Studies of Ice Movements on the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf by Means of Triangulation-Trilateration

Abstract

Ward Hunt Island is surrounded by more than 2000 sq km of ice shelf. In 1964 and 1965 the University of New Brunswick Department of Surveying Engineering made a survey of the ice shelf in which geodimeter distance measurements and angular theodolite measurements were combined in a system of triangulation-trilateration in the form of a chain of quadrilaterals to achieve relative positioning accuracies of ± 2 cm for the survey markers. Shelf ice movements of 30 cm with respect to solid ground occurred between 1964 and 1965. The relative position change between the markers on shelf ice was < 4 cm.