My research projects focus on combining remotely-sensed and in situ observations and numerical ice flow modeling to develop a better understanding of the environmental triggering mechanisms and internal controls of marine-terminating glacier behavior (i.e., glacier dynamics). I am particularly interested in glacier-ocean interactions, namely submarine melting and iceberg calving, and how changes in these interactions influence the rate of mass loss from the fast-flowing glaciers that drain the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. I completed my Ph.D. research under the supervision of Dr. Ian Howat (Glacier Dynamics Group, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center) in 2013. Since then, I have been working at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute. Information on my research interests can be found under the Research tab. I am also passionate about getting undergraduate students involved in research so that they leave college with the ability to conduct research and convey their research to the public. I am particularly interested in providing research opportunities to women and other under-represented populations in STEM fields since my undergraduate research experiences are what got me interested in glacier research. I am actively involved in a number of outreach activities.   Summer 2018NASA funding is now available to support a 2-year Masters in glaciology and remote sensing starting in Fall 2018 (or later if necessary)! The UMaine Glaciology and CompuMAINE labs are looking for an interdisciplinary Masters student who will assist in the NASA-funded project “Quantification and Analysis of Greenland Glacier and Ice Cap Discharge using Automated Landsat Terminus Change Time Series and NASA Data Products”. This is a joint project led by Dr. Ellyn Enderlin from the Climate Change Institute and School of Earth and Climate Sciences and Dr. Andre Khalil, founder and director of the CompuMAINE Lab. Winter/Spring 2018PAPERS! PAPERS! AND MORE PAPERS! If you are interested in learning about the use of remotely-sensed iceberg melt rates as a means to infer variations in ocean conditions in glacial fjords, check out my paper recently published in The Cryosphere: https://www.the-cryosphere.net/12/565/2018/. The iceberg melt data that my students and I produced for Greenland suggest that although ocean conditions in glacial fjords generally adhere to expected spatial patterns based on variations in regional air and ocean temperatures, differences in fjord geometry lead to deviations from expected patterns: long fjords packed with icebergs have lower melt rates than fjords where icebergs are rapidly transported to the open ocean. Whether these variations are due to differences in water temperature or circulation between fjords is an area of future interest. Masters student Will Kochtitzky also recently had his undergraduate thesis work published in the Journal of Glaciology: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/improved-estimates-of-glacier-change-rates-at-nevado-coropuna-ice-cap-peru/AE2C29B25C4757967B2C6CEB8C918C33. Congrats Will! He mapped glacier change at the Coropuna Ice Cap in Peru using Landsat satellite images. I also have a paper on variations in controls on mass loss from Columbia Glacier in Alaska at seasonal to inter-annual time scales that is under review at the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. Check back for updates on the publication of these papers and more! Fall 2017 New graduate student: The CCI Glaciology group is happy to add Mariama Dryak to our team! Mariama is TAing this year and will also be assisting with research on Antarctic iceberg melting. Mariama will be using very high-resolution satellite images to estimate iceberg melt rates around Antarctica and (hopefully) link melt rate variations in space and time to changes in ocean conditions and melting beneath Antarctica's ice shelves. Welcome Mariama! Winter 2017New Project on Antarctic Icebergs: Starting in June, I will be expanding the scope of my research on iceberg melting as part of an NSF-funded project titled "Antarctic Submarine Melt Variability from Remote Sensing of Icebergs". The project will compare spatial and temporal variations in iceberg melt rates, obtained using repeat very-high resolution (~0.5 m pixel width) satellite images, with variations in ice shelf thinning and ocean forcing. The major objectives of the project are to determine whether (1) differences in iceberg melting can be used as a proxy for variations in melting of Antarctica's ice shelves and (2) current ocean models are capable of simulating changes in ocean forcing, which have important implications for our ability to accurately predict future changes in Antarctic ice shelf stability. Fall 2016  UMaine Glaciology in the News! Check-out the press release issued by the American Geophysical Union on iceberg melting in Greenland's glacial fjords: http://news.agu.org/press-release/most-meltwater-in-greenland-fjords-likely-comes-from-icebergs-not-glaciers/ New undergraduate research assistant: Time-lapse photos of glaciers and glacial fjords, like those featured in the movie "Chasing Ice", provide the opportunity to observe rapid changes in ice-ocean interactions. Undergraduate Mike Driscoll is currently working with time-lapse photos from Helheim Glacier in SE Greenland (see real-time photos here: http://glacierresearch.org/realtime-images.html) to characterize changes in iceberg calving. These data will be used to quantify iceberg calving volumes, which will be compared to glacier stress time series in order to assess the glacier's sensitivity to changes in terminus position. New graduate student: The CCI Glaciology group is happy to add a new graduate student, Will Kochtitzky. Will is assisting with research on my Greenland iceberg melting project: he is extracting iceberg meltwater flux and melt rate estimates for ~6 fjords in Greenland using very high-resolution satellite images. Welcome Will! Spring 2016Undergraduate Research: Undergraduate research assistant and UMaine junior, Caroline Carrigan, presented her research results on iceberg melting at the UMaine Center for Undergraduate Research symposium. This was Caroline's first scientific poster! She presented her preliminary results on submarine melting for icebergs calved from Alison Glacier in NW Greenland and Zachariae Isstrom in NE Greenland. She's found that 2011 iceberg melt rates were similar in both locations, with an average of ~0.04 m/d and no significant seasonal variations. She'll be expanding her datasets to investigate seasonal and inter-annual variations in iceberg submarine melting near these two glaciers during her senior year at UMaine. |
Climate Change Institute School of Earth & Climate Sciences Glacier Flubber GIF Glacier Dynamics Video Educational Antarctic Game Real-time Glacier Observations OSU Glacier Dynamics Group Visitor Count |
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