Eos features Bohleber’s Kilimanjaro findings

UMaine Alert

Posted: April 19, 2024 - 1:32 PM

At approximately 9:24 a.m. on Friday, April 19, a University of Maine graduate student was struck by a university vehicle on Long Road at the University of Maine campus in Orono. The student reports that they are at a local hospital with minor injuries.

Emergency services, including the Orono Fire Department, University Volunteer Ambulance Corps, University of Maine Police Department, Orono Police Department and Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene.

The university vehicle involved in the incident was a Chevrolet Express van. It was being operated by a university employee.

Counseling services and support are available for students, faculty or staff who may have been affected. The Counseling Center can be reached at 207-581-1392 and the Dean of Students Office can be reached at 207-581-1406.

The scene has been cleared and Long Road is now accessible. An investigation is being conducted by the University of Maine Police Department with assistance from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office Crash Reconstruction Unit. Any witnesses to the incident are encouraged to contact Lt. Noel Santiago at noel.santiago@maine.edu.

March 6, 2017 Climate Change, Research, Signature and Emerging Areas, UMaine in the News

Pascal Bohleber’s findings about ice thickness on Mount Kilimanjaro are featured in Eos, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Bohleber is an adjunct research assistant professor at the Climate Change Institute. In 2015, he led a team that — for the first time — took ground-penetrating radar to Kilimanjaro’s 6,000-meter-high summit. “It’s like an X-ray of the glacier,” Bohleber said. Using ground-penetrating radar, “you basically see straight down into the glacier.” After a six-day climb and three days of measurements, the team — which also included CCI doctoral student Mario Potocki — learned the ice thickness ranged from roughly 6 to 54 meters. On average, the ice field had fallen in height by 6 meters over 15 years. Glaciers at lower elevations on Kilimanjaro have decreased even more substantially in height, Bohleber said. The team calculated the total ice volume of the Northern Ice Field to be about 12 million cubic meters — enough to fill Manhattan’s Central Park to a depth of 4 meters, according to the article. The group also demonstrated the ice layering within the Northern Ice Field is regular and horizontal, which means ice samples from the field’s exposed walls are representative of the interior. Bohleber’s team will trace the evolution of the Northern Ice Field in three dimensions, then remeasure the ice the summit in a few years to create a new three-dimensional map to track the rate of ice loss in detail.