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Researchers unveiled a detailed map of Antarctica's landscape beneath ice sheets.
It reveals diverse terrains such as alpine valleys and deeply eroded troughs.
Map was created using satellite data and the Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis method.
People on Earth know more about the surface of Mercury than the landscape underneath the ice sheets of Antarctica. But that is set to change. A group of researchers has developed a novel method to visualise the relief many kilometres below the ice cover.
By using satellite data to identify ice surface and utilising the physics behind how ice moves over a “bedrock” feature or the landscape under an ice sheet, researchers were able to map the landscape of Antarctica.
The outcome displayed a diverse terrain, ranging from high-relief alpine valleys to scoured or flat lowlands to “deeply eroded ice stream troughs” or valleys carved into the earth’s surface by fast-moving rivers made of ice.
“The landscapes are more varied than presumed by earlier site-specific geophysical surveys,” the authors of the report said.
Further, according to the researchers, the new topography mapping would also aid in future ice loss and sea-level rise projections.
In the past, there have been efforts to map the surface of Antarctica by deploying radar surveys to identify what lies beneath. But many of them were not extensive and the data collected would have gaps.
By applying the Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis (IFPA) method or analysing the ice flows and the change in flow, the researchers were able to map “topographic variability across the continent with unprecedented detail”, the study read.
The detailing included deeply cut valleys — think the Grand Canyon in the United States — further shedding light on the geological or tectonic origin of the region. The report published in the journal Science mapped out individual peaks and valleys buried under the sea, identified in newly named regions like Golicyna Subglacial Regions, Subglacial Highlands, among others.
While the IFPA method was able to piece together large areas, which could not be properly analysed earlier due to data gaps, it came with certain limitations, the researchers noted.
Like any method, the IFPA “assumes that all topography in the ice surface occurs as a result of ice flow over bed perturbations”. But in some regions, “surface processes” or what happens on the surface of the ice — and not the bedrock — can also influence the topography of the place, they added.
Further, there is the question of size constraints: The IFPA method might miss features that are smaller than two kilometres and wider than 30 kilometres, the authors mentioned.