A team of researchers led by the University of Arizona (UArizona) conducted a radar “body scan” of Alaska’s Malaspina Glacier, which is the largest piedmont glacier in the world, and revealed interior channels underneath the glacier that could cause a higher rate of glacier retreat if seawater makes its way into these channels due to erosion of the glacier’s coastal barrier.The principal author of the study and PhD student at the University of Arizona’s Department of Geosciences, Brandon Tober, asserted that the loss of this glacier will probably result in the biggest loss of ice from an Alaskan glacier this century.