Congratulations to Ricky Stevens, Richard Bailey and Jonathan Wheatland, three of our 2nd year undergraduate students, who have been awarded a very competitive grant from the Royal Geographical Society for fieldwork in Iceland. Supported by Simon Carr they have won support for a project entitled “Dynamics of a marginal glacier within an actively volcanic region”. Further details can be found at:
http://iceland2010-dynamics-of-a-marginal-glacier-in-a-volcanic-region.wikispaces.com/
This develops Ricky's earlier success in gaining a “Learning and Leading Apprenticeship Scheme” award from the RGS last year, and his visit to Iceland over the summer.
The project aims to document the past and present behaviour of a small niche glacier located within Kerlingarfjoll, central Iceland. Ricky writes that through the fieldwork comprising three interelated projects, they aim to extend “scientific knowledge on how small glaciers, which are arguably the most sensitive to climatic changes, have behaved during the past to changing environmental conditions. If we could quantify these changes, we could use this to infer how these small glaciers have fluctuated in past times and significantly offer inferences to how these small glaciers may behave in the future – something which has social, ecological, economical and environmental implications.”
Jack Hawkins, Niall Lehane and Michael Rooke, have also been successful with the RGS grants scheme this year. They will be traveling to Svalbard with Sven Lukas in the summer to carry out fieldwork on on the response of Svalbard glaciers to climate change, and will be working with Professor Doug Benn at UNIS, a leading international expert in this field.