My educational background is metallurgy as an undergraduate, expanded into materials science as a graduate student. The material that engages my research interest is glacial ice, particularly the large ice sheets that mantle Greenland and Antarctica. This and related work have taken me to the Arctic ten times and the Antarctic thirteen times since 1968, mostly as the principal investigator of NSF-funded glaciological research. Within glaciology, my primary research interest is the dynamics of ice streams, which are fast currents of ice that drain about 90 percent of present-day ice sheets and which may have been the conduits through which deglaciation of Quaternary ice sheets was accomplished, in large part. My major research tool for studying ice streams is aerial and satellite remote sensing of their surface elevation and velocity which, with data on ice thickness and mass balance, provide input to numerical models of ice dynamics developed in cooperation with my colleague, Dr. James Fastook. The overall goal of our glaciological research is to understand the interaction between glaciation and climatic change. In pursuing this goal, glacial geology and paleomarine micropaleontology provide information we use as input to our computer models for simulating the dynamics of past and present ice sheets. In interpreting these data, we work closely with our colleagues, Dr. George Denton and Drs. Thomas and Davida Kellogg. We also maintain close contact with research conducted at Columbia, Princeton, and Brown universities on paleoclimates, and The Ohio State University, the University of Chicago, and NASA-Wallops Flight Center on glaciological research in polar regions. Current modeling research, in collaboration with Fastook and David Bromwich at Ohio State, is simulating abrupt changes in the former Laurentide Ice Sheet that may have been large enough and fast enough to cause abrupt climate change. Newly funded research is modeling abrupt changes in the Jakobshavns drainage system of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Planned Antarctic research consists of studying Byrd Glacier as a rock-floored ice stream, in collaboration with Fastook and NASA, and participating in the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition traverse from Byrd Station (120°W, 80°S) to South Pole Station (90°S), in collaboration with Paul Mayewski and Gordon Hamilton, for the purpose of measuring how much East Antarctic ice is entering West Antarctica.
Articles
Ice-Bed Coupling Beneath and Beyond Ice Streams: Byrd Glacier, Antarctica (with Aitbala Sargent and James L. Fastook), Journal of Geophysical Research-Earth Surface (2011)
Ice sheet thickness is determined mainly by the strength of ice-bed coupling that controls holistic...
Variations of Ice Bed Coupling Beneath and Beyond Ice Streams: The Force Balance, Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (2009)
A geometrical force balance that links stresses to ice bed coupling along a flow band...
Thermal Convection and the Origin of Ice Streams, Journal of Glaciology (2009)
Ice streams are a fact of ice-sheet dynamics, draining up to 90% of the ice....
Calving Giant Icebergs: Old Principles, New Applications (with James P. Kenneally), Antarctic Science (2006)
Earth-orbiting satellites can now monitor calving of large icebergs from ice shelves bordering the marine...
Governance and the Capacity to Manage Resilience in Regional Social-Ecological Systems (with Louis Lebel, John M. Anderies, Bruce Campbell, Carl Folke, Steve Hatfield-Dodds, and James Wilson), Ecology and Society (2006)
The sustainability of regional development can be usefully explored through several different lenses. In situations...
Other
Correction to Variations of Ice Bed Coupling Beneath and Beyond Ice Streams: The Force Balance, Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (2009)
A geometrical force balance that links stresses to ice bed coupling along a flow band...