Hello AGU, Vast expanses of seasonal shelf ice are a prominent feature of polar oceans, with enormous consequences for marine food webs and the temperature-ice/snow-albedo feedback on Earth’s climate. Large temperate lakes, like the Laurentian Great Lakes (~250,000 km2), also experience considerable winter ice cover, which influences shoreline morphology, lake ecology, and regional weather. Shelf ice […]
Postcards From the Field
Posted inPostcards From the Field
A Metazoan Visitor in a Microbial World
Dear AGU, Life in submerged karst sinkholes in the Laurentian Great Lakes, where salty groundwater with high-sulfur and low-oxygen is actively venting, is almost exclusively composed of prokaryotic microbes, Bacteria and Archaea, that build colorful benthic mats capable of both photosynthesis and chemosynthesis. Aerobic organisms such as eukaryotic invertebrates and vertebrates are usually excluded from these isolated […]
Posted inPostcards From the Field
Greetings From Utqiagvik, Alaska!
Hello from Utqiagvik, Alaska in late February of 2024! This picture was taking during my year-long biennial Arctic Geophysics undergraduate research class. The students in this class choose their own research area dealing with the sea ice, and then I work with them to build – to MacGyver! – their own microcontroller-based sensors to collect […]