Black Rapids Glacier, Alaska, timelapse photographs

The archived photographs are from three cameras situated at the margin of Black Rapids Glacier in the Eastern Alaska Range. The cameras were established to monitor several glacier marginal lakes. These lakes fill every spring and then drain catastrophically. The lake drainage leads to an acceleration of glacier motion. The main interest in this NSF-funded project was to document these lake drainages, relate them to glacier motion and assess how the glacier acceleration affects the glacier tributaries. These tributaries are known to play a regulating role for glacier surges (one to two year long phases of very rapid glacier motion), and it is hoped that the lake drainage induced accelerations serve as useful analogues for glacier surges.