Newswise — Two Hamilton College seniors presented posters at the December American Geophysical Union Meeting highlighting research related to the National Science Foundation-supported LARsen Ice Shelf System, Antarctica (LARISSA) project. Led by Hamilton Geoscience Professor Eugene Domack, the project is the first interdisciplinary program funded in the AISS program of the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs and brings together investigators, students, and media to address the rapid and fundamental changes taking place in the region of the Larsen Ice Shelf and surrounding areas.
Theresa Allinger ’11 presented “Recent century-scale intrusion of MCDW on the Ross Sea continental shelf evidenced by multi-proxy analysis of the deep-water coral, Errina Antarctica.” She had recently traveled to the University of Seville in Spain to sample corals collected from the Weddell Sea for geochemical analysis. Allinger analyzed the Antarctic corals in order to infer oceanographic and climatic change in the regions of study. She was aided in her travel and lab work by Caroline Lavoie, who recently completed postdoctoral research at Hamilton College.
Hamilton senior Drew Christ presented a poster developed by him and fellow students who participated in a LARISSA short course held in July at Hamilton College. His poster “Evidence for Late Holocene disintegration of an ice-shelf in Barilari Bay, Western Antarctic Peninsula” was based on multi-proxy data generated by the students during the two-week course.
Five Hamilton students including Allinger and Christ joined 12 other students from seven colleges and five countries for the summer course on the marine geology of Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf. The National Science Foundation-sponsored program took an interdisciplinary approach in examining the reason for the ice shelf's dramatic breakup in 2002. Topics addressed in the course included marine sediment core examination, analysis and interpretation; marine geophysical database evaluation; marine microfossil identification and utility; organic geochemistry and stable isotope analyses; and use of continuous Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) ground stations to evaluate ice mass fluctuations.
Course director Eugene Domack has served as the chief scientist during the LARISSA project’s first two expeditions to Antarctica. Colgate Associate Professor of Geology Amy Leventer, Associate Professor Scott Ishman (Southern Illinois University), Associate Professor Stefanie Brachfeld (Montclair State University) and University of Houston Visiting Assistant Professor Julia Smith-Wellner.
Domack also presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting. The poster, for which he was the first author, was titled “The LARsen Ice Shelf System, Antarctica, LARISSA a Model for Antarctic Integrated System Science (AISS) Investigations using Marine Platforms.”
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