Freeze-on and melt-out on a channelized bed

The entrainment and release of subglacial sediments are sensitive to changes in both thermal and mechanical forcing. Seepage flows that exchange pore fluids with channelized drainage systems are driven by gradients in pore pressure that control the heterogeneous distribution of effective stress at the glacier bed. The variations in frictional dissipation that result modify the heat balance so that mechanical and thermal heterogeneities are coupled. This can cause freeze-on and melt-out to occur simultaneously on different portions of an initially uniform bed. I explore these thermo-mechanical, drainage--entrainment feedbacks and their implications for the development of subglacial landforms.