“My background in glaciology has been for 5 years related
to the study of physico-chemical processes occurring at the base
of polar glaciers and ice sheets. This interface is one of the
major boundary zones in the cryosphere. I am currently dealing
since this PhD with another of these major boundary zones: the
marine ice environment, which reflects the ice-ocean transition
in polar regions. The term marine ice actually qualifies ice
formed under continental ice that gets afloat on the ocean (ice
shelf). This type of ice shows a significant variability in its
spatial distribution and originates from various mechanisms,
all linked with ocean water circulation at the margin of major
ice sheets. Marine ice properties have been extensively studied
in previous phases of the Belgian Antarctic programme. These
properties have been shown to be very different from continental
meteoric ice, especially in terms of bubble and impurity content,
salinity, geochemistry as well as of crystal microstructures.
In fact, marine ice shows very specific rheological properties
(properties dealing with streams), the knowledge of which are
of greatest importance if one wants to properly simulate global
ice flow at transition zones in polar regions. On a dynamical
point of view, marine ice has recently been proposed as having
a great potential to stabilize the ice sheet flow, especially
at those boundary zones where the ice gets afloat (grounding
line) and where it impinges on pinning points. However, no data
is presently available on the mechanical behaviour of marine
ice and its derivates (e.g. “ice mélange”)
to characterize such stabilizing effect and to integrate it
into models of ice-sheet flow.
Thanks to the Travel Scholarship granted
by the Be-Poles cluster, I will first be able to follow an
upgrade training in automated crystallographic techniques at
the Niels Bohr Institute (Copenhagen Univ., DK), a world-wide
known geophysical group with whom I have already collaborated
during my PhD. This grant will also allow me to analyze the
first thin sections of marine ice that have been experimentally
deformed in the lab. Such collaborative effort will be of prior
importance for the advancement of the new Antarctic research
program (ASPI)
launched at ULB. I will stay at the Glaciology Group of Copenhagen
University for about one month between Nov. and Dec. 2006.
This collaboration has great chance of success in terms of
data and knowledge acquisition, given the fact that I have
already visited and used the facilities there during my PhD
(Dec. 2004) and, most of all, the widely recognized know-how
of this institution.”
