Using seismometers to monitor glaciers

Seismic instruments could be used to estimate the amount of ice that shears away from glaciers as they flow into the sea, offering a way to better estimate sea level rise due to the breakup of those ice masses.

In 2004 and 2005, Shad O’Neel, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his colleagues installed a network of 11 seismometers around the lowermost portions of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier.