Brenda Hall
University of Maine, ME·Earth & Environmental Science
Some of Earth's past climate shifts, such as the end of the last ice age, happened very fast. Ice sheets have also grown and shrunk dramatically.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
paleoclimate
glacial geology
last ice age
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Synthesize existing Southern Hemisphere records of environmental change covering the descent into and abrupt exit from the last ice age.
- Develop new glacial, geochemical, and sedimentological records from lake and periglacial deposits in the Falkland Islands, a key Southern Hemisphere location.
- Use these records as benchmarks for an Earth System model to test whether ice-age climate behaved as a 'nearly intransitive' system that jumps between semi-stable states at tipping points.
- Map the meltwater-scoured landscape of the Transantarctic Mountains from imagery, and reassess existing age data, to define the extent of a past major expansion of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
- Use surface exposure dating of existing rock samples to test whether this scoured surface is much younger than its traditionally assigned age of at least 14 million years.
More about the research
Knowing how and why these changes happened is key to predicting future sea-level rise and environmental change. This research reads that history in landscapes and sediments, from the Falkland Islands to the mountains of Antarctica, and puts dates on past events so they can be compared with climate records and models.
Why it matters
Better-dated records of how ice sheets and climate changed in the past could improve the models that society uses to project sea-level rise and long-term environmental change. Those projections matter for coastal planning, agriculture, and national and international climate policy. If tipping-point behavior or a young East Antarctic expansion is confirmed, current predictions may need substantial revision.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Aaron Diefendorf
University of Cincinnati, OH·Earth & Environmental Science
Synthesize existing Southern Hemisphere records of environmental change covering the descent into and abrupt exit from the last ice age, so patterns and rates can be compared on a common footing.
Alia Lesnek
CUNY Queens College, NY·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
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.
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.
The school
University of Maine: 10 labs on PI Pages, $199M a year on research, 81 research doctorates a year.
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