Modeling glacial meltwater plume dynamics and sedimentation in high-latitude fjords

Abstract

A model, SedPlume, has been developed to simulate marine sediment deposited by glacial meltwater plumes emerging from tidewater glaciers. Turbid meltwater emerging from beneath a glacier into a fjord rises as a buoyant forced plume due to density contrasts with the ambient fjord water. SedPlume assumes that meltwater discharge flows at a constant rate for long enough periods that the plume reaches a steady state. Entrainment of ambient fluid into the turbulent plume is assumed to occur at a rate proportional to the local velocity of the plume. Plume motion is considered in two dimensions: one horizontal dimension (perpendicular to the glacier front) and the vertical dimension. An integral model is formulated for the conservation equations of volume, momentum, buoyancy, and sediment flux along the path of a turbulent plume injected into stably stratified ambient fluid. Sedimentation occurs from the plume when the radial component of the sediment fall velocity exceeds the entrainment velocity. When the plume reaches the surface, it is treated as a radially spreading surface gravity current, for which exact solutions exist for the sediment deposition rate. Flocculation of silt and clay particles is modeled using empirical measurements of particle settling velocities in fjords to adjust the settling velocity of fine-grained sediments. SedPlume has been applied to McBride Inlet, Alaska, a temperate glaciated fjord where the majority of sedimentation originates from meltwater sources. SedPlume produces rates and patterns of sedimentation in good agreement with observations, with calculated peak ice-proximal annual sedimentation rates of approximately 22 m yr -1. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.