Mines researchers looking for answers to climate challenges below the surface

Addressing climate change is one of the greatest scientific and engineering challenges of our time, requiring expertise and collaboration across disciplines. Glaciers and freshwater systems are vital indicators of climate change, offering essential data for predicting future environmental conditions and shaping mitigation strategies. At Mines, researchers are on the leading edge of advancing our understanding of and response to critical environmental issues.

Ryan Venturelli, assistant professor of geology and geological engineering, studies climate and cryospheric science by reconstructing past changes in Earth’s glaciated regions using paleoglaciological data gathered from rocks and sediment above, around and beneath modern glaciers. This helps create benchmarks for ice sheet models to predict future ice mass loss and prepare coastal communities for future sea-level rise.

Matthew Siegfried, associate professor of geophysics, focuses on understanding polar cryospheric processes. He uses hard-to-collect ground data to enhance more accessible remote sensing observations. He is investigating processes at the boundaries of the Antarctic ice sheet—ice-land, ice-water, ice-air and ice-ocean—and how these processes formed the ice sheet visible today and predict future behavior.

Brandon Dugan, professor and associate department head of geophysics, focuses on advancing knowledge of offshore freshwater systems to help mitigate stresses on resources. Using geophysical imaging, subsurface geology and glacial history, his work is providing essential data for understanding how these freshwater systems evolve overtime and how they will respond to sea-level rise.

We asked the researchers about their approaches to climate research and how multidisciplinary collaboration helps find solutions to climate science challenges.

How does your work cross disciplines, and how does that help inform your research outcomes?

Venturelli: My group specializes in isotope geochemistry and geochronology. Alone, this work allows us to answer questions of “what happened?” and “when?”in the geologic past. But when we combine these techniques with work of our colleagues with expertise in glaciology, geophysics, sedimentology, microbiology and micropaleontology, we gain even greater context for what the changes we’re reconstructing mean and how they fit into the bigger picture of Earth’s climate system.

Siegfried: Working across disciplines is really the key to unlocking Antarctic science. I’m interested in ice sheet physics and the hydrology underneath, but these processes are controlled by how much snow fell from the atmosphere, how much heat is carried up from the rock beneath, how much ice the ocean melts at the coast. You can’t just observe and measure a glacier and call it a day because you will only have a small sliver of the picture in view, so our work requires collaborating with atmospheric scientists, geologists, oceanographers and many more disciplines.

Dugan: To really understand offshore freshwater systems has required contributions from drilling engineers, geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, electrical engineers, microbiologists and curious scientists. While any one group could have gotten stuck on the minutia of a detail, by integrating our work, we can better assess offshore freshwater systems, how they are controlled by climate drivers—such as sea-level cycles and glacial systems—and then how dynamics of the freshwater system feed back into water quality and the diversity and productivity of subsurface microbes

How does this cross-collaboration help address issues like climate change?

Venturelli: Earth’s climate system is a product of interactions between the lithosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. If we were to only work within our discipline, we would be ignoring the fact that our data only provide a piece of information about a system resulting from this interplay. Cross-collaboration enables us to take a systems approach to understanding climate change. 

Siegfried: Cross-disciplinary collaboration reveals the full picture of how the climate changes and how humans push the climate in one direction or another. I, as a glaciologist, can’t just say “my observations say Antarctica will change this way” because, for example, Antarctica changing modifies the global ocean. This then tweaks how heat is transported around the globe, which impacts the atmosphere, all of which then changes the way Antarctica will change. And that is just an example from the physical system, when really capturing the state and evolution of our climate system involves physics, chemistry, biology, economics, sociology and nearly every other existing discipline

Why should collaborators turn to Mines researchers to invest in and advance climate research?

Dugan: Mines is top-of-mind when it comes to offshore freshened groundwater. We are leading the technical and scientific foundation upon which the first-ever dedicated offshore freshened groundwater drilling project will be completed. Our rare position to develop the scientific hypotheses, navigate the drilling technology and sampling needs to complete the project and to test hypotheses with data and process-based models makes us a technical and scientific leader.

Siegfried: We have globally recognized research leaders, not just in observing the physical climate system but also in developing engineering solutions to mitigate climate change and understanding how humans are impacted by and adapt to a changing climate. And our close ties to a wide variety of commercial partners and established collaborations with the vast array of federal and state agencies allows our research to move quickly from campus to the public.

Venturelli: Mines is an incredibly special place when it comes to climate research. We have researchers like me who focus on basic science and generating data to elucidate new information about Earth’s climate system, but we also have a wealth of capability in applied science and engineering. This means we can generate new climate knowledge that can act as a direct pipeline to engineering solutions and mitigation efforts—all while educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.