ORONO, Maine — Aaron Putnam, a research associate with the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, is conducting glacial geology research in Mongolia with doctoral student Peter Strand.
Fieldwork will include mapping and collecting samples of moraines and glacial geomorphologic features around Khoton Nuur. Khoton Lake is at the foot of the Altai Mountains near the border of China.
Strand and Putnam, who also is associated with Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, are blogging about their experiences during the monthlong research trek at umglacialgeology.tumblr.com. The project is being done in collaboration with Mongolia University of Science and Technology.
A DeLorme inReach Satellite Communicator is broadcasting the team’s location every two hours. Those who wish to following the researchers may visit share.delorme.com/PeterStrand; type in the password “glacier” to view the researchers’ location, send a message and follow their progress.
“The last glacial termination represents the last great global warming and the last time [carbon dioxide] rose by a substantial amount before the industrial period. And yet the role of carbon dioxide] in causing the last great global warming is not certain,” Putnam and Strand blogged June 18.
They say the research could advance understanding of “the sensitivity of atmospheric temperature to [carbon dioxide],” as well as increase knowledge about processes that catapulted the Earth out of an ice age.
When Strand and Putnam, who this fall will be a faculty member in the University of Maine School of Earth and Climate Sciences, return to UMaine, they will process the collected samples and create a chronology that documents the reduction of glacier volume since the peak of the last ice age.
The research team also includes David Putnam, professor at University of Maine Presque Isle; Caleb Ward, a student at University of Maine at Presque Isle; Sarah Kramer, a graduate student at Medill School of Journalism; and Pagamsuren Amarsaikhan and Tsetsenbileg Bavuu from the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. Tanzhuo Liu, of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; and Hayley Walcott, a student at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, will join the team in the field.