Glacial Assessment: Past, Present and Future: Acquisition of Essential Research Instrumentation

The program has three major thrusts: 1) documenting ongoing and recent glacier change primarily using geophysical methods including remote sensing; 2) assessing the recent changes from a long-term perspective provided by high-resolution ice core-derived climate histories; and 3) projecting future glacier changes by improving modeling capability, and hence, predicting future climate forcing in terms of snowfall and ablation.

Acquisition of these instruments contributes to the Glacial Assessment Program's ability to investigate glacier changes in the past, present and future by enhancing OSU's technical capability to make critical observations and analyses. More specifically, the spectroradiometer allows crucial field observations of the spectral signature of periglacial landscapes, in order to serve as validation for trimline mapping using multispectral satellite imagery.