The Mueller Glacier is a long

glacier A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...

flowing through

Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park is a national park located in the Canterbury Region in the central-west of the South Island of New Zealand. It was established in October 1953 and takes its name from the highest mountain in New Zealand, Aora ...

in the

South Island The South Island ( , 'the waters of Pounamu, Greenstone') is the largest of the three major islands of New Zealand by surface area, the others being the smaller but more populous North Island and Stewart Island. It is bordered to the north by ...

of New Zealand. It lies to the west of

Mount Cook Village Mount Cook Village, officially Aoraki / Mount Cook, is located within New Zealand's Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park at the end of , only south of the summit of the country's highest mountain, also called Aoraki / Mount Cook, in the Souther ...

within the

Southern Alps The Southern Alps (; officially Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana) are a mountain range extending along much of the length of New Zealand, New Zealand's South Island, reaching its greatest elevations near the range's western side. The n ...

, flowing roughly north-west from its névé near Mount Montgomerie before curving around the Sealy Range as it approaches its terminus. Various other glaciers feed into the Mueller Glacier along its route, including the Frind and Huddleston Glaciers. The glacier ends at a small unnamed terminal lake, which is also fed by meltwater from the nearby Hooker Glacier. This lake is the source for the Hooker River, a small tributary of the Tasman River, which flows into

Lake Pukaki Lake Pukaki () is the largest of three roughly parallel alpine lakes running north–south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin on New Zealand's South Island. The others are Lakes Tekapo and Ōhau. All three lakes were formed when the ...

. The glacier was named after German-Australian botanist and explorer

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Victoria, Australia ...

. The Mueller Hut, located on the ridge of the Sealy Range east of the Mueller Glacier, was also named after Ferdinand von Mueller. Based on dating of a yellow-green lichen of the ''Rhizocarpon''

subgenus In biology, a subgenus ( subgenera) is a taxonomic rank directly below genus. In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between the ge ...

, Mueller Glacier is considered to have had a

Little Ice Age The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region. It was not a true ice age of global extent. The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. Mat ...

maximum mass between 1725 and 1730. White Horse Hill, a small hill to the north of Mount Cook Village, represents the

moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and Rock (geology), rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a gla ...

left from this period.

References

Glaciers of New Zealand Landforms of the Canterbury Region Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park {{CanterburyNZ-geo-stub

See also

References