September 2013

We performed two reflection seismic surveys at Russell Glacier, a land-terminating glacier in South West Greenland.  Both sites lie in the ablation zone so the surface consists of ice.  Site SPG is located some 60 km upstream (East) of the glacier snout and site SHR 15 km upstream from the snout. Every late spring Russell glacier speeds up. Reason enough to identify the subglacial conditions at both sites.

Site SPG:

At the upstream site, SPG we used a high resolution 96 channel, 200 m snow  streamer towed by skidoo.  The ice is flat and covered by a thin layer of snow, making skidoo travel a bit easier. As source we used 500 g dynamite charges drilled in 2 m deep boreholes.

We collected:

• 5 km 2-fold profile line parallel to the ice flow, 101 shots, 50 m shot interval
• 5 km 2-fold profile line perpendicular to the ice flow, 101 shots, 50 m shot interval
• Amplitude versus Offset (AVO) data, 22 shots, offset range 10-4400 m

Site SHR:

This site could only be accessed on foot.  The surface has significant topography and is characterized by moulins, drainage channels and crevasse zones. Here we set out 101 shots over a 5 km transect parallel to the flow line. To save time we kept the streamer positioned in the center while firing the shots so effectively we collected 2.5 km 4-fold data with varying offsets.