INVENTORY AND ANALYSIS OF ROCK GLACIERS AND PERIGLACIAL LANDFORMS IN UTAH’S UINTA MOUNTAINS

Rock glaciers and periglacial landforms are alpine features that can indicate the presence of sub-freezing air temperatures and subsurface ice or permafrost. As the climate continues to warm and urban water demands increase, especially in the arid Western United States, these landforms may become an important transitional water source as the ice within them begins to thaw. Additionally, as the ice that holds these features together melts, they can lose internal cohesion and collapse, presenting a hazard to communities downslope. Therefore, mapping rock glaciers and other periglacial landforms in detail across the state of Utah is critical for informing water management and hazard assessment for the state’s increasing population. The Uinta Mountains are of particular interest because of the importance of their watersheds, with the Uinta forming the headwaters of the Green River, and the ubiquity of favorable conditions for periglacial land features, namely high elevation, high relief topography, and heavy winter snow. To precisely map these features, we used satellite imagery from Google Earth Pro and LiDAR hillshades from OpenTopography and Caltopo to manually identify and outline rock glaciers and periglacial landforms following standard procedures to identify rock glaciers presented Version 1.0 of the Rock Glacier Inventories and Kinematics inventorying guidelines published by the International Permafrost Association . We are in the process of performing primary analysis of this dataset to determine changes in morphology, abundance, volume, and ice content of features across these mountain ranges. This mapping effort will be part of a future public database in conjunction with the Utah Geological Survey and funded by the University of Utah Summer Program for Undergraduate Research and USGS EDMAP programs. These data will provide a valuable foundation for future hydrologic studies and water resource management in the alpine areas of Utah.