Alex Hyde
Alex's project aims to understand how glacial lakes in the Himalayas are driving non-heterogeneous glacier retreat. Read more about Alex's research.
About Alex
Project description
The project aims to understand how glacial lakes in Himalayas are driving non-heterogeneous glacier retreat.
The focus of the study is the large lake terminating glaciers in the Lunana valley, north west Bhutan. The project focuses on the rapid and unexpected retreat of the Thorthormi glacier between 2018 – 2022, which saw the break-up of 1.83 km2 of ice over 4 years. This contrasts with the relatively stable retreat rates of the three neighbouring lake terminating glaciers.
Understanding the drivers of this retreat will be important in informing our understanding of glacial change in High Mountain Asia, as well as inferring future risk of potential glacial hazards such Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs), and water supply concerns.
The project will explain the dynamic retreat seen at Thorthormi by using remote sensing and field based methods to measure the changing dynamic regime that led to the break-up of the glaciers large ice tongue.
The first phase of the study uses satellite imagery to measure ice velocities in order to understand how the glacier responded to short term changes in the force balance at the terminus using platforms such as PlanetScope, this data can feed into modelling studies looking to improve the parametrisation of lake terminating ice dynamics.
Field mapping of the study area, and collection of bathymetry data will then be used to estimate historical ice thicknesses and answer questions regarding glacier buoyancy and the timing of dynamic thinning.