Aerial view of Stagnation Glacier (B28)

Location: Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada

Aerial view of Stagnation Glacier (B28) from an altitude of approximately 700 m, looking northeast. See image 0085 for further explanation. Light color of inner face of moraine on the right (northeast) is related to substantial summer mass movement of poorly sorted, muddy, bouldery debris down the steep outer slopes and inner ice-contact slopes. There is concomitant melting of the ice core of the moraine, exposed as its insulating cover of sediment slides off. The substantial lateral and end moraines of retreating glaciers at Bylot Island and northern Baffin Island are for the most part cored by the preserved glacier ice that formed the side of the glaciers at the time they stood at their neoglacial maxima. The forefronts of glaciers that have retreated significantly since reaching their neoglacial maxima (such as C79, B17, B28, B30, and B37) typically are underlain by a few meters of debris-rich, remnant glacial ice. This ice has been preserved due to insulation by a thick sediment cover of supraglacial debris (often dominated by angular boulders that have fallen onto the glacier from adjacent slopes) overlying basal diamicton melted out of the basal zone of high debris concentration (lower 5 to 10 m of these glaciers). The mean annual temperature at Pond Inlet is about -15°C, so the only way that ice insulated by sediment can melt is for the sediment to be removed by slumping or by wind or water erosion during the thaw season.

Updated 08/31/2009 AW