Flavien Beaud

CR Cryospheric Sciences

The 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Flavien Beaud for the poster/PICO entitled:

Numerical modelling of esker formation in semi-circular subglacial channels (Beaud, F.; Flowers, G. E.; Venditti, J. G.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

I just finished my PhD in glaciology at Simon Fraser University, Canada, with Gwenn Flowers. My research is focused on understanding the processes of glacial erosion, in particular how subglacial water flow influences such erosion. The water flowing under glaciers largely dictates conditions at the ice – bedrock interface, conditions that drive erosion. In addition, subglacial water can form ice-walled channels that transport sediment and can erode bedrock, similarly to rivers, but water flow speeds are much greater. For my PhD, I studied these processes using process-based numerical models.

In this poster, we present a numerical model of water-born sediment transport in ice-walled subglacial channels suited for both supply- and transport-limited conditions. We find that a spatio-temporal bottleneck in sediment transport is inherent to the dynamics of water flow in ice-walled channels. Thus, in the presence of a sufficient amount of sediment, deposition occurs, leading to the formation of an incipient esker.