LIONESS is an international collaboration between The University of Texas at Austin, Montana State University and the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), which aims to resolve unanswered questions about the sprawling Thwaites Glacier system in West Antarctica. On the UTIG team are three experienced field scientists, Dillon Buhl, Anja Rutishauser and Natalie Wolfenbarger. Learn why… Continue Reading LIONESS 2020: Who are the UTIG researchers investigating Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier?
UTIG Investigates Sea Level Threat of Giant Antarctic Glacier
Polar researchers from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) have joined colleagues in West Antarctica to conduct vital surveys of one of the most unstable glaciers on Earth. At around the size of Florida, Thwaites Glacier holds enough water to raise average global sea levels up to a meter. What’s more, if it… Continue Reading UTIG Investigates Sea Level Threat of Giant Antarctic Glacier
Denis Felikson receives Early Career award for pioneering research on glacier thinning
Denis Felikson, a former UT graduate student, has received an early career award from the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) for research into glacier thinning that he conducted while working as a graduate research assistant at UTIG. Felikson graduated from the Department of Aerospace Engineering with a doctoral degree in 2018 and is now… Continue Reading Denis Felikson receives Early Career award for pioneering research on glacier thinning
New Study Reveals Layers of Textured Mantle ‘Frozen’ into North American Plate
The North American plate is a medley of geological parts that protrude into Earth’s mantle like tree branches frozen into the surface of an iced-over lake. Research from The University of Texas at Austin has proposed a new method to map these ‘frozen-in’ layers of the tectonic plate and reveal how it interacts with the… Continue Reading New Study Reveals Layers of Textured Mantle ‘Frozen’ into North American Plate
Remembering the Apollo moon landings: Yosio Nakamura and the birth of planetary seismology
By Constantino Panagopulos Fifty years ago, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk the surface of the moon they left behind a seismometer – a bulky instrument about the size of a milkcrate whose purpose was to detect moonquakes. Yosio Nakamura was one of the scientists involved in preparing the… Continue Reading Remembering the Apollo moon landings: Yosio Nakamura and the birth of planetary seismology