Laura Hartman wins presentation award

Laura Hartman was awarded a prize for her presentation “Frozen Volcano: Quantitatively Sourcing Ice Core Tephra” at the 2017 UMaine Student Symposium. Laura is an M.S. student in the Climate Change Institute, working with Andrei Kurbatov and Alicia Cruz-Uribe of SECS.

Laura’s project relates to tephrachronology, as she explains: “Paleoclimate reconstructions from ice cores rely on an accurately developed time scale. The best ice core dating method available is based on annual layer counting, which can often be verified by radiometric dating and volcanic-based time markers. Small volcanic particles, called tephra, that get injected into the atmosphere and eventually deposit on polar ice sheets can serve as chronostratigraphic markers in ice cores. If we can chemically match the tephra to historic volcanic eruptions, we can provide better time constraints on a given section of an ice core that contains tephra. The present study is attempting to apply the NIST DTSA II software to SEM – EDS analyses taken on cryptotephra (tephra particles