2024 TUNDRA Award Recipients
Rain Blankenship
Project: Investigating Climate Change Impacts on Permafrost Watershed Dynamics: A Multi-Isotopic Investigation in Alaska's North Slope
Rain Blankenship is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. Under the guidance of his advisor Joshua West, Rain is using isotopic tools to investigate the Earth’s processes, particularly those of erosion, sediment provenance, and trace metal transport in riverine systems. The Tundra Award will enable Rain’s research at Toolik Field Station – measuring stable isotopic ratios of water and uranium to characterize hydrology, water-rock interaction time, and trace metal release to assess the impact of climate change on groundwater discharge and transport in permafrost-dominated watersheds in the North Slope. This research will expand our understanding of the utility of uranium as a geochemical tracer, which directly reflects the extent of active layer deepening at the watershed scale.
In addition to his research at Toolik, Rain applies isotopic tracers to investigate the historical relationship between climatic intervals and chemical weathering in equatorial Brazil. Prior to beginning his doctorate program at USC, Rain’s research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography focused on using radiogenic isotopic tracers to investigate the mineral, nutrient, and soil provenance of California’s San Jacinto Peak.
Cansu Culha
Project: Measuring land stability and erosive power that set retrogressive thaw slumps and thermoerosional gullies
Cansu Culha is a computational modeler interested in the physics of natural hazards. She is currently a National Science Foundation postdoctoral scholar at the University of British Columbia, using granular mechanics computational models to understand erosional features in permafrost soils. Both retrogressive thaw slumps and thermoerosional gullies can mobilize significant amounts of carbon into downstream ecosystems and threaten the stability of infrastructures like roads. Given the unique morphology and growth of each feature type, she is curious as to why one forms over the other and what sets their cadence. With her Tundra Award, she will model these thermokarst features and provide a process-based understanding of carbon mobilization at Toolik.
Cansu earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University and worked at ETH Zurich to study flood response to rainfall events and heat waves, using data from Toolik Field Station. She also co-founded outreach initiatives such as the Art as Science Communication Initiative and Mediterranean Sustainability Coalition and has consulted for start-ups and the World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation. These experiences empower her to forge practical tools from her research. While her path is carved by rigorous scientific inquiries, it is fuelled by the impact her findings have in helping communities adapt to the realities of our changing world. Cansu's website | Cansu's X
Jacqueline Gerson
Project: The impact of fire on mercury storage and transformation in the Arctic tundra
Jacqueline Gerson is an Assistant Professor in Earth and Environmental Science and Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University. She is a watershed biogeochemist interested in the impact of human activity on the cycling of elements. Her research focuses on contaminants and trace elements like mercury, examining the fate, transport, and transformation of these chemicals within and between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Jacqueline’s findings help evaluate the implications these chemicals have on the people and animals that live in these landscapes.
Through the Tundra Award, she will be studying the impact of wildfires and climate change on the biogeochemical cycling of mercury in the Arctic. Mercury contamination is of particular concern in the Arctic due to long-range transport and deposition to this region, which leads to high storage of mercury in peatlands. Arctic wildfires and climate change have the potential to release stored mercury and increase the rate of transformation from inorganic forms to the bioavailable form of methylmercury. Jacqueline will examine how wildfire legacy impacts soil mercury storage and transport into nearby rivers, as well as mercury methylation in soils and sediments. She will also perform laboratory incubations to determine the impact of warming on methylation processes in soils and sediments. Jacqueline's website | Jacqueline's X
Austin Routt
Project: Rock Glaciers in a Changing Arctic
Austin Routt is a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the Geoscience program. His research primarily focuses on the formation and evolution of periglacial landforms. He studies the internal structure of rock glaciers and pingos using geophysical techniques such as ground-penetrating radar and frequency domain electromagnetics. Austin also investigates their morphology and dynamics using unpiloted aerial systems and photogrammetry. Austin has spent time in the Canadian Arctic studying pingos near Tuktoyaktuk and has researched rock glaciers in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains and Alaska’s Chugach Mountains. This award will be his first time at Toolik Field Station.
Understanding how these landforms develop helps us understand how they will respond to climate change and what the future might look like for ground ice around the world. This Tundra Award will support the investigation of a rock glacier in the Brooks Range using photogrammetry and geophysical techniques. Rock glaciers in the Brooks Range have rarely been studied but are unique in their environmental context. Austin hopes to fit this work into a larger story of rock glacier change and climate impacts in the Arctic. Austin's LinkedIn
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