Deploying seismometers on Lemon Creek Glacier, near Juneau, Alaska
In the summer of 2017, Dr. Victor Tsai's graduate students Celeste Labedz and Daniel Bowden deployed 60 seismometers across the surface of Lemon Creek Glacier near Juneau, Alaska along with collaborators from the University of Idaho and the University of Alaska Southeast. These seismometers weren't looking for earthquakes, though; their goal was to sense the motion of water. If you stand near a rushing river, you can feel and hear the vibrations that moving water creates, and seismometers can sense it, too. There are channels of flowing liquid water below many glaciers, and they create seismic signals in the same way that rivers do. Because these channels are underneath so much ice, indirect observations like seismology are often the only way to gain information about them. The liquid water inside and underneath glaciers plays a big role in how the glaciers flow, fracture, and melt, so these seismological observations can provide important insight into glacier behavior.