William Durkin

G Geodesy

The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to William Durkin for the poster/PICO entitled:

Impact of local crustal variations and ice mass balance uncertainties on interpreting regional GIA in southeast Alaska (Durkin, W. J.; Kachuck, S. B.; Pritchard, M. E.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

William (Joey) Durkin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University. His research focuses on using satellite imagery to study glacier dynamics, improve estimates of glacier mass loss, and investigate cryosphere-solid Earth interactions.
The poster presented at the EGU 2018 meeting describes a new workflow to quantify the uncertainty in modeled elastic deformation of the solid Earth using an ensemble of 1D elastic structure models describing the region of interest. In southeast Alaska, where ongoing deglaciation results in elastic uplift rates of up to ~10 mm/yr, the use of local elastic structures can result in modeled elastic uplift rates up to 50% different than those modeled with the global average elastic structure (i.e., PREM), and up to 100% different if first-order estimates of anelastic interactions with pores and fractures in the crust are considered. Although these differences are limited to regions near to the glacier (< 2.5 km in southeast Alaska) they could directly impact many glaciological studies that estimate ice mass loss or density of lost glacial material based on the PREM model and elastic uplift constraints. The large impact of including estimates of anelasticity demonstrates the need to better constrain these effects with further experiments. This work flow is based on open source software and globally available data and can be applied to other deglaciating regions around the world.