What Lies Beneath Antarctica’s Ice? A New Map Reveals the Hidden Landscape

Описание: People on Earth know more about the surface of Mercury than what lies beneath Antarctica’s massive ice sheets. That gap is now narrowing.
Researchers have unveiled a detailed new map of Antarctica’s landscape hidden kilometres below ice. The map reveals alpine-style valleys, deeply eroded troughs, flat lowlands and high-relief terrain buried under the ice.
The study used satellite data and a technique called Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis, or IFPA. By analysing how ice flows across the surface and applying the physics of ice movement, scientists inferred the shape of the bedrock beneath Antarctica’s ice cover.
Earlier efforts relied largely on radar surveys. These were limited in coverage and left major gaps. The IFPA method helped piece together large regions that could not be properly analysed earlier due to missing data.
The results show that Antarctica’s subglacial landscape is far more varied than previously believed. Researchers identified deeply cut valleys, comparable in scale to the Grand Canyon, carved by fast-moving rivers of ice. The map also highlights individual peaks and valleys buried under the ice and identifies newly named regions such as the Golicyna Subglacial Region and the Subglacial Highlands.
According to the authors, this new topography mapping will help improve future projections of ice loss and sea-level rise. The shape of the land beneath the ice strongly influences how ice sheets move and how quickly they can flow toward the ocean.
However, the researchers also flagged limitations of the IFPA method.
The technique assumes that all variations in the ice surface are caused by ice flowing over bedrock features. In some regions, surface processes changes occurring on the ice itself, can also influence surface topography, independent of the bedrock below.
There are also size constraints. The IFPA method may miss features smaller than two kilometres or wider than 30 kilometres.
Despite these limitations, scientists say the study marks a major advance in understanding Antarctica’s hidden terrain.
This research, published in the journal Science, marks a major step towards uncovering the hidden geography of Earth’s coldest continent.


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Down to Earth is Science and Environment fortnightly published by the Society for Environmental Communication, New Delhi. We publish news and analysis on issues that deal with sustainable development, which we scan through the eyes of science and environment.