Sentences with phrase «suture zones»
Chris Borstad, a geophysicist at the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, is particularly interested in Larsen C's «suture zones» — areas where glacial ice flows off land and merges.
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Ice often fractures as it moves around the ice rise, creating long cracks that run perpendicular to the suture zones.
Suture zones are complex and more heterogeneous than the rest of the ice shelf, containing ice with different properties and mechanical strengths, and therefore play an important role in controlling the rate at which rifts grow.
In 2014, however, this particular crack started to rapidly grow and traverse the suture zones, leaving scientists perplexed.
«We don't currently know what changed in 2014 that allowed this rift to push through the suture zone and propagate into the main body of the ice shelf,» said Dan McGrath, a glaciologist at Colorado State University who has been studying the Larsen C ice shelf since 2008.
The crack remained dormant for decades, stuck in a section of the ice shelf called a suture zone, an area where glaciers flowing into the ice shelf come together.
In November 2014, Jansen assembled images of Larsen C taken by NASA's Landsat satellites and noticed something unusual: One of the cracks had spread past the suture zone and was more than halfway toward breaking off a large section of the ice shelf.
Dozens of cracks neatly terminate along the suture zone near the Gipps Ice Rise.
Kuntz, M.A., and Snee, L.W., eds., 2007, Geological studies of the Salmon River suture zone and.
Not exact matches
The bold, glacier - clad peaks comprising the Alaska Range actually derive from within the aforementioned «weak suture - zone rocks» between the terranes.
During deformation, suture - zone rocks usually deform first, especially if they are adjacent to a strong rock body.
Rock movement along the Denali fault drives the uplift of the mountains, which form at bends in the fault, where previously fractured suture - zone rocks are pinned against the stronger former North American continental margin.
When terranes collide and accrete, they form a suture, also known as a collision zone, which is made up of weak, crushed rock.