Current Research

1) Dust Deposition in the Alpine Zone of the Uinta Mountains: Building on almost 20 years of work studying the late Quaternary history of the Uintas, I recently received funding from NSF to expand my work on dust deposition in the alpine zone. Passive and active dust samplers deployed since 2011 have provided information about the properties of modern dust, rates of dust deposition, and impacts of dust deposition over time. This award will support deployment of additional dust collectors for increased spatial coverage, field and lab study of alpine soils to more completely understand dust impacts on pedogenesis, and study of lake sediment cores to reconstruct dust deposition over the post-glacial period.

2) Glacial History of Great Basin National Park: Ben Laabs (SUNY-Geneseo) and I were funded by the National Park Service to produce a glacial map of Great Basin National Park, to expand our work applying cosmogenic surface-exposure dating to moraines in the Park, and to use terrestrial laser scanning to monitor movement on the Wheeler Peak (rock) glacier.

3) Records of Past Environmental Change from an Idaho Ice Cave: I received funding from the American Philosophical Society to study a recently discovered ice cave in Idaho. The cave contains over 30 m of interstratified ice and organic matter. Preliminary radiocarbon dating indicates that the lowest accessible ice dates to the 16^th Century. Radiocarbon dating, stable isotopes, and geochemistry will be used to investigate the paleoclimate information contained within this ice deposit.

4) Paleoenvironmental Records from Vermont Caves: Together with Middlebury colleague Will Amidon I am studying caves in western Vermont to determine their potential as archives of paleoenvironmental information. We recently determined that clastic sediments in Weybridge Cave predate the last glaciation.

5) Climate and Chronology of the Last Glacial-Interglacial Transition, North-Central Great Basin, U.S.A.: Ben Laabs (SUNY-Geneseo) and I were funded by the NSF-P2C2 program to investigate the timing and spatial pattern of events during the last deglaciation in the northern Great Basin. This project had multiple components including reconstructing ice masses in this region during the Angel Lake Glaciation, numerical modeling to determine the paleoclimate responsible for these glaciers, cosmogenic surface-exposure dating to determine the timing of the Angel Lake glacial maximum and pace of the subsequent retreat, and dating and numerical modeling of pluvial lake deposits. Although fieldwork for this project has ended, data reduction and interpretation are ongoing.

6) Development of Alpine Soils in the Northeastern U.S.: I continue to be interested in alpine soils of the northeastern U.S. Most of the work focused on the alpine zones of the region’s highest mountains has dealt with ecology or botany, and surprisingly little is known about the history of these soils and their development over time. This oversight is unfortunate because the alpine zones are continually threatened by increased recreational impacts and the real possibility of future climate change. Work I began with a Middlebury student in the fall of 2004 shed light on the pedogenic pathways followed by these soils, as well as the rates of their formation. A paper presenting soil chemistry and parent material investigations appeared in Catena in 2007, while a second paper detailing the distribution and morphology of the summit soils was published in 2008 in the Soil Science Society of America Journal. During the 2013-14 academic year I worked with Katie Schide ’14 to study pedogenesis of alpine soils on the Monroe Flats in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire. This work revealed that deposits of glacial till are the likely parent material for alpine soils in some geomorphic settings.

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Last updated by J. Munroe 9/15/15