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How has the landscape of Antarctica changed over the last 200 million years? 20,000 years? 20 years? There are many answers; this talk aims to provide three of them by analysing geological change, ice sheet fluctuations, and recent, rapid glacial retreat on the Antarctic Peninsula. Zircon dating reveals the timing and origin of granite formation from some of the most remote mountains on the central Peninsula. Cosmogenic nuclide data from the same mountains provide new limits for ice sheet thickness that indicates minimal change over the last few million years. Photogrammetry of 1960s imagery provides new insights into glaciers before dramatic change in the early 2000s and allows direct calculation ice loss. These results fill several knowledge gaps in our understanding of landscape evolution on the Antarctic Peninsula and provide new data ready for tectonic reconstructions, ice sheet models, and sea-level rise calculations.

About the presenter

Ryan (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences at UOW and affiliated with Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future ARC Special Research Initiative, supervised by Timothy Barrows (UNSW) and Lloyd White (UOW). Ryan is passionate about understanding the Earth’s history, and his diverse scientific interests are evident in his multi-method, multi-site and multi-timescale PhD project.