GPR as an effective tool for safety and glacier characterization: experiences and future development

Abstract

In recent times, the GPR technique has assumed an important role in glacial environment exploration. Ice thickness, bedrock description, internal water floods or underground channel, glacial structures (as snow layering and crevasses detection) form part of our experience in Antarctica and in high alpine glacier ski areas. In this paper, we present some results of these investigations exploring the possibility of combining our technical expertise on Radio Echo Sounding (RES) instrumentation to develop a system for subglacial environment exploration.