GLACier Collaborative Infrastructure (GLACI)

Antarctic Ice Sheet. Image: Unsplash

The GLACI Infrastructure facility will provide deployed/telemetered and portable instruments to investigate glaciers and adjacent areas, including ice sheets, ice streams, and ice shelves.

Overview

Understanding our Antarctic region is critical due to its role in Earth’s climate and ocean systems. With sea level rises and global development accelerating climate change, improving our knowledge of this key region across temporal and spatial scales is critical in informing operational and policy decisions.

Professor Anya Reading will lead this project in collaboration with Dr Sue Cook and Sarah Thompson from the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP) and Dr Felicity McCormack from Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future (SAEF), which is based at Monash University.

The Challenge

On-ground data collection is a vital component needed to progress understanding of ice sheet and ocean interaction processes, as it will enable better modelling and inform operational activities from satellite imagery to sea-level-rise forecasts.

As such, this collaborative infrastructure facility aims to transform Australia’s glacier data collection capability into the future, boosting research into glacier system processes and better constraining boundary conditions for ice sheet modelling.

Expected Outcomes

  • Establish core equipment components of the glacier geophysics facility.

  • Establish a documentation and training framework.

  • Plan a pathway for dataset archiving and ongoing access.

What are the benefits?

  • Enhanced In-Situ Observations: A suite of portable and deployable instruments will help deliver large-scale glacier and ice-ocean interaction datasets across the Antarctic region.

  • Better Constrained Ice Sheet Modelling: Direct measurements of ice-bed conditions and ocean interfaces tighten boundary conditions for predictive ice-sheet and climate models

  • Greater Environmental Management: Detailed subglacial data will assist in wider sea-level projections, feeding into maritime operations and adjacent environmental considerations through real-time ice margin and sea-ice dynamics.

Who will benefit?

This project's beneficiaries include researchers, academics, national and international agencies, policymakers, and regulators who rely on high-resolution melt and ice dynamics to inform policy and operational management.

Access

  • Instrument Access: Access to equipment will only be available to researchers working across ACEAS, AAPP, and SAEF Special Research Initiatives and Programs.

  • Data Access: TBC

Acknowledging AuScope

This project was made possible by support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) through AuScope. Acknowledging AuScope and NCRIS helps us demonstrate the value of shared research infrastructure, ensuring continued support and resources for the research community.

If you helped deliver this project or have benefited from its outputs, please credit AuScope so we can include your work in our impact reporting. For examples of acknowledgment, please visit our ‘How to Acknowledge AuScope’ page.

We’d love to see your work—please tag us on social media using:

@auscope | #AuScopeImpact | #NCRISimpact

 
 

Project Name
GLACier Collaborative Infrastructure (GLACI)

Project Lead

Timeframe
July 2025 - June 2026

Status
Active

Funding
Pilot 4

Host
The University of Tasmania (UTAS)

NCRIS Collaborators
National Computational Infrastructure (NCI)

Host
Australian Centre for Excellence in Atarctic Sciences (ACEAS)
Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP)
Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF)

AuScope Programs

EISAuScopePilot 4, Monash, UTAS, Geophysics, Glaciology, GLACI, Antarctic Science