Project Grant 2223352

This three-year, $291,344 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) will support research investigating past, present, and future glaciated alpine landscapes using integrated data and modeling. Four early career principal investigators at Occidental College will develop detailed modern and paleo glaciological datasets from a well-constrained site in the Teton Range, Wyoming. They will integrate these datasets into a state-of-the-art glacier model, PyG2D, to accurately simulate past and ongoing glacier retreat in the Western U.S. This novel model includes topographically-mediated effects on mass balance important for shrinking glaciers. The researchers will constrain and simulate glacier states from the Last Ice Age to 2100, producing the first detailed simulations of future glacier evolution in the contiguous U.S. Ultimately, this work will advance understanding of deglaciation processes while developing an open-source modeling tool applicable to glacierized settings globally.