Overview
- Researchers combined Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis with high-resolution satellite observations and ice-thickness data to reconstruct continent-wide subglacial topography.
- The model reveals a complex landscape of mountains, deep canyons, valleys and plains, including tens of thousands of previously uncharted hills.
- One standout feature is a steep-sided valley nearly 400 kilometers long in the Maud Subglacial Basin, now resolved at mesoscale detail.
- By refining the shape and roughness of the bed that controls ice friction, the reconstruction provides improved boundary conditions for ice-sheet models and sea-level projections.
- Authors note the map is a physics-based reconstruction that depends on assumptions about basal processes, so targeted airborne and ground surveys are needed to validate and sharpen it.