Taylor Glacier on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
__NOTOC__
The Taylor Glacier is an 
The Taylor Glacier has been the focus of a measurement and modeling effort carried out by researchers from the Taylor Valley, Antarctica
at
Pictures from the Taylor Glacier
*
Long Term Ecological Research
group is working in the Taylor Valley
Satellite images of the region
{{Authority control Glaciers of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys
Antarctic
The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and other ...
glacier
A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires dis ...
about long, flowing from the plateau of Victoria Land
Victoria Land is a region in eastern Antarctica which fronts the western side of the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf, extending southward from about 70°30'S to 78°00'S, and westward from the Ross Sea to the edge of the Antarctic Plateau. It ...
into the western end of Taylor Valley
Taylor Valley is the southernmost of the three large McMurdo Dry Valleys in the Transantarctic Mountains, Victoria Land, Antarctica, located west of McMurdo Sound at approximately . The valley extends from Taylor Glacier in the west to McMurdo So ...
, north of the Kukri Hills
Kukri Hills () is a prominent east-west trending mountain range, range, about long and over high, forming the divide between Ferrar Glacier on the south and Taylor Glacier and Taylor Valley on the north, in Victoria Land, Antarctica.
The hills w ...
, south of the Asgard Range
The Asgard Range is a mountain range in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It divides Wright Valley from Taylor Glacier and Taylor Valley, and was named by the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (1958–59) after Asgard, the home o ...
. The middle part of the glacier is bounded on the north by the Inland Forts and on the south by Beacon Valley
Beacon Valley () is an ice-free valley between Pyramid Mountain (Antarctica), Pyramid Mountain and Beacon Heights, in Victoria Land. It was mapped by the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910–13, and named by the Victoria University of Wellington ...
.
History
The glacier was discovered by theBritish National Antarctic Expedition
The ''Discovery'' Expedition of 1901–1904, known officially as the British National Antarctic Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since the voyage of James Clark Ross sixty years earlier (1839–184 ...
(1901–04) and at that time thought to be a part of Ferrar Glacier
__NOTOC__
Ferrar Glacier is a glacier in Antarctica. It is about long, flowing from the plateau of Victoria Land west of the Royal Society Range to New Harbour in McMurdo Sound. The glacier makes a right (east) turn northeast of Knobhead, where ...
. The Western Journey Party of the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910 determined that the upper and lower portions of what was then known as Ferrar Glacier are apposed, i.e., joined in Siamese-twin fashion north of Knobhead. With this discovery Robert Falcon Scott
Captain Robert Falcon Scott, , (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the ''Discovery'' expedition of 1901–1904 and the ill-fated ''Terra Nov ...
named the upper portion for Thomas Griffith Taylor
Thomas Griffith "Grif" Taylor (1 December 1880 – 5 November 1963) was an English-born geographer, anthropologist and world explorer. He was a survivor of Captain Robert Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica (1910–1913). Taylor was a se ...
, geologist and leader of the Western Journey Party.
Glaciology Research
The Taylor Glacier has been the focus of a measurement and modeling effort carried out by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
and the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
.
Like other glaciers in the McMurdo Dry Valleys
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby ...
, Taylor Glacier is “ cold-based,” meaning its bottom is frozen to the ground below. The rest of the world's glaciers are “wet-based,” meaning they scrape over the bedrock, picking up and leaving obvious piles of debris (moraines
A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice she ...
) along their edges.
Cold-based glaciers flow more like putty, pushed forward by their own weight. Cold-based glaciers pick up minimal debris, cause little erosion, and leave only small moraines. They also look different from above. Instead of having surfaces full of crevasse
A crevasse is a deep crack, that forms in a glacier or ice sheet that can be a few inches across to over 40 feet. Crevasses form as a result of the movement and resulting stress associated with the shear stress generated when two semi-rigid pie ...
s, cold-based glaciers are comparatively flat and smooth.at
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory is an online publishing outlet for NASA which was created in 1999. It is the principal source of satellite imagery and other scientific information pertaining to the climate and the Environment (biophysical), environment whi ...
. Article includes public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
text from this US government website.
See also
*Blood Falls
Blood Falls is an outflow of an iron oxide–tainted plume of saltwater, flowing from the tongue of Taylor Glacier onto the ice-covered surface of West Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land, East Antarct ...
, an escaping flow of iron oxide-rich ancient ocean water trapped under the Taylor Glacier over a million years ago, containing a unique microbial community.
* List of glaciers
A glacier ( ) or () is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform ...
* List of glaciers in the Antarctic
There are many glaciers in the Antarctic. This set of lists does not include ice sheets, ice caps or ice fields, such as the Antarctic ice sheet, but includes glacial features that are defined by their flow, rather than general bodies of ice. Th ...
* Tschuffert Peak Tschuffert Peak () is a prominent, isolated peak between Taylor Glacier and Chapman Ridge in Mac. Robertson Land. It was mapped by Norwegian cartographers from air photos taken by the Lars Christensen Expedition in 1936–37, and was originally na ...
References
External links
Pictures from the Taylor Glacier
*
Long Term Ecological Research
group is working in the Taylor Valley
Satellite images of the region
{{Authority control Glaciers of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys