Collaborative Research: REU Site: Arctic REU Greenland - Earth and Environmental Processes from the Inland Ice to the Ocean along the Aasivissuit-Nipisat World Heritage Corridor

Concord University, Athens WV

Investigators

Abstract

Concord College, located in WV, and Montana State University (MSU) will organize an international Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The program will engage three cohorts of students over three summers in an international field experience in Greenland that will be followed by laboratory analysis and final presentations at Concord or MSU. The REU Site will focus on the natural and environmental characteristics of a coastal region in Greenland that includes a World Heritage Site. The program offers opportunities for students to conduct both field and laboratory work in structural geology, earthquake geology, climate change, social sciences, paleoecology, glaciology, geo-microbiology, mineralogy, and petrology. This project addresses a diverse array of questions in polar science ranging from bedrock geology and earthquake rupture dynamics to hyperspectral albedo calibration and ecological succession along a retreating icecap margin. The projects are unified by an integrative approach to understanding Earth systems along an ice to ocean transect at the Arctic Circle. REU students will test a new hypothesis for the origin of multi-fault earthquake rupture and generate a geologic data set that will provide a unique compliment to geophysical and geodynamic investigations for multi-fault rupture processes, collect and analyze hyperspectral data to derive a better calibration of satellite albedo data, and explore ecological and geomicrobiological gradients evolving along the retreating ice margin. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.