Abstract:
This award supports a two year project to address fundamental questions about the mass and energy flux through Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake in East Antarctica, sealed beneath almost 4 kilometers of ice. The project will involve developing lake circulation models, complemented by the analysis of new ice penetrating radar data over the lake and surrounding regions. This project will help to accurately define the regions of melting and freezing within the lake and help to provide an improved estimate of the form of the lake. The combined data analysis and modeling effort will provide a critical framework for developing international plans to sample the waters of Lake Vostok for biota and to recover sediments from Lake Vostok for paleoclimate studies.
Description:
Project at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory focuses on the linkage between extensional tectonics and ice sheet dynamics on the Antarctic continent. The optimum approach to study processes linking ice sheet dynamics and geological structures is the analysis of integrated airborne geophysical data consisting of gravity, magnetics, laser altimetry and ice penetrating radar.
Description:
The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) is a leading research institution where more than 200 research scientists seek fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world.
