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Full-Text Articles in Glaciology

Size, Timing, And Landscape Impacts Of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods In The Channeled Scabland Of Eastern Washington, Usa, Karin E. Lehnigk Oct 2022

Size, Timing, And Landscape Impacts Of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods In The Channeled Scabland Of Eastern Washington, Usa, Karin E. Lehnigk

Doctoral Dissertations

Extreme floods have dramatically altered landscapes on Earth and Mars through bedrock erosion, sediment deposition, and canyon formation. The Channeled Scabland of the Columbia Plateau in eastern Washington, USA, is perhaps the most striking example of such a landscape, where outburst floods from an ice-dammed glacial Lake Missoula eroded immense canyons and transported large volumes of sediment during the late Pleistocene. Despite advances in numerical modeling and geochemical exposure dating methods, it has remained a challenge to untangle the complex interactions between floodwater, bedrock, and glacial ice to link the size of a flood with its impact on the landscape. …


Antarctic Ice Sheet Stability During Warm Periods: Integrating Numerical Modeling With Geologic Data, Anna Ruth W. Halberstadt Jun 2022

Antarctic Ice Sheet Stability During Warm Periods: Integrating Numerical Modeling With Geologic Data, Anna Ruth W. Halberstadt

Doctoral Dissertations

Sea level rise is one of the major social and environmental challenges that threatens modern civilization, yet the response of polar ice sheets to future warming is deeply uncertain. Mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet is projected to dominate global sea level rise in the near future, but how much, and when, remains a key unknown. The challenges associated with projecting Antarctica’s future sea level contribution are derived from a knowledge gap of physical ice sheet processes in a world warmer than today, and a lack of understanding of climatic thresholds that drive potentially irreversible retreat. Future and even …


Modeling The Pleistocene History Of The Greenland Ice Sheet, Benjamin Andrew Keisling Mar 2020

Modeling The Pleistocene History Of The Greenland Ice Sheet, Benjamin Andrew Keisling

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the most profound and immediate consequences of anthropogenic climate change is sea level rise, which in large part is driven by the melting of polar ice sheets. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) contains enough ice to raise global sea level by ~7 meters. Fluctuations of the GrIS in response to past climate change provide an opportunity to better understanding the stability of the ice sheet during periods of climatic change. In this thesis, we use numerical ice-sheet models to understand the causes and consequences of past fluctuations of the Greenland ice sheet. In Chapters 3 and 4, we …


Accessible Science: The Natural History Of The Connecticut River Valley, Fred Venne Jan 2019

Accessible Science: The Natural History Of The Connecticut River Valley, Fred Venne

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Many students take an Earth science or geology course to fulfill a requirement, knowing little to nothing about the field. Like all sciences, geology can appear to have ready answers unconnected to other areas of human endeavor, such as art, religion or philosophy. An interdisciplinary approach to teaching can ameliorate this perception for students who are intimidated by the subject and deepen understanding for those who are already excited about geology. We will examine two strategies designed to support the nature of science while scaffolding student learning in geology: research based digital resources use and museum of natural history visits. …


Arctic And North Atlantic Paleo-Environmental Reconstructions From Lake Sediments, Gregory A. De Wet Nov 2017

Arctic And North Atlantic Paleo-Environmental Reconstructions From Lake Sediments, Gregory A. De Wet

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

ARCTIC AND NORTH ATLANTIC PALEO-ENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTIONS FROM LAKE SEDIMENTS MAY 2017 GREGORY A. DE WET, B.Sc., BATES COLLEGE M.Sc., UNIVERSITY OF MASSSCHUSETTS, AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST Directed by: Drs. Raymond S. Bradley and Isla S. Castañeda There are few fields in the discipline of Earth Science that hold more relevancy in 2017 than studies of earth’s climate. Called the “perfect problem” considering its complexity and magnitude, climate change will continue to be one of the greatest challenges humanity will face in the 21st century. And while numerical models provide valuable information on conditions in the future, …


Large Ensemble Modeling Of The Last Deglacial Retreat Of The West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Comparison Of Simple And Advanced Statistical Techniques, David Pollard, Won Chang, Murali Haran, Patrick Applegate, Robert Deconto Jan 2016

Large Ensemble Modeling Of The Last Deglacial Retreat Of The West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Comparison Of Simple And Advanced Statistical Techniques, David Pollard, Won Chang, Murali Haran, Patrick Applegate, Robert Deconto

Geosciences Department Faculty Publication Series

A 3-D hybrid ice-sheet model is applied to the last deglacial retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet over the last  ∼  20 000 yr. A large ensemble of 625 model runs is used to calibrate the model to modern and geologic data, including reconstructed grounding lines, relative sea-level records, elevation–age data and uplift rates, with an aggregate score computed for each run that measures overall model–data misfit. Two types of statistical methods are used to analyze the large-ensemble results: simple averaging weighted by the aggregate score, and more advanced Bayesian techniques involving Gaussian process-based emulation and calibration, and Markov …


7700 Years Of Holocene Climatic Variability In Sermilik Valley, Southeast Greenland Inferred From Lake Sediments, Samuel H. Davin Jan 2013

7700 Years Of Holocene Climatic Variability In Sermilik Valley, Southeast Greenland Inferred From Lake Sediments, Samuel H. Davin

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

During the latter half of the 20th century until present day there has been an unprecedented rise in global annual mean temperatures accompanied by rising sea levels and a decrease in Northern Hemisphere snow cover, which if it continues will lead to widespread disruption of climate patterns, ecosystems, and present-day landscapes. It is therefore of critical importance to establish an expanded network of paleoclimate records across the globe in order to better assesses how the global climate system has changed in the past, that we may create a metric by which to address modern change. Herein is presented a7,700 …


Final Evaluation Report, Sagefox Consulting Group Jan 2011

Final Evaluation Report, Sagefox Consulting Group

IPY STEM Polar Connections

No abstract provided.


Melting Ice And Sea Level Changes, Morton Sternheim Jan 2010

Melting Ice And Sea Level Changes, Morton Sternheim

IPY STEM Polar Connections

A simple experiment to demonstrate the effects of melting sea.


Thermohaline Circulation, Rob Snyder Jan 2010

Thermohaline Circulation, Rob Snyder

IPY STEM Polar Connections

Surface currents, such as the Gulf Stream, are pushed by the wind. Deep ocean currents, called the “Thermohaline Circulation”, are the result of changes in the density of water. In this activity you can investigate how differences in the temperature and salinity of water can produce deep ocean currents


Detecting Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide With Btb, Stephan Schneider Jan 2010

Detecting Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide With Btb, Stephan Schneider

IPY STEM Polar Connections

A study of the concentration of carbon dioxide gas in air samples requires an understanding of effective sampling techniques, the use of pH indicators, an understanding of chemical reactions that result on the formation of acidic compounds, and an understanding of the chemical processes that contribute to the composition and characteristics of Earth’s atmosphere.


Melting Ice And Sea Level Change, Morton Sternheim Jan 2010

Melting Ice And Sea Level Change, Morton Sternheim

IPY STEM Polar Connections

Global warming can melt snow or ice on Greenland, Antarctica, and other land areas. It can also melt floating ice in the Arctic Ocean. How do the two cases compare in changing sea levels?


Brine Rejection Activity, Beth Caissie, Rob Snyder Jan 2010

Brine Rejection Activity, Beth Caissie, Rob Snyder

IPY STEM Polar Connections

As salt water freezes, the salt is pushed out of solution through channels in the ice. This process is called brine rejection or brine exclusion. These channels are often used as microhabitats by ice algae, zooplankton, and even tiny fish. You can easily demonstrate what these channels look like.


Play Doh Coring Sampler Teacher Guide, Beth Caissie Jan 2010

Play Doh Coring Sampler Teacher Guide, Beth Caissie

IPY STEM Polar Connections

Sediment cores are one of the most valuable types of samples for researchers who would like to learn about past climate or ecological changes. Cores can be retrieved from lakes, marshes, swamps, fields, and the ocean. The layers often reveal striking changes in color (see photos) reflecting changing sediment composition (i.e. more clay deposition or more microfossil s). This easy activity illustrates the basic geologic principle that horizontal layers of sediment become older the deeper you go below the Earth’s surface (Law of Superposition). Each layer contains sediment, fossils and organic matter etc. that can inform us about past changes …


Sea Ice Food Webs—Hands On Sampler Teacher Guide, Beth Caissie Jan 2010

Sea Ice Food Webs—Hands On Sampler Teacher Guide, Beth Caissie

IPY STEM Polar Connections

This activity is a variation on a food web game that I’ve seen played many times before, but it is adapted to reflect a sea ice food web and show the many organisms that are intimately connected to polar bears.


Glacier Goo Activity, Beth Caissie Jan 2010

Glacier Goo Activity, Beth Caissie

IPY STEM Polar Connections

We provided the students with background information about what a glacier is, where they are, how they move. Then split the students into four groups each tasked with a question to answer through experimentation

Group s 1 and 2: How does temperature change the way a glacier flows? (we provided frozen, and room temperature goo, and a microwave for heating the goo)

Groups 3 and 4: How does friction or obstacles change the way a glacier flows? (we provided different pvc tubes—tubes with nothing done to them, tubes with paintable sand applied to them, and tubes with rocks glued to …


Carbon Travels Game, Marie Silver Jan 2010

Carbon Travels Game, Marie Silver

IPY STEM Polar Connections

Carbon cycle game.

Proportions for this activity are based LOOSELY on data from the Exploring the Environment website http://davem2.cotf.edu/ete/modules/carbon/effig11_full.html

They have a brief overview of the carbon cycle at http://davem2.cotf.edu/ete/modules/carbon/efcarbon.html


Recommended Books, Holly Hargraves, Ray Bradley Jan 2010

Recommended Books, Holly Hargraves, Ray Bradley

IPY STEM Polar Connections

No abstract provided.


Teacher’S Guide: Penguins Of Antarctic Region, Marie Silver Jan 2010

Teacher’S Guide: Penguins Of Antarctic Region, Marie Silver

IPY STEM Polar Connections

These activities help to connect science learning with real world issues through a study of the Antarctic region. By studying the penguins of the South Pole region you can tap students’ interest in a charismatic macrospecies through demonstrating their adaptation to ongoing climate changes and human activity. A number of current research projects at Antarctic research stations can be accessed online and the data used to demonstrate key concepts of feeding behavior, migration, breeding and population dynamics. The attached activity is in three parts and includes one hands-on demonstration, several mapping exercises and some data interpretation. These activities also provide …


Stable Isotopes And Climate Change, Ray Bradley, Rob Snyder Jan 2009

Stable Isotopes And Climate Change, Ray Bradley, Rob Snyder

IPY STEM Polar Connections

The following description of the role of the study of stable isotopes in water and carbon dioxide molecules when constructing a record of Earth’s pattern of climate change is an excerpt from:

Climate Change and Society by Raymond S. Bradley & Norman E. Law (2001) Nelson Thornes, Cheltenham, UK (ISBN: 0 7487 5823 2)


Proposal Abstract, Morton Sternheim, Julie Brigham-Grette Jan 2007

Proposal Abstract, Morton Sternheim, Julie Brigham-Grette

IPY STEM Polar Connections

No abstract provided.


Proposal Narrative And References, Morton Sternheim, Julie Brigham-Grette Jan 2007

Proposal Narrative And References, Morton Sternheim, Julie Brigham-Grette

IPY STEM Polar Connections

No abstract provided.