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| 2000 Team |
Leigh Sterans
Field Assistant
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
My name is Leigh Stearns and I am a first year Master's student at The Ohio State University, studying glacier dynamics. More specifically, I am working on ice stream mechanics, with Dr. Ian Whillans, to try to determine what the force budget is across the shear margins. This work will help gain a better understanding of how ice streams work and what causes their speeds to fluctuate. Last year we revisited survey lines across the shear margins of ice streams B, D and E using GPS measurements to determine how much the lines had moved since they were put in two years ago. We also resurveyed mass-balance (coffee-can) sites and drilled a few ice cores to get long-term snow accumulation rates. This data is still being processed.
I have been involved with the ITASE traverse since last winter by putting together RADARSAT images of the traverse route and plotting out 'safest' routes. RADARSAT images penetrate into the snow surface ~6m and are therefore helpful in detecting buried crevasses as well as surficial ones. This winter I will join the ITASE traverse in December, trading off half-way with Gordon Hamilton. We will be collecting high-resolution GPS measurements along the traverse and setting up a number of automatic "coffee-can" sites. As for some past history, I grew up on the small but not so deserted island of Manhattan, which I promptly left to go to Carleton College in rural Minnesota for my undergraduate education. In the town of cows, colleges and contentment, I got my BA in Geology and Environmental Sciences and became altogether too attached to the cold, flat, barren landscape. Hence Antarctica.
When I'm not studying I can be found running with my dog or failing miserably at many cooking attempts.
