Collaborative Research: EAR-Climate: Investigating the past, present, and future of glaciated alpine landscapes using an integrated data-model approach

今天，80%的冰川小于0.5平方公里，许多较大的山谷冰川正处于向小冰川过渡的过程中，以应对现代变暖。尽管面积很小，但环形冰川在高山地貌中发挥着超大的地貌和生态作用，主要是通过水文和沉积物输送的区域变化。了解这些冰川如何对过去的气候变化做出反应，以及它们将如何应对未来的气候变化，是了解美国西部和其他地方高山集水区过去的演变和未来命运的先决条件。该项目将通过从怀俄明州提顿山脉一个特别有限的研究地点开发详细的现代和古冰川数据集来满足这一需求，并将它们与最先进的模型相结合，以准确地表示冰川缩小和消失的过程。最终，这项工作将在开发适用于全球冰川环境的开源冰川模型的同时，洞察冰川作为高山景观演变代理人的过去、现在和未来的作用。该项目还将促进四个早期职业PI之间的新合作，通过增加未被充分代表的少数族裔参与地球科学来改善两个公共研究机构和一所文理学院的STEM教育，并促进气候科学素养和公共参与。这项研究将通过将不同的数据集整合到一个新的冰川模型来模拟美国西部过去和正在进行的冰川消退，从而促进我们对高山景观冰川消融的基本理解。该模型代表着一项变革性的进步，因为它包括了地形对物质平衡过程的影响的新表示，随着冰川缩小为阴影圆圈，这些过程变得越来越重要。重要的是，新的开源冰川模型(PyG2D)可以应用于世界各地的其他环境，以量化气候变化对山区生态系统、水文学和景观的影响。通过在提顿山脉应用和测试这个模型，这个地点对过去的冰川波动有着特殊的地质约束，以及一套代表全球小冰川的环形冰川，该项目将首次对毗邻的美国未来的冰川演变进行详细的模拟。我们将通过约束和模拟从上一次冰川时代到公元2100年的冰川状态来考虑现代和未来的冰川变化。这项工作虽然集中在一个单独的自然实验室，但对地球上其他地方的冰川化地区具有广泛的影响，并提供了一个重要的时空替代，以告知未来更严重的冰川景观将如何演变。随着冰川范围、厚度和体积的不断记录，这项工作将为未来的地貌和生态研究奠定基础，这些研究将量化冰川变化对面临完全冰川消融的高山景观的影响。预期结果将成为气候变化对冰冻圈的切实影响的关键例子，资源经理、政策制定者和更广泛的公众可以很容易地理解这些影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Today, 80% of all glaciers are smaller than 0.5 km2, and many larger valley glaciers are in the process of transitioning to small cirque glaciers in response to modern warming. Despite their small size, cirque glaciers play an outsized geomorphic and ecological role in alpine landscapes, largely through regionally variable changes in hydrology and sediment transport. Understanding how these glaciers responded to past climate changes and how they will respond to future climate changes is prerequisite for understanding the past evolution and future fate of alpine catchments in the western U.S. and elsewhere. This project will address this need by developing detailed glaciological datasets, both modern and paleo, from an exceptionally well-constrained study site in the Teton Range, Wyoming, and integrating them with a state-of-the-art model to accurately represent glaciers as they shrink and disappear. Ultimately, this work will produce insight into the past, present, and future role of glaciers as agents of alpine landscape evolution while developing an open-source glacier model, which will be applicable to glacial settings globally. The project will also foster new collaborations between four early career PIs, improve STEM education at two public research institutions and one liberal arts college through increased participation of underrepresented minorities in the Earth sciences, and promote climate science literacy and public engagement.This research will advance our fundamental understanding of deglaciation in alpine landscapes by integrating diverse datasets into a new glacier model to simulate past and ongoing glacier retreat in the western U.S. This model represents a transformative advance in that it includes novel representation of topographically-mediated effects on mass balance—processes that are increasingly important as glaciers shrink into shaded cirques. Importantly, the new open-source glacier model (PyG2D) can be applied to other settings worldwide to quantify the effects of climate change on mountain ecosystems, hydrology, and landscapes. By applying and testing this model in the Teton Range, a site with exceptional geologic constraints on past glacier fluctuations and a suite of cirque glaciers that are representative of small glaciers globally, this project will produce the first detailed simulations of future glacier evolution in the contiguous U.S. We will place modern and future glacier change in context by constraining and simulating glacier states from the Last Ice Age to 2100 CE. This work, while focused on a single natural laboratory, has broad implications for glacierized regions elsewhere on the planet and offers an important space-for-time substitution to inform how more heavily glaciated landscapes will evolve in the future. With a continuous record of glacier extent, thickness, and volume this work will lay the foundation for future studies, both geomorphic and ecological in scope, that quantify the impact of glacier change on alpine landscapes facing complete deglaciation. Anticipated results will serve as key examples of the tangible impacts of climate change on the cryosphere that can be readily understood by resource managers, policymakers, and the broader public.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.