Ice Control for cold Environments

The program aims to address extreme cold weather challenges for the DoD by developing biologically inspired solutions to control ice formation, growth, and adhesion. The Soil Microbiology laboratory at CRREL characterized bacterial isolates from cold regions to evaluate potential for bioproduction and ice control.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Thermal High-voltage Ocean-penetrator Research platform

The goal of this project was to develop an instrument capable of penetrating ice and autonomously detecting life in ocean environments on ocean worlds. The project was originally planned to take place on the Matanuska glacier (Alaska, USA). Due to COVID-19 delays, fieldwork took place at Mt. St. Helens (Washington, USA) where the team investigated the biogeochemical and microbiological effects of glacial and hot spring water mixing while testing life detection tools.

Funded by NASA’s Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research (PSTAR) program

Significance of Ice-loss to Landscapes in the Arctic

In a warming Arctic, new landscapes are exposed and extant ecosystems become hydrological disconnected from ice sheet meltwater. Over two melt seasons, we characterized the ecosystems associated with supraglacial, subglacial, periglacial, and deglaciated watersheds in Western Greenland. Improving understanding of how climatic and environmental change affects weathering reactions, stream solute composition, and biological communities in the Arctic is a primary goal of the SILA project.

https://sila.research.ufl.edu/

Funded by the National Science Foundation