Kaskawulsh Lake, Yukon, 2017
Kaskawulsh Lake and its annual outburst flood were the focus of our 2017 Yukon field work. M.Sc. candidate Dave Bigelow was joined by Gwenn Flowers, collaborator Laurent Mingo (Blue System Integration Ltd), M.Sc. candidate Alex Pulwicki and undergraduate research assistant Glenn Hall. We drilled and instrumented nine shallow boreholes to monitor englacial water levels in the vicinity of the ice shelf/ice dam during the lake filling and draining cycle. We also installed two stationary radar systems, GPS stations, meteorological sensors and time-lapse cameras to help us understand the dynamics of outburst flood initiation and progression. Roving radar surveys were conducted before and after the flood to quantify the change in englacial water content and the extent to which an englacial aquifer is hydraulically connected to the lake. Dave will be using all these data to investigate the evolution of englacial hydrology during glacier lake outburst floods.
