Glacial Movement and Seismicity
Meet the Team
Teacher - Michael Lampert
West Salem High School
Salem
, Oregon
United States
Micheal Lampert grew up saving earthworms from sunny sidewalks, wondering about how water drops dance on hot skillets, puzzling over which color is at the top of a rainbow, and trying to build perpetual energy machines with Lego's. His love of physics and science led him to become a physics teacher at West Salem High School in Salem, Oregon. As a teacher of over twenty years he has continually tried to bring the excitement of science research to his students.
In the classroom, Mr. Lampert's students have learned about science using exciting hands-on instruction and have been highly successful in national contests. Photos of his students line the wall with their successes and humorous follies. He loves art and integrates it into his lessons whenever possible. Mr. Lampert's ultimate goal is to enthuse a generation of students to pursue science as a life-long career.
His fascination with the Polar Regions began many years ago, with a play on Antarctica his mother took him to. From that day on he was hooked on the adventures of Scott, Schackleton, and Amundsen and he has previously studied ozone depletion while based in McMurdo Station. He is thrilled to continue connecting science with the community through PolarTREC.
Researcher - Neal Iverson
Iowa State University
Ames
, Iowa
United States
Dr. Neal Iverson is a professor of glaciology, geomorphology, and engineering geology at Iowa State University. He strives to understand how glaciers move across rock and sediment and how they shape the landscape. For the past ten years, Dr. Iverson has travelled to Norway's Svartisen Glaciological Observatory, located in a tunnel cut underneath the Svartisen Ice Cap. Although it may not be the best work environment, he feels its "a great natural lab to study glaciers and glacier motion." To learn more about Dr. Iverson's scientific interests, please visit his faculty biography page (http://www.ge-at.iastate.edu/iverson.shtml).
Project Information
Glacier Seismicity and its Relationship to Basal Movement
Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory, Norway
25 April 2011
20 May 2011
Where are They?
The team will be living and working at the Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory located in northern Norway, and slightly north of the Arctic Circle. The Svartisen Glacier is one of the largest glaciers on the Norwegian mainland and the laboratory is situated under some 200 meters ofice. The under-ice laboratory provides researchers the unique opportunity to study the base of the glacier, underlying bedrock, and glacial processes. In addition to being a research station, tunnels in the rock beneath the ice cap have been engineered to direct glacial meltwater water to a nearby hydroelectric power station.
What are they Doing?
Glaciers are like moving rivers of ice, and as meltwater makes its way to the bottom of the ice sheet it acts like a lubricant helping the glacier move. As climate warms in the polar regions, glacial meltwater increases, reduces friction and causes this movement to increase. Increased glacial movement may cause glaciers to recede more rapidly, but there is no exact formula for this.
For this project, the team will work at the Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory, a laboratory located beneath a glacier, to study the glacier’s movement. From the lab, water pressure beneath the glacier will be manually increased in an attempt to cause rapid glacial movement. The sliding of the glacier will cause very small earthquakes, which can be measured using seismometers at the glacier surface and in rock tunnels below the glacier.
Predicting future increases in ice-sheet sliding speed is one of the single largest unknowns in predicting sea-level rise due to melting glaciers. The measurements taken will help scientists learn more about glacial movement. In addition, the information will improve how seismological data from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets translate to glacial movement, and therefore sea level rise.
Resources
| Title | Date | About | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tunnel Vision: Studying the Engabreen Glacier | 30 September 2011 |
PolarTREC teacher Michael Lampert describes the wonders of working underneath a mass of moving... |
Article |
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