Rock glaciers are periglacial landforms composed of a mixture of rock debris and ice.  The ice deforms just like a “regular” glacier, and the entire mass of ice and rock moves slowly downslope.  Because the rocks act to insulate the ice, rock glaciers can be found in places where conventional glaciers are absent.  Rock glaciers also remain obvious and mappable feature on the landscape after their internal ice has melted away.

I’ve been interested in rock glaciers for a long time because they are such characteristics components of high mountain landscapes.  Together with my colleague Al Handwerger, I am currently funded by the NSF to study the possibility that ice melting from within these rock glaciers is contributing to an unsustainable degree to late summer baseflows in high-elevation watersheds.  Part of that work also involves using InSAR to detect and measure rock glacier movement; that effort was part of my student Quinn Brencher’s senior thesis work in 2019-2020.  You can view a video of some of his results here.