Electrical resistivity measurements on Ice Stream B, Antarctica

Electrical resistivity sounding using the four-electrode Schlumberger array was carried out at station U p B on Ice Stream B to an electrode spacing of 3 km. Measured apparent resistivities were compared with theoretical models based on known relations between resistivity, density and temperature. Densities were measured in a pit and two coreholes; temperatures were measured in the upper 200 m of the ice stream and have been calculated for greater depth from an ice-stream temperature model. The resistivity, after correction for density and temperature, increases with depth down to 650-700 m. Below that is a marked decrease over the next 100m or so that we correlate with the Holocene-Wisconsin transition zone. Still deeper there is an orders-of-magnitude increase to a value, in the basal ice, of 30 MΩ m or more. This extremely high resistivity is similar to that reported for temperate glaciers and deep in the Antarctic ice sheet elsewhere. We attribute it to the destruction, by extensive metamorphism, of impurity-conduction paths at two-grain boundaries