By Scott Braddock, of the University of Maine – School of Earth and Climate Sciences and Climate Change Institute
The Journey
After two days of flying, we arrived at the small airport of Balmaceda where we caught a bus to the nearby town of Coyhaique. There we met our colleagues from RRCS and used our free evening to purchase food and supplies for the upcoming expedition to the fjords of Bernard O’Higgins National Park. The following morning, we bussed the Carreterra Austral (Southern Highway) to the small town of Cochrane where we stayed an extra night as poor weather closed the port in Tortel. Luckily the years working with RRCS in Patagonia meant this came as no surprise. The plus side to the delay was that we were able to give a surprise talk to a group of students from RRCS at their home base in Cochrane. We chatted about glaciers and evidence of the last major glaciation of Patagonia as well as our research expedition (Fig 1).
The following day we traveled to Tortel, the launch point for trips into the northern fjords around the Southern Patagonian Icefield (SPI), to meet with our colleagues from CONAF (stewards of all national parks in Chile) and RRCS. We set off the next day, lucky to have sunshine and low winds (a rare combination in Patagonia), for the 6-hour trip by boat to the refugio (cabin) in Bernardo Fjord (Fig 2). This would serve as our home base for research in the coming weeks.
As we entered Bernardo Fjord, our captain, Felidor, mentioned that the icebergs we passed were not a normal sight that far from the glacier. He predicted that there may be a GLOF (glacial lake outburst flood) event occurring at Bernardo Glacier, a now annual event which sees a massive glacially dammed lake flood catastrophically over the course of a few days into the fjord. As we approached the end of the fjord where the glacier meets the ocean, we could see and hear the roar of the otherwise calm outlet river draining Bernardo Lake into the ocean. The river choked with ice and flowing at such a speed gave us no doubt that a GLOF was underway. Amazing to experience and see first-hand but it meant access to the face of Bernardo Glacier would be impossible under those conditions. Fortunately, the neighboring fjord is fed by Témpano Glacier and was our ‘plan b’ for research.
The Research
We set off for Témpano Fjord the following day with the goal of installing a time-lapse camera that overlooked the face of the glacier where it contacts ocean waters. This angle from the camera will allow us to track iceberg movement which gives an idea of the surface ocean currents in the fjord as well as sediment plumes exiting the glacier and how these might change over time. This data compliments what we collected the following day with our CTD. A CTD is a device that is lowered in the water and at different depths can record water properties such as temperature, salinity and conductivity. We were able to collect this data in a grid pattern across the fjord. After a day of collecting data at Témpano, we returned to Bernardo. The GLOF had subsided but icebergs still littered the shorelines and choked the water directly in front of the glacier itself. There are so many unknowns working in a place such as this that you can’t account for when planning 6 months in advance. However, we collected samples farther from Bernardo Glacier and set up a time-lapse camera to capture iceberg movement to at least collect initial data. Along with our measurements, CONAF Marine Biologist, Raúl Pereda, was able to use a net to take water samples at some of the same locations as our CTDs to study the tiny marine organisms living in these fjords (Fig 3).
The Why?
Ultimately, these data will give us a 3-D snapshot of water properties directly in front of the glacier (Fig 4). With that, we can understand at what depth warmer ocean water is reaching the front of the glacier and start to understand how that may be driving its retreat. The goal is to complete this same study at several different glaciers that are in contact with the ocean around the SPI. Our question is what has the biggest impact in driving the retreat of these glaciers. Is it warming ocean waters or rising atmospheric temperatures? Likely the answer is a combination of both but understanding that question will lead scientists to better predict how much and how fast ice will be lost in this region in the future. This has major implications for communities surrounding the icefields as well as the flora and fauna living in these environments. This is the connection that allowed researchers from the University of Maine to work with students and conservations scientists from RRCS. The ongoing research efforts and outreach of RRCS are essential to both enhance our research in with an interdisciplinary approach and to communicate this work with the communities of Patagonia who will be most severely impacted by climate change in this region.
The Team
Meet the team (Fig 5)! From left to right in the below photo: Kristin Schild is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Maine and studies Physical Glaciology. She is driving the science questions for this project and is most interested in ice/ocean interactions. Scott Braddock is a PhD student at the University of Maine and former Round River Patagonia Instructor. He studies past climates and glaciology using a variety of proxies and methods. He is most interested in combining the expertise of three independent organizations, UMaine Ice/Ocean group, CONAF and RRCS, to enhance interdisciplinary research efforts in a dynamic and rapidly-changing Patagonia. Raúl Pereda is a Marine Biologist with CONAF interested in the impacts that melting glaciers have on marine life in these fjord ecosystems. Fernando Iglesias Letelier is RRCS’s Chilean Coordinator and conservation scientist. He helped coordinate many of the logistics alongside other RRCS staff and helped field work and translation on this trip. Felidor Paredes is a Park Guard with CONAF and has lived his whole life in Patagonia. His knowledge, skills and expertise in these harsh environments is invaluable to any expedition looking to work in the remote fjords of Patagonia.
For more information on the nitty-gritty science and questions driving this expedition, please visit UMaine’s Climate Change Institute website to have a look at our trip report (coming soon!): https://climatechange.umaine.edu/research/expeditions/
Funding for this research was provided by: Churchill Exploration Fund, American Alpine Club and Geological Society of America. A big thank you to the staff and students of Round River Patagonia for hosting us and providing amazing science and logistical support.