Evening at Egan: Researching the Mendenhall Outburst Flood: 2025 and Beyond

The 2025 Mendenhall Glacier outburst flood occurred shortly after a large precipitation event, resulting in record-high discharge down the Mendenhall River. Once the flood began, the National Weather Service, with help from UAS and USGS researchers, was able to predict the timing and peak discharge of the flood to a high degree of accuracy using data from drone surveys, time-lapse photography, lidar measurements, and an ~15 year record of outburst floods. Despite this success, the annual flood continues to teach us new things each year and forces us to continually refine our field and modeling approaches.

In this talk, UAS researchers Jason Amundson and Eran Hood will discuss how the flood has evolved and how they are working with other university researchers and state and federal agencies to determine how glacier outburst floods will evolve in the future—at Mendenhall Glacier and across Alaska.

University Community | View More Events

Contact the organizers