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French scholar studies Fox Glacier with Canterbury University

24/2/2016

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PictureWork on the field, measuring vertical density profile of snow. Sandrine (left) is showing the core of snow.
For the fulfillment of her MSc in Geology and Geophysics of the University of Strasbourg, Sandrine Roy recently completed an internship at the Department of Geography of the University of Canterbury under the supervision of Dr C.Gomez and Dr H.Purdie.

Sandrine conduced a preliminary assessment of the rock fall onto the Fox Glacier using the physics-2.5D model: RockFall Analyst by Lan et al 2007.  At first, she used a drone to take extensive pictures of the steep slope in contact with the lateral glacier. Using this set of pictures, she built a high resolution surface model of the local catchment and conduced the rock fall simulations on the digitised surface.

Sandrine's thesis shows that the lateral glacier morphology is changing from a convex to a concave transverse profile. Thus, the rocks travel further out onto the glacier. She identified potential rock fall run-outs on hazard maps and provided a first assessment tool to the Fox Glacier Guiding company. Sandrine also evidenced the strong limits of the model used. She presented her work at the annual Snow and Ice New Zealand Research meeting in June 2015 in Cass and gave a conference at the 13th International Symposium of Geo-Disaster Reduction in August 2015 in the Prague, Czech Republic. 

The next goal in her scientific career is to do a PhD thesis in the fields of Physical Geography and Geomorphology. Her research interests are focusing on the interaction between paraglacial processes, climate and rockfall hazard in alpine environment. Such environments are sensitive to climate and represent one of the keys to understand the current and future climate changes.



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