The Lamont Earth Science Colloquium presents:
Greenland Rising – Modeling, mapping, and communicating coastal impacts of a changing Greenland ice sheet
with Dr. Jacqueline Austermann, Associate Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Dr. Kirsty Tinto, Lamont Associate Research Professor, Marine and Polar Geophysics, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet contributes to rising global sea levels. However, local sea level along much of the Greenland coast is falling due to postglacial rebound and a decrease in gravitational attraction from the ice sheet. This affects Greenlandic coastal communities, which have to adapt their coastal infrastructure, shipping routes, and subsistence fisheries. Greenland Rising is an NSF funded project and collaboration between Lamont and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources that ran from 2020 – 2025. In this project we worked closely with communities to understand local priorities and map the bathymetry and marine habitat around 3 coastal communities. We modeled future sea level change accounting for glacial isostatic adjustment and calibrated model parameters using measurements of present-day uplift. We combined these results with the survey to identify how sea level fall will affect ports, waterways, and the marine environment. Results were shared and iterated on with local stakeholders over the course of the project. In this presentation we will summarize this project and reflect on its origins, its evolution (running field campaigns during the covid era!), and its lasting impacts, which included coining new scientific terms in Greenlandic.
The Earth Science Colloquium Series, sponsored by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES), provides a lively forum for discussing a wide variety of topics within the Earth sciences and related fields. Colloquia are attended by the full range of scientific and technical staff at LDEO. Colloquium attendance is required of all pre-orals DEES graduate students. The Colloquium Series supports the Lamont Seminar Diversity Initiative.
