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St. Olaf scientist receives $680,000 grant for Antarctic study

By David Gonnerman '90
September 1, 2009

Bob Jacobel, Grace Whittier Professor of Physics at St. Olaf College, has received funding from the National Science Foundation for his participation in an interdisciplinary collaboration of scientists who are studying subglacial environments at two coastal sites in West Antarctica.

An Antarctic glacier has been named after St. Olaf Professor of Physics Bob Jacobel, who has previously worked on seven projects on the icy continent.

The $680,000 award, funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is the St. Olaf portion of a $10 million grant made to 11 scientists at nine U.S. institutions for a five-year study that will take Jacobel to Antarctica for his eighth project. The grant includes funding for the participation of three to four St. Olaf students each year who will help plan the field program, and analyze and interpret the resulting data.

St. Olaf is the only liberal arts college involved in the project that includes scientists from NASA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, Penn State, Dartmouth and other research institutions.

Under the ice
The project will study conditions below the kilometer-thick ice in a subglacial lake, and at a point where the Ross Ice Shelf leaves the land and begins to float on the ocean. Jacobel's team will visit the two sites a year in advance of the drilling team (beginning in November 2010) to use a special radar to map the area under the ice so that the drillers can pick optimal drill sites. The team will then send sensors down boreholes at the lake site. At the coastal site they will use a sensor-laden remotely operated vehicle that will crawl down through a hole in the ice.

Researchers will analyze the vast amounts of information they compile -- including ice, water, and sediment samples -- to help determine how global warming is affecting Antarctic ice melt and sea-level changes. In addition to gathering data on physical, chemical, and geobiological interactions in subglacial environments, the project also will assess how groups of organisms at the two sites have evolved in relation to each other.

In 2005 Jacobel received a $400,000 NSF grant for a study that mapped subsurface ice across 1,700 km of Antarctica. Previously, his work earned him the distinction of having a West Antarctica glacier named in his honor.

Read more about St. Olaf involvement in polar research in the St. Olaf Magazine story "Fire and Ice" (in PDF).

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.