Current Research Interests

Glaciology, ice stream migration, time-series investigations, polar regions and Antarctic ice sheet studies and Antarctic tectonics.

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My work has concentrated on the ice streams of West Antarctica, which are large, fast-flowing glaciers that move most of the ice out of the interior of the ice sheet. Understanding their flow regime, their dynamic history, and their links to the geology and tectonics of the continent is key to predicting their response to ongoing drawdown of the ice sheet (in response to Holocene warming) and their response to possible anthropogenic climate change over the next centuries and millenia. The migration of these ice streams into their interior reservoir is of great interest, because of their ability to transport large volumes of ice to the ocean. Over the next 3 years, I will conduct a seismic and radar experiment (in collaboration with researchers from UT Austin) to characterize the bed of the ice streams to address whether these ice streams can continue to extend inland or not. My recent work in broadband seismology is aimed at the need for understand- ing the neotectonic framework of the Ross Embayment (in which the dynamic ice streams and glaciers that drain much of the West Antarctic sit). The local seismicity is too infrequent and small to be recorded by the global network, so I directed the design and installation of a regional network of seismographs to record local and teleseismic events. These data will be used to invert for structure of the crust and for upper-mantle properties as well, in collaboration with Mike Ritzwoller at U. Colorado, Doug Wiens at Washington University, and Andy Nyblade and Chuck Langston at Penn State. In addition, I am a co- Investigator ( with Andy and Doug Wiens) on a proposal to study the western rift shoulder of the Ross Embayment and the anomalously high East Antarc- tic craton. This four-year seismic deployment will address some fundamental issues of the mantle support for the craton and the uplift mechanism of the Thansantarctic Mountains.