Juneau Icefield Research Program

Rocks are slow. I assume everyone who is reading this is well aware of the fact. The geologic timescales we work within are so vast that it is rare to join a subdiscipline where you can observe noticeable, annual or shorter, deformation events. My impatience with this inalienable fact is one of many reasons I became interested in ice. That is, massive bodies of solid dihydrogen monoxide that flow under the stress of their own weight – glaciers. There are active existential questions related to glaciers: How exactly are they responding to the changing climate? Can humanity stop them from retreating? How quickly will their ablation raise the sea level? Why is their deformation and flow so darn complicated to model?

Studying glaciers over a summer as an undergraduate can be difficult. Field work on individual alpine glaciers can be quite comprehensive, given enough infrastructure and time, but to correlate relationships with climate requires multiple glaciers that are often far way. Ice sheets are an excellent location to observe the behavior of the cryosphere, but their weather is particularly nasty and variable, and they are prohibitively expensive to reach for a post-baccalaureate like myself. Luckily, nestled in the Tongass National Forest in South East Alaska, is an accessible 4000 km2 ice field where the massive Taku Glacier merges with the Mendenhall, Gilkey, and Llewelyn glaciers, and established alpine camps dot the nunataks that rise out of the snow.

This summer, due in no small part to the aid from the GSA J. David Lowell Field Camp Scholarship Award and a GoFundMe crowdsource, I had the privilege and pleasure to join the 2021 expedition of the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP). Armed with a Compro Transit (thanks Brunton!), a Garmin GPS, some trusty 3-pin backcountry skis, and a 45lb pack, I joined 31 other students intrigued by the ice, climate, earth science, and field work that define the transdisciplinary field of glaciology. Under the guidance of experienced staff, we trained in mountaineering, alpine safety, crevasse rescue, and traversed through highly variable conditions from the burning brightness of the never-setting midsummer sun to wet and windy whiteouts where rope teams became isolated in a veritable ping-pong ball.

The nunatak camps along the 120 kilometers of traverse were the heart of our expedition. The eldest buildings were established 75 years ago when the first field scientists began their measurements and accountings of the mass balance of the ice field. Today they are occasionally-powered cooking facilities, bunk houses, and helicopter pads where us students are taught by active research faculty and a resident artist on topics like the energy balance of the planet, modeling glacier flow, paleoclimate, hydrology, science communication and satellite remote sensing. From basecamp the expedition traveled to gather data by digging mass balance pits (the longest continuous record in North America), flying aerial drone surveys, taking centimeter precision GPS measurements of velocity stakes, and surveying huge transects with both ground and ice penetrating radar. When exhausted from field work, I would peruse the small libraries of the camps reading old scientific texts of ice dynamics and the typewriter field notes of the late JIRP founder from the 50s and 60s, giving a historic context to the work we were doing. Gaining hands-on training with professional equipment and experience with the analytical software was a major asset for moving into graduate level research. The team also summited mountains, built week-long field camps on the ice, and learned the finer elements of expedition logistics and helicopter resupply.

Another large focus of JIRP is the community involvement, or to use the NSF terminology, the broader impact of the research we conducted. Using a Garmin inReach, we were able to communicate from the field with Upward Bound high school students in Miami concerned with climate change and sea level rise and answer their questions. Many student research projects have led to PI endorsed abstract submissions at the annual AGU. Online presentations are planned for the local Juneau community this Fall via the Mendenhall Visitor Center, and also the glaciological community worldwide via the IGS weekly seminar series.

JIRP was a truly eye opening two-month field experience that was as educational and preparatory for glaciology as it was uncannily beautiful. The wide vistas of the surreal expanse of ice, as well as the training and memories, are things I don’t believe will every leave me.