Canals: distributed versus channelised

Subglacial drainage through ice and sediment incised channels, so-called canals, likely impacts the dynamics of soft bedded glaciers and ice streams as well as dictating sediment evacuation from ice sheet and glaciers. The original work of Walder and Fowler (1993) found that canals would form a distributed drainage system, i.e. that many small canals would be favoured over one large canal for a given discharge. We present a simple 1D numerical canal model which simulates both ice and sediment incision, water flow and sediment transport whilst assuming a fixed shape of the channel. With this model we investigate the distributed vs channelised behaviour of canals and extract which processes impact this dichotomy.