albedo of mountainous regions serves as indicator of climate change. SW albedo for relatively low altitudes may reduce due to shrinking of snow/ice pack in the warming climate. For high elevations, albedo may change due to changes in amount of precipitation (snow). We analysed coarse resolution satellite data available from AVHRR and...

Three ice cores recovered on or near Mount Logan, together with a nearby lake record (Jellybean Lake), cover variously 500 to 30 000 years. This suite of records offers a unique view of the lapse rate in stable isotopes from the lower to upper troposphere. The region is climatologically important, being beside the Cordilleran pinning-point of the R...

Snow and ice surface roughness affect the backscatter of the pulse emitted by a radar altimeter, and hence the accuracy of the surface elevation calculated from the waveform echo, but the influence of surface roughness has not been quantified. As part of the CryoSat calibration/validation field campaigns on the Devon Ice Cap in 2004, surface roughn...

The capability of RADARSAT synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for the purpose of snow-line/accumulation area mapping for a temperate alpine glacier is examined. In agreement with other orbital C-band SAR studies, RADARSAT can discriminate between firn and bare ice facies. Limited observations are reported with respect to the electromagnetic variability...

Baby Glacier, Axel Heiberg Island, N.W.T., Canada is a small (0.6 km2), high-latitude (79°N), high-altitude (700–1200 m) glacier with a mass balance record extending from 1959–60 to the present. The record demonstrates shrinkage of the glacier, but a statistically significant trend is not evident. Correlations are strong between the mass balance of...

The major conclusion of CCAF-PARC Study P55 is that the reliability of water flow from the glaciated headwater basins of the upper North Saskatchewan River Basin has declined since the mid-1900s, and that hydrologic and ecological regimes dependant on the timing and magnitude of glacier-derived meltwater may already be experiencing the medium-long-...

Although a great deal of research has focused on the hydrologic effects of climate variability and change, relatively little research has examined the effects on streamflow of interactions between climate variability and change and resulting glacier response. Place Glacier, in the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, has been monit...

CRYSYS (Cryosphere System in Canada) is a national collaborative research effort to improve the ability to observe, monitor and model the cryosphere, and its processes and feedbacks in the climate system. The project is a Canadian contribution to NASA's Earth Observing System and will contribute to WCRP's new initiative on Climate and Cryosphere (C...

Discusses logistics and applications of the first complete airborne scanning LiDAR survey of a glacierised mountain basin. The survey was conducted over a 25×6 km area with ground height variation from 1800 m asl to 3400 m asl. The resolution of survey points on the ground varied from 1 per sq metre to around 1 per 4 sq metres, depending on elevati...

Flooding of deltas on large, northern rivers is usually the result of spring ice-jam events, as opposed to high flows during the open-water season. Some of the most sensitive components of such ecosystems are the perched basins: small ponds and lakes that are hydraulically isolated from the main flow system. The biological structure and productivit...

Delta ecosystems are often comprised of a myriad of channels and lakes, the latter of which can be subdivided according to the level of their connection with the main flow system. The dynamics of such lakes, in terms of their overall biological structure and productivity, depend on flooding and flushing during high-stage events. Major flooding of t...