Kaitlin Keegan: How does snow become glacial ice? Investigating the evolution of firm microstructure
Title
How does snow become glacial ice? Investigating the evolution of firm microstructure
Mentor
Department
Geological Sciences and Engineering
Biosketch
Kaitlin Keegan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in materials engineering from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in 2014. Her research focuses on studying the material properties of natural ice to improve our understanding of glacial ice formation processes that impact important applications in glaciology, such as remotely sensing ice-sheet mass loss and interpreting ice-core paleoclimate records.
Project overview
The transformation of snow into glacial ice in persistently cold places like Greenland and Antarctica is a fundamental process in glaciology that has yet to be fully understood. Improving our understanding of how snow compacts into firn (partially compacted old snow) and ultimately into glacial ice will advance our ability to remotely sense ice sheets and interpret climate records from ice cores. Our laboratory works to better understand this process through analysis of shallow (firn) core samples from the field. This project focuses on the development of image processing techniques to extract microstructural information from micro-CT datasets of Antarctic firn samples, in preparation for receiving new shallow ice cores from Taylor Dome, Antarctica in spring of 2025.
Pack Research Experience Program information and application