USAP-DC

Antarctica’s glaciers have advanced and retreated numerous times over the last 55 million years. However, little is known about the factors forcing past advances and retreats or the behavior of different glaciers around Antarctica. Such knowledge is important for understanding present and predicting future ice sheet behavior, which has critical societal and national security implications. This project will generate chemical records from mud deposited on the ocean floor offshore East Antarctica to test the hypothesis that ocean temperatures near Antarctica influenced the advance and retreat of regional glaciers in the past and to identify the causes of observed variability. Over time, mud accumulates on the sea floor around Antarctica that is composed of the skeletons and organic components of microscopic marine organisms and sediment from the adjacent continent. As this mud is deposited, records of past glacier advance and retreat, ocean temperature, circulation, and chemistry are created and preserved. Researchers from the University of South Florida will reconstruct the past four million years of ocean temperature and glacier variability offshore a region of East Antarctica where some local glaciers are currently retreating due to the presence of warm ocean waters, while other glaciers are advancing. New data records will be generated from recently recovered muds and legacy geologic samples recovered in the 1970’s by the Deep Sea Drilling Program. Results will provide essential information to improve models that provide societally relevant information to local, state, and federal policy makers on the timing and magnitude of global sea level change and inform United States national security policies. The proposed research will support a PI committed to maximizing the United States’ intellectual capital in Antarctic research and train graduate and undergraduate students who will build future capacity in the nation’s strategic polar workforce. 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.

Person	Role
Shevenell, Amelia	Investigator and contact

Antarctic Earth Sciences

Award # 2535651

USAP-2535651_1

2025_Final_PLR_Data_Management_Plan.pdf