2011 - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ...

VISITING FELLOWS
With partial sponsorship by NOAA, CIRES offers visiting fellowships at the
University of Colorado Boulder. Every year, CIRES awards several fellowships
to visiting scientists at many levels, from postdoctoral to senior. These fellowships
promote collaborative and cutting-edge research. Since 1967, 267
people have been visiting fellows at CIRES, including previous CIRES Director
Susan Avery and current Director Konrad Steffen.
Matthew Druckenmiller
Postdoctoral
Ph.D., University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Project: Providing usable sea ice
information to Arctic coastal
communities in Alaska
Matthew Druckenmiller will
earn a doctorate in geophysics this
summer from the University of
Alaska, Fairbanks, and then begin
his postdoctoral research at CIRES
investigating how sea-ice retreat
in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas affects marine mammals
and coastal communities. As Alaska’s Arctic coasts
experience rapid change in the sea ice and coastal environment,
policymakers and other stakeholders face difficult
decisions regarding related issues such as coastal erosion,
offshore oil and gas development, and subsistence hunting.
Such decisions require accessible, understandable and
relevant environmental data sets.
Partnering with the National Snow and Ice Data Center
and Alaska’s North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife
Management, Druckenmiller will identify the baseline
data needed for tracking sea-ice impacts and develop
strategies for communicating that information to Arctic
coastal communities so they can proactively address
changing conditions. He also will collaborate on a study to
examine how sea-ice retreat in the Beaufort Sea relates to
the body size of bowhead whales, since less sea-ice cover
equates to a larger feeding area.
Sponsor: Mark Serreze
74 CIRES Annual Report 2011
Alison Duvall
Postdoctoral
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Project: Landscape response to
strike-slip faulting: A case study of the
Marlborough Fault Zone, South Island,
New Zealand
Alison Duvall is working within
Greg Tucker’s geomorphology and
landscape-evolution group and also
is collaborating with Peter Molnar’s
group (mountain range formation
and continental lithosphere deformation) and Roger
Bilham’s group (earthquakes and tectonic plate motions).
She is investigating how strike-slip faulting—when two
blocks of the Earth’s crust slide past each other—changes
hill slopes, river channels and other landscape features.
Tectonically active strike-slip faults pose a major earthquake
hazard, especially in heavily populated areas such
as the West Coast of the United States and much of Asia.
Unfortunately, measuring the activity of these faults is
difficult with standard techniques. By learning to correlate
specific strike-slip fault characteristics to specific landscape
features, Duvall hopes to develop new ways of recognizing
and analyzing fault activity. For her research, she
is conducting a case study of New Zealand’s Marlborough
Fault System, which contains faults with widely varying
slip rates. She will combine field data (geomorphic
mapping, field surveys and analysis of digital topographic
data) with computer modeling of landscape evolution to
explore how the Earth’s surface responds to strike-slip
faulting.
Sponsor: Greg Tucker