Alia Lesnek
CUNY Queens College, NY·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Glaciers that flow into the sea can shift from slow retreat to sudden collapse, and that switch matters for how fast global sea level rises. Satellites have watched these glaciers for only a few decades, which captures a small slice of the conditions they can face.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
glacial geology
outlet glaciers
marine-terminating glaciers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2031
What they work on
- Reconstruct when the Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreated across Southwest Alaska, using geologic mapping and cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating, which measures atoms that build up in rock once it is exposed.
- Test whether marine-ending outlet glaciers draining to the North Pacific retreated before North Atlantic glaciers during the Last Deglaciation, about 22,000–11,000 years ago, by comparing dated retreat records.
- Use ice sheet modeling to find how ocean and atmosphere conditions, topography and ice flow interact to control switches between gradual and rapid outlet glacier retreat.
More about the research
One way to see the full range is to study an ice sheet that already retreated long ago and to read its history from the landscape it left behind.
Why it matters
Projections of sea-level rise depend on ice sheet models that are hard to check against the short modern record. Ancient retreat records from Alaska could help test these models. Better forecasts could support planning for U.S. coastal communities, ports and shipping corridors, and could clarify how the Arctic responded to past environmental change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Shaun Marcott
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
Date the thinning of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet by measuring 135 beryllium-10 exposure ages along about 15 vertical mountain transects in western Canada, known as the "glacial dipstick" approach.
Robert DeConto
University of Massachusetts, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether the northern Greenland Ice Sheet is more sensitive to Arctic warming than the southern ice sheet, by drilling through the ice and measuring cosmogenic nuclides such as beryllium-10 and aluminum-26 in the bedrock below to find past ice-free periods.
Brenda Hall
University of Maine, ME·Earth & Environmental Science
Synthesize existing Southern Hemisphere records of environmental change covering the descent into and abrupt exit from the last ice age.
The school
CUNY Queens College: 2 labs on PI Pages, $32M a year on research.
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