Remote Sensing Sediment–Albedo Feedbacks Affecting Ice Thickness on Taylor Valley Lakes, Antarctica

The McMurdo Dry Valleys are the largest unglaciated region in Antarctica and home to perennially frozen lakes. Thirty years of ice thickness measurements reveal meter-scale fluctuations over decadal time scales. In this paper, we hypothesize that changing surface sediment dynamics alter ice albedo, changing the heat balance and thickness of the ice column. To investigate this, we applied Spectral Mixture Analysis to Landsat-8 imagery using Google Earth Engine to quantify sediment coverage on ice from 2016 to 2025. We found that there was both spatial and temporal heterogeneity in surface sediment cover across Lake Fryxell, Lake Hoare, and Lake Bonney, with each lake showing consistent “hot spots” of sediment through time. Results show that higher surface sediment abundance was correlated with thinner lake ice across the study lakes. These findings show that small changes in ice surface reflectance exert a strong control on thickness independent of broader climatic conditions.