Collaborative Research: North American ice patches: Assessing formation, morphology, and persistence through the Holocene and links to climate, humans, and the environment

About This Grant

Ice is a crucial component of the Earth system and exists in a variety of landforms, including polar ice caps, glaciers, and permafrost. Long-lived, shallow ice patches are relatively obscure ice features that have persisted for thousands of years in certain alpine landscapes and serve as ecologically and culturally significant archives of past climate and environmental conditions, vegetation changes, and human and animal activities. Because these ice patches can be up to 10,000 years old, they preserve some of the oldest ice on Earth outside the polar regions. This project will study North American ice patches located in the northern Rocky Mountains and Alaska to develop detailed, multifaceted records of environmental and ecological change in high-elevation regions across a range of geographic regions where few high-resolution, long-term historical records exist. This project is working to better understand how these small ice features have persisted for thousands of years under varying climate conditions, and to use this information to predict how these ice features may fare in the future. This work is important to society because ice cores provide some of the most direct records of long-term atmospheric and environmental conditions—records that can help us better understand how alpine environments and their critical water resources will change over time. Throughout the project, the researchers will engage with local communities affected by the potential loss of alpine ice and the valuable environmental and archeological archives they contain, as well as work with museum curators to develop exhibits to display and communicate findings. To achieve these goals, this project will 1) develop an array of long-term paleoenvironmental records from selected ice patches that will provide new insights into environmental change over time, and 2) improve understanding of ice patch development, morphology, and energy balance. For objective 1), the team will develop records of stable water isotopes, ice accretion rates, and macrofossil deposition from ice cores recovered from ice patches in continental North America including Alaska. The research team also will evaluate and document cultural and animal remains preserved within the ice. For objective 2), the team will conduct process-level studies on ice patches within the study area using meteorological data, ice patch extent, and borehole temperature profiles to inform energy-balance modeling. This modeling will help constrain the conditions under which ice patches develop, persist, and eventually shrink and disappear. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.