Alaska Section, American Water Resources Association

Michael R. Lilly, Alaska Section AWRA Northern-Region Director

I would like to invite you to the September 1998 Brown-Bag presentation by Kazuhisa Chikita, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, JAPAN. Please note this meeting is the third Wednesday in September. Chikita's talk will be a special presentation on his recent work in the Himalayas. You may also wish to talk with Chikita after the meeting about his current Yukon Basin research efforts. We look forward to seeing you. Please feel free to bring a colleague to the meeting.

September 1998
Alaska Section AWRA, Northern-Region Brown-Bag Presentation
Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Large Conference Room
Noon to 1300

"The Lake-Basin Expansion Mechanism:
A Comparison Between Two Supraglacial Lakes In The Himalayas"
Kazuhisa Chikita
Laboratory of Hydrology, Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Hokkaido University
Sapporo, JAPAN

Some of the large (D-type) glaciers in the Himalayas hold a lake of 1 km order on each of their tongues. The lakes, at present dammed up by the end moraine, have been expanding since 1950's with the shrinkage or retreat of glaciers. Since 1960's, the lake outburst has occurred once per 3-year on average by the collapse of the end moraine. In order to clarify the lake-basin expansion mechanism, I examined physical conditions of supraglacial Tsho Rolpa Lake (4580 m asl) in 1995 - 1996 and Imja Lake (5010 m asl) in 1997. I will explain the mechanism in relation to lake hydrodynamics.