Hydraulic geometry of Greenland Ice Sheet supraglacial streams: Field measurements from 2012

Vena W.
1, Chu

Laurence C. Asa K. Richard R. Colin J. Lincoln H. 4, Carl J. Legleiter4, Alberto E. Behar5, Marco Tedesco6, Kang Yang1,7 Brandon T. Overstreet
1UCLA Department of Geography, 1255 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (venachu@ucla.edu)
4Department of Geography, University of Wyoming, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, WY, 82071 5Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA

1, Smith

2, Rennermalm

3, Forster

1, Gleason

1, Pitcher

Samiah E.

2, Moustafa

C43C-0618

2Department of Geography, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854 3Department of Geography, University of Utah, 260 S. Central Campus Dr., Salt Lake City, UT 84112

6Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The City College of New York, 160 Convent Ave., New York City, NY, 10031 7Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, 210093, China

1 Introduction
Increasing surface melting on the Greenland ice sheet and rising sea level have heightened the need for understanding the complex pathways transporting meltwater from the ice sheet surface to the ice edge and the ocean. Supraglacial streams are abundant throughout the ablation zone, transporting large volumes of meltwater into moulins and crevasses (Colgan et al., 2011), yet these streams remain poorly studied. Here we present a study of supraglacial stream hydraulics and geometry in the ablation zone of western Greenland during summer 2012. We measured various parameters including flow width, depth, velocity, and water surface slope at different elevations and stream network types in a 75 km transect spanning 500 m to 1480 m in elevation. This transect includes two highly sampled catchments, one at 500 m (Ice Edge) and one at 875 m elevation (Ice Camp), and 6 other day trip sites, yielding a total of 78 cross-sections.

3 Field locations

5 Universal hydraulic geometry and scaling relationships

100

b = 0.516 Width (m)

10

0.1 0.001 10

w = 3.260Q0.516 R = 0.883, n = 78
0.01 0.1 1 10 100

Avg depth (m)

f = 0.498
1

Combining 78 cross-sections from a 75 km transect spanning various stream types and catchments yields a universal hydraulic geometry for Greenland Ice Sheet supraglacial streams. Width and depth show high and very similar b and f exponents, while velocity shows a nearzero m exponent, indicating that discharge is predominantely driven by variations in width and depth. With velocity less important and averaging ~1 m/s, the three variables controlling dicharge may possibly be simplified to just two, width and depth.
2

Table 1. All measured parameters for the 78 cross-sections.

Parameter Discharge (Q ) Width (w ) Avg depth (d ) Avg surface velocity (v ) Cross-sectional area (A ) Wetted perimeter (P ) Width/Depth Ratio (F ) Hydraulic radius (R ) Froude number (Fr ) Manning's resistance coef icient (n ) Water surface slope (S )
2

Units m3s-1 m m ms-1 m2 m m

Hydraulic geometry
Hydraulic geometry describes an empirical model where changes in width, w, depth, d, and velocity, v at cross-sections are power functions of discharge, Q (Leopold and Maddock, 1953): w = aQb; d = cQf; v = kQm, where ack = b+f+m = 1 Science questions: What are the relationships between supraglacial stream hydraulics and geometries, and are they scaleable to larger rivers? Is there a universal hydraulic geometry for Greenland Ice Sheet supraglacial streams?

Ice Edge 500m elev 31 cross-sections

Avg surface velocity (ms-1)

1450m elev 12 cross-sections

10

m = -0.014

Avg depth (m)

0.01

0.1

10

100

Hydraulic radius (m)

1293m elev 4 cross-sections 1410m elev 1080m elev 1200m elev 1080m elev 1 cross-sections 2 cross-sections 1 cross-sections 2 cross-sections

Ice Camp 875m elev 20 cross-sections

Min 0.006 0.20 0.03 0.24 0.008 0.21 1.3 0.024 0.055 0.009 0.001

Mean 3.749 4.62 0.48 1.08 5.756 6.01 11.2 0.363 0.892 0.136 0.032

Max 28.782 19.06 1.95 2.60 29.000 31.14 42.2 1.627 3.116 1.278 0.088

1070m elev 7 cross-sections

0.1

0.01 0.001

d = 0.331Q0.498 R = 0.897, n = 78

1.5

1.5

0.5

0.5

Integration with remote sensing

The integration of these hydraulic geometry relationships with widths and spectral reflectances extracted from high-resolution World-View 2 (WV2) remotely-sensed imagery are explored for retrieving water depths and scaling up to larger rivers in catchments across the entire ablation zone. Combined with automated WV2 extraction of supraglacial streams (Yang and Smith, in press), this will allow for large-scale mapping of supraglacial hydrology across the Greenland Ice Sheet. Science questions: Can remotely-sensed widths and reflectances mapped from high-resolution satellite imagery retrieve water depths? Can we assess and constrain water flux using these empirical hydraulic geometry relationships?

d = 0.010w + 0.010 R = 0.866, n = 78

0 5 10 15 20 25

R = 0.075w + 0.013 R = 0.880, n = 78

0 0 5 10 15 20 25

0.1 0.001

v= R = 0.003, n = 78
0.01 0.1 1 10 100

0.927Q-0.014

Width (m)

Width (m)

Legend

Discharge (m3s-1) Fig. 5. Power functions relating discharge with width, average depth, and average surface velocity for the 78 cross-sections.

Fig. 6. (Left image) The relationship between width and average depth shows a strong correlation, providing the possibility for extracting depths from remotely-sensed widths. (Right image) Width is is also strongly correlated with hydraulic radius, a component of Mannings n. The empirically-derived Mannings n represents surface roughness and sinuosity and can be used to calculate velocity using hydraulic radius and slope.

! (

Day sites Ice camps Rivers

10 km

! .

6 Integration with remotely-sensed

World-View 2 imagery
WV2 extraction of stream networks provides remotely-sensed widths and spectral reflectances, two opportunities for retrieving water depth. While the width and depth relationship may help constrain depth estimates, an empirical model relating reflectance ratios of WV2 green (R545) and green (R605) bands developed from field measurements provides a more direct method.

7 Conclusion
This study provides a first assessment of supraglacial stream hydraulic relationships and preliminary findings integrating those relationships with remotely-sensed imagery. While hydraulic geometry relationships are traditionally evaluated for downstream reaches of the same stream catchment, results show that hydraulic relationships across a variety of cross-sections and catchments yield a universal hydraulic geometry for Greenland Ice Sheet supraglacial streams. Velocity is typically the parameter with the highest rate of change with discharge in other supraglacial environments, driven by both steep slopes and relatively low resistance from smooth stream beds (Brykala 1999; Knighton 1981; Marston 1983), but here discharge is controlled almost equally by width and depth variations, with very little contribution from velocities. While the strong relationship between width and depth over larger scales may help constrain water flux measurements, preliminary results show that empirical models relating depth to spectral reflectance ratios can map depths from satellite imagery. Future work will assess our ability to estimating ablation zone meltwater fluxes at other ice sheet locations using high-resolution WV2 satellite imagery.

2 Data and methods

Stream hydraulics and geometries at cross-sections were measured along a 75 km transect and at two highly sampled catchments using different methods for different stream scales. Discharge (Q): calculated by the velocity-area method Width (w): leveling rod and helicopter-aided cable cross-sections Mean depth (d): depth probe and Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) Mean velocity (v): surface velocity using a FloWav Phaser portable velocity meter for streams < 8 m wide, with ADCP used for larger streams. Cross-section area (A) Wetted perimeter (P) Width/depth ratio (F): F = w/d Water surface slope (S): automatic level and leveling rod at the water surface Hydraulic radius (R): R = A/P Froude number (Fr): Fr , where Fr > 1 describes supercritical flow Mannings resistance coefficient (n): Meteorological station (Onset HOBO) for climatic variables measuring temperature, wind speed/direction, shortwave radiation (), and precipitation. Diurnal water levels and water/air temperature from Solinst pressure transducers. World-View 2 high-resolution satellite imagery over the field locations provide remotely-sensed maps of stream networks

Fig. 2. Locations of stream measurements in southwest Greenland over the period of July 20 - August 20 in summer of 2012 along a 75 km transect. Each site is labeled with the elevation and number of cross-sectional hydraulic measurements. Two highly sampled sites at 500 m and 875 m also provide measurements of ablation rate, stream water and temperature data, and meteorological variables. Rivers are extracted from World-View 2 imagery from July 18-23, 2012 coincident with the field campaign.

4 Ice Camp climatic and hydraulic

diurnal variations
The highly sampled Ice Camp site at 875m elevation from July 19 - 24, 2012 contains 23 cross-section measurements of hydraulics and geometries, ablation rate, meteteorological station variables, and diurnal stream water level and water temperature. Ablation rate in Ice Camp for the four days is an average of 5.09 cm/day. Water levels are highly driven by air temperatures, and water temperatures remain at 0C until the last day when it drops to below zero.

Meteorological measurements
Cloudy

Temperature ( C)

4 3

800 600

Radiant energy flux (Wm-2)

2 1 0 200 -1 -2 7/20 0 7/21 7/22 7/23 7/24 Temperature, C Upward shortwave radiation, W/m Downward shortwave radiation, W/m 400

a)

References
Brykala D (1999). Hydraulic geometry of a supraglacial stream on the Waldemar Glacier (Spitsbergen) in the summer. Polish Polar Studies 5164. Colgan W, Steffen K, McLamb WS, et al. (2011). An increase in crevasse extent, West Greenland: Hydrologic implications. Geophysical Research Letters 38:17. Leopold LB, Maddock TJ (1953). The hydraulic geometry of stream channels and some physiographic implications. U S Geological Survey Professional Paper 252:157. Knighton AD (1981). Channel form and flow characteristics of supraglacial streams, Austre Okstindbreen, Norway. Arctic and Alpine Research 13:295306. Marston RA (1983). Supraglacial stream dynamics on the Juneau lcefield. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73:597608. Yang K, Smith LC (in press). Supraglacial streams on the Greenland Ice Sheet delineated from combined spectral-shape information in high resolution satellite imagery. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters.

Fig. 3. Ice Camp meteorological measurements of temperature and upward/downward shortwave radiation. A heavily overcast day on July 22, 2012 dampened to diurnal temperature variation and muted the shortwave radiation.

Stream levels and temperature

30 8 6 4 2 0 -2 7/24/2012 05:00

Water level (cm)

25 20 15 10 5 7/20/2012 17:00

Temperature ( C)

7/21/2012 05:00

7/21/2012 17:00

7/22/2012 05:00

7/22/2012 17:00

7/23/2012 05:00

7/23/2012 17:00

a)

b)

c)

Acknowledgments
b)
Fig. 4. WV2 imagery from July 18, 2012 showing (a) the extracted water mask, and (b) retrieved water depths from application of the empirical model: d = -0.936 + 3.09ln(R545/R605)
This work was supported by the NASA Cryospheric Sciences Program grant NNX11AQ38G, managed by Dr. Thomas P. Wagner. The WorldView imagery was provided by Paul Morin and Claire Porter from the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota. We thank Kangerlussuaq International Science Support (KISS) for providing logistical support for field work.

Fig. 1. a) Surface velocity measured using a portable velocity meter and near-surface velocity measured using a mechanical flowmeter. b) ADCP tethered to a cross-sectional cable for measuring depth and velocity. c) Water surface slope measurement using an automatic level and leveling rod.

Water level (cm) Water Temperature (C) Air Temperature (C)

Fig. 4. Ice Camp meteorological measurements of temperature and upward/downward shortwave radiation. A heavily overcast day on July 22, 2012 dampened to diurnal temperature variation and muted the shortwave radiation.