Abstract

ABSTRACT The Devon Ice Cap (DIC) is one of the largest ice masses in the Canadian Arctic. Each summer, extensive supraglacial river networks develop on the DIC surface and route large volumes of meltwater from ice caps to the ocean. Mapping their extent and understanding their temporal evolution are important for validating runoff routing and melt volumes predicted by regional climate models (RCMs). We use 10 m Sentinel-2 images captured on 28 July and 10/11 August 2016 to map supraglacial rivers across the entire DIC (12,100 km2). Both dendritic and parallel supraglacial drainage patterns are found, with a total length of 44,941 km and a mean drainage density (Dd ) of 3.71 km−1. As the melt season progresses, Dd increases and supraglacial rivers form at progressively higher elevations. There is a positive correlation between RCM-derived surface runoff and satellite-mapped Dd , suggesting that supraglacial drainage density is primarily controlled by surface runoff.

Highlights

  • The Arctic contains numerous large ice masses including the Greenland Ice Sheet, Devon Ice Cap (DIC) and Agassiz Ice Cap, with a total collective area of approximately two million square kilometers (Abdalati et al, 2004; Cook et al, 2019; Gardner et al, 2011)

  • Supraglacial rivers were successfully mapped across the entire DIC using nine Sentinel-2 L1C images acquired on 28 July 2016 (Main Map, Figure 4)

  • This paper presents a first complete time-slice map of > 10 m wide supraglacial river networks across the entire Devon Ice Cap using high spatial resolution (10 m) Sentinel-2 L1C satellite images

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Summary

Introduction

The Arctic contains numerous large ice masses including the Greenland Ice Sheet, Devon Ice Cap (DIC) and Agassiz Ice Cap, with a total collective area of approximately two million square kilometers (Abdalati et al, 2004; Cook et al, 2019; Gardner et al, 2011). During 2016, the warmest year in the Arctic since 1900 (Richter-Menge et al, 2016), Arctic ice masses experienced significant surface melt, which formed large and complex supraglacial river networks at their lower elevations in summer (Pitcher & Smith, 2019). The spatial structure of these supraglacial river networks is thought to be controlled by the surface topography (Yang et al, 2015a) through the transfer of bed variability to the ice surface at the large scale (Crozier et al, 2018; Ignéczi et al, 2018), their temporal evolution is affected by the rate and magnitude of meltwater production and the permeability of glacier surface throughout the melt season (Irvine-Fynn et al, 2011; Lampkin & Vanderberg, 2014)

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