Doctoral Dissertation Research: Human-Environmental Interactions in Deglaciating Landscapes

The doctoral dissertation project investigates plant establishment and soil formation in recently deglaciated alpine landscapes. Most mountain glaciers are predicted to disappear by the end of the 21st century, leaving significant ice-free land. People and ecosystems depend on these glaciers, but as the glaciers melt, natural resources (e.g., water and pastures, ecosystems services (e.g., carbon storage), cultural identities, and tourism decline.

These new lands, however, offer opportunities to study social and ecological adaptations. This study will show how communities adapt to the loss of glaciers. One experiment will be to study the role of grazing animals in enhancing proglacial landscape formation.

The project reinforces partnerships between local communities, governmental entities, NGOs, and researchers working across continents to promote scientific advancements of social and ecological adaptations in proglacial landscapes.

Melting mountain glaciers are exposing large new land areas and this project investigates how postglacial ecosystems could contribute to indispensable services for local and downstream populations in future glacier-free valleys. This doctoral dissertation project uses plot studies of plant species, soil fertility, and geomorphic surfaces across a range of alpine landscapes where glaciers have melted over the last hundred years.

By studying the migration of alpine plant communities to higher elevations and ecosystem formation, the research characterizes the main processes occurring in these ice-free landscapes. The study also combines intensive sampling, UAV (drone) surveys, satellite imagery, and an experiment to test if introducing grazing animals can accelerate ecosystem formation.

By applying the same research design in multiple locations, this project provides reproducible data and generalizable knowledge regarding social and ecological adaptations in deglaciating landscapes.

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.