Institut fédéral de recherches sur la forêt, la neige et le paysage WSL

Research interests

  • Debris-covered glaciers
  • Supraglacial cliffs and ponds
  • Energy-balance modeling
  • Glaciohydrological modeling
  • Structure-from-motion photogrammetry

A few examples...

I am interested in understanding the melt of ice cliffs at the subseasonal scale - these cliffs act as melt 'hotspots' on debris-covered glaciers and undergo a lot of change on a weekly to monthly basis. To quantify the cliff melt and study the processes underlying their evolution I install arrays of time-lapse cameras to calculate the glacier surface geometry at daily intervals:

Installing time-lapse camera on the moraine of Langtang Glacier, Langtang
Ice cliff backwasting during the monsoon of 2019 on 24K glacier, Eastern Tibet

Precise understanding and quantification of the processes happening at the cliff scale is achieved by comparing the measurements with an energy-balance model quantifying the ice cliff melt.

Modeling of the melt and evolution of two cliffs on Lirung Glacier (Nepal) artificially oriented north and south to look at the aspect influence.

I use this local-scale understanding of the processes to study the ice cliff variability at the glacier scale over time and for different glaciers. This includes the development of new methods to map ice cliffs automatically and at the large-scale with satellite imagery, but also the development of stochastic models to reproduce and quantify this cliff variability and distribution.

Evolution of ice cliffs (pink) and ponds (blue) at the surface of Urdok Glacier (Karakorum) and comparison with glacier velocity.
Stochastic modeling of the ice cliff area and number across four debris-covered glaciers in High Mountain Asia from 2009 to 2019.

Background

  • Since 10/2018: PhD Student, Supraglacial ice cliffs on debris-covered glaciers in High Mountain Asia, ERC RAVEN project, WSL
  • 2018: MSc thesis, Influence of glacier retreat on proglacial streams using wavelet analysis, SBER institute, EPFL
  • 2018: Engineering degree, Ecole des Mines de Paris
  • 2017: Research Assistant, Meltwater plumes at the front of Bowdoin Glacier (Greenland) with UAV photogrammetry, VAW Glaciology Group, ETHZ
  • 2016: Project Officer, Regional integration of the East African power sector, French Development Agency
  • 2015: Research Assistant, Forward modeling of synthetic seismograms, Seismological Laboratory, Caltech

 

Publications

  • Miles, E., McCarthy, M., Dehecq, A., Kneib, M., Fugger, S., & Pellicciotti, F. (2021). Health and sustainability of glaciers in High Mountain Asia. Nature Communications 2021 12:1, 12(1), 1–10. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23073-4
  • Ren, S., Miles, E. S., Jia, L., Menenti, M., Kneib, M., Buri, P., et al. (2021). Anisotropy Parameterization Development and Evaluation for Glacier Surface Albedo Retrieval from Satellite Observations. Remote Sensing 2021, Vol. 13, Page 1714, 13(9), 1714. doi.org/10.3390/rs13091714
  • Kneib, M., Miles, E. S., Jola, S., Buri, P., Herreid, S., Bhattacharya, A., et al. (2020). Mapping ice cliffs on debris-covered glaciers using multispectral satellite images. Remote Sensing of Environment, 112201. doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2020.112201
  • Kneib, M., Cauvy-Fraunié, S., Escoffier, N., Boix Canadell, M., Horgby, & Battin, T. J. (2020). Glacier retreat changes diurnal variation intensity and frequency of hydrologic variables in Alpine and Andean streams. Journal of Hydrology, 583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.124578
  • Jouvet, G., Weidmann, Y., Kneib, M., Detert, M., Seguinot, J., Sakakibara, D., & Sugiyama, S. (2018). Short-lived ice speed-up and plume water flow captured by a VTOL UAV give insights into subglacial hydrological system of Bowdoin Glacier. Remote Sensing of Environment, 217, 389–399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2018.08.027

Projects

Publications