Study of Ice Sheet Basal Processes With Visible Light Images Acquired from a Borehole Probe

We have developed and deployed the JPL Ice Borehole Camera system into boreholes in two sites in Antarctica (and are deploying it in a third at the time of this meeting), and we have analyzed the image data to improve our understanding of processes at the bed of ice streams and the at basal surface of ice shelves. Though quite simple, the image data sets permitted interpretation of basal freeze-on associated with "binge and purge" processes of the Kamb Ice Stream as well as ice accretion processes, marine ice character and the marine ice-meteoric ice interface of the Amery Ice Shelf. In many ways the hot-water drilled hole is an excellent photographic environment for study of ice sheet phenomena; we are now examining means of augmenting simple digital imagery with additional optical, noninvasive interrogation strategies in order to obtain data on included particle properties, clathrate content, biological materials and phenomena, and on-going dynamic processes.