Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

My multidisciplinary research program focuses on the Quaternary evolution of Arctic Canada with an emphasis on terrestrial and marine archives of deglacial to postglacial environmental change. The Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) is the world's largest formerly glaciated archipelago. Subject to fundamental environmental reorganization during deglaciation (13-8 thousand years ago), the region's response to dramatic warming across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition represents an unparalleled analogue for recent polar anthropogenic climate change. In a global community facing the consequences of sea-level rise and ice-sheet instability, the study of our own Canadian deglacial history to more fully comprehend cryospheric responses to future climate is of pressing importance.*The prime objective of my research program is to advance our knowledge of the role ice shelves played in the deglacial system - a hitherto overlooked and under explored element of the glacial constellation of the CAA. To achieve this, comprehensive inductive models of paleo-ice shelf sedimentation and landform development that are appropriate to the short-lived deglacial ice shelves of Canada's Arctic will be developed to aid the identification of former floating ice margins. This necessitates a multidisciplinary and highly collaborative approach, integrating ship-based (stratigraphy, sedimentology of marine sediment cores, seismic and multibeam data) and terrestrial fieldwork (geomorphic, stratigraphic mapping, glacitectonics), united by a robust geochronological framework (14C dating of biogenic calcite and compound specific FAMEs). Elucidating what has been previously a generally overlooked element of deglacial dynamics in the CAA has vital implications for developing an integrated understanding of climatic and oceanic forcing on ice retreat across complex high latitude island systems. Together, these data will enable the characterization of deglacial and rapid advance ice shelves and their landforms, thus permitting the construction of a detailed framework for their identification and an improved understanding of how they either acted to support ice sheets and retard deglaciation, or induce rapid catastrophic ice sheet collapse. *As an approach to studying the deglaciation of arctic island environments, this program is innovative and timely, uniting terrestrial and marine approaches to elucidate an integrated picture of linked cryosphere-ocean-terrestrial responses. This is a vital pre-requisite for meaningful paleoanalogues of future polar climate change. The program incorporates 10 HQPs, providing invaluable training in stratigraphic, geomorphic, and sedimentological methodologies. Students will gain first hand experience in field planning, project management, and remote fieldwork, preparing them for roles as future leaders in academia, industry, and government.*