Methods

(Left) Between the foreground and the mountains in the background, a very rare cross-cutting of the of the older Mono Basin Moraine on the left by the younger Tahoe moraine on the right can be seen. Typically younger glaciers erode away older moraines in their path, eliminating their records. In this case both have been preserved.

Field methods and modeling

Fieldwork focused in Lee Vining and Bishop, CA during summers 2010 and 2011 collected bare earth scans approximately 1 square meter in size along hillslopes of Mono Basin and Tahoe Moraines. Terrestrial LiDAR (Leica ScanStation) with accompanying Cyclone software was used to collect repeat scan data at the sub-cm scale. Surface models of the LiDAR data were used together with sediment collected from sediment traps, pebble transport markers, and photo analysis, to numerically model sediment transport rates and cross-section profile degradation.