Southeastern Greenland (SEG) provides a complex habitat area consisting; of dozens of deep fjords that connect land-based ice with the open; ocean. Within these fjords, glacial ice mixes with sea ice and intricate; topography can create niche local conditions. This area is important for; a number of species, including polar bears, and better understanding of; both land ice and floating glacial ice as biological habitat motivates; the need to study the physical environment itself. Studying SEG,; however, posed a variety of challenges, including difficult access for; in-situ work or instrument deployment, cloudy conditions that can; obscure optical satellite instruments, and steep, complex terrain that; can complicate identification of surface conditions. Here, we discuss; our work to leverage several remote sensing products to determine the; geospatial patterns of landfast sea ice and solid glacial ice during; 2015-2019 in five SEG fjords with high polar bear use. We further; connect these data with measurements of solid glacial ice discharge and; glacial and terrestrial freshwater flux across SEG. The landfast sea ice; season in our focus fjords is quite short, extending on average only; ~2-4 months, and including substantial variability.; Because of the fjord connections to marine-terminating glaciers,; however, solid glacial ice creates a potential alternative ice platform; on the fjord surfaces that can complement the short sea ice season.; Challenges remain in automating this type of surface classification, and; we discuss how our manual digitization work can be leveraged to support; other ongoing efforts to create machine learning surface identification; algorithms.
