Join us for our next colloquium on Thursday 4th March with Dr. Stuart Lane, Professor of Geomorphology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Register using the form below to receive Zoom meeting details via email.
Alpine glaciers, as with glaciers world-wide, are currently in a phase of rapid retreat.
In Switzerland and Austria alone, research has shown that since the 1850s, 900 km2 of new terrain has been exposed. Current climate warming is accelerating this process. Surprisingly, the zones that form in front of retreating glaciers are very poorly understood — both in terms of the ecosystem succession that they sustain, and their effects on the transfer of sediment downstream.
Whether in the context of biodiversity protection or hydropower exploitation, we urgently need a better understanding of these regions.
In this seminar, Dr. Lane will present results from a field-based campaign that is seeking to quantify how and when retreating glaciers evacuate the sediment that they have eroded, how proglacial margins respond to this upstream sediment (and water) boundary condition, and what this means for the development of embryonic ecosystems in proglacial margins.
After an overview of Dr. Lane’s work, the seminar will focus on one of these key questions – how and when do glaciers evacuate the sediment they have eroded.
This event is virtual, but its hosts are settlers who live and work on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh). These communities have been custodians of this land since time immemorial.
