Instructor Materials: Overview of the Exploring the Glacier Basin System Module
Module Overview
This Module consists of five Units, walking students through an overview of the glacier basin system, exploring glacier mass balance, albedo, and surface melt, and looking inside and underneath the glacier. The Units also cover the transition from the glacier margin to land and system responses to climate change.
Module Goals
Based on specific Driving Questions for each Unit, after completing all 5 Units student will be able to:
- Develop a sense of place (e.g., spatial, visual, & emotional) for the Kangerlussuaq glacier basin system.
- Recognize the characteristics of the glacier surface and the processes that shape it in different seasons.
- Map the movement of water through and underneath the glacier system.
- Evaluate seasonal change in a glacier basin system and be able to predict glacier behavior (speed, englacial/subglacial evolution) throughout a year.
- Determine how seasonal changes in temperature influence the overall hydrology of a glacier basin system.
- Articulate the changes that occur over decadal timescales in a glacier basin system.
Units
- Unit 1: Overview of the Glacier Basin System: Students are introduced to the geography of the Arctic and Greenland, and use interactive exercises to identify the fjord-to-glacier landscape features they might encounter in a polar glacier basin system.
- Unit 2: Glacier Mass Balance, Albedo, and Surface Melt: Using imagery, interactive online data, and GIS activities, students learn about the changing seasonal character of the ice sheet surface, and what these changes mean for the creation of surface melt, the albedo (reflectivity) of the ice surface, and implications for gaining or losing ice mass.
- Unit 3 : A Look Inside and Underneath the Glacier: This unit explores the important role of ice melt in the glacier basin system. Beginning at the ice sheet surface and then traveling through and underneath the ice, students learn about seasonal meltwater patterns and their connections to ice sheet motion and terrestrial river discharge.
- Unit 4: Transition from Glacier Margin to Land: The presence of a glacier in a basin system has substantial influence on terrestrial hydrology, including river discharge. This unit explores the differences between glaciated and unglaciated basins.
- Unit 5: System Response to Climate Change: In this unit, students transition to considering how a glacier basin system changes over multiple decades. Bringing together weather, albedo, melt, and ice sheet surface elevation data, students assess how and why this Greenland glacier basin system has changed under contemporary climate change.
Assessment
- Unit 1: Map annotations and written reflections allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the glacier system and the physical and human characteristics of the landscape.
- Unit 2: Annotations of satellite imagery and block diagrams ask students to depict seasonal variation both on and beneath the surface.
- Unit 3: Students use feedback loops to identify connections among surface and subsurface processes of the glacier and how seasons can affect those feedbacks.
- Unit 4: Students interpret hydrographs from different geographic settings (glaciated vs. un-glaciated) and describe what factors influence the pattern of annual discharge for the different data sets.
- Unit 5: Students return to map annotations and written reflections to demonstrate their understanding of the time scale on which the glacier basin system changes and how those changes impact the physical landscape and built environment.