Update
Now Archived! PolarConnect event with Steve Kirsche and researchers Ian Baker and Eric Wagner from Summit Station in Greenland on Tuesday, 20 June 2017. You can access this and other events on the PolarConnect Archives site.
What Are They Doing?
We will drill an 80-meter firn core at Summit, Greenland and transport it to Dartmouth University. After the field expedition, Steve will work with the team at the university, where we will perform experiments to observe changes based on temperature and stress (due to depth and load). In addition to observing the microstructure as a whole, we can follow the evolution of ice crystals to observe bond formation and bond-breaking under load in detail, as undertaken in some prior studies on snow.
Our project will aid in the understanding of firn and ice microstructure evolution in polar ice sheets. This will aid in understanding ice flow and interpreting paleoclimate reconstruction from ice cores.
Where Are They?
Latest Journals

Ian has been on the Faculty at the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College for 34 years. He has been working on the structure, chemistry, and properties of snow, firn, and ice cores for the last 30 years. This work has ranged from fundamental studies of defect behavior in ice, studied using synchrotron X-ray topography, to studies of impurity locations in firn and ice cores and the metamorphism of snow.

Eric Wagner is currently an Engineering PhD student at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. His research focuses on the microstructure of firn and the mechanics of firn evolution. This is of interest in determining how firn evolution contributes to ice sheet fabric development and interpretation of paleoclimate data where coarse-grained and fine-grained firn exhibit different pore close-off depths. When not in the lab, he enjoys hiking, biking and skiing.