https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites daily 0.75 2022-07-01 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/hayfestivalarequipa monthly 0.5 2021-05-09 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/peru monthly 0.5 2021-05-09 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/ice-rivers-features-in-british-vogue-magazine monthly 0.5 2021-05-09 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/scotland-post-news-special-when-things-go-badly-for-our-glaciers-they-go-badly-for-all-of-us-they-are-our-lifelines monthly 0.5 2021-05-09 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/iceriversinsundaytimes monthly 0.5 2021-05-09 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/qa0ry4uvq4zjae4lsr3lvtlunk8w8i monthly 0.5 2021-12-30 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/rapid-retreat-of-glaciers-leading-world-towards-humanitarian-crisis monthly 0.5 2021-12-30 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/ampq1dczc14dd8gjkuge3q8iqncx2o monthly 0.5 2021-12-30 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/life-in-the-deep-freeze-the-revolution-that-changed-our-view-of-glaciers-forever monthly 0.5 2021-12-30 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/the-times-higher-interview-with-jemma-wadham monthly 0.5 2021-12-30 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/how-i-wrote-it-jemma-wadham-on-ice-rivers monthly 0.5 2021-12-30 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/interview-in-corriera-della-sera-italy monthly 0.5 2022-07-01 https://www.jemmawadham.com/icy-bites/under-isbreene-er-det-fullt-av-liv-forkningno monthly 0.5 2022-07-01 https://www.jemmawadham.com/home daily 1.0 2021-05-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1615383519452-VDMMCBDEGWVT1TFV2NOG/DSC_0153.jpg Home - Biography I am glacier biogeoechemist and writer, educated at the Universities of Cambridge (B.A/M.A.) and Bristol (PhD), where I first fell in love with glaciers. My academic research is field-based and has taken me to most of the icy corners of our Earth, including glaciers in Greenland, Antarctica, Svalbard, Chilean Patagonia, the Peruvian Andes and the Himalaya. I’ve been fortunate to have been supported by many incredible teams of researchers and have won several prestigious national awards for my research, including a Philip Leverhulme Prize and Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award. I am particularly interested in glacier-hosted life and the impacts of glaciers on our global carbon cycle. I have written over 100 academic journal articles, one academic book and have recently finished my first book for a wide audience - Ice Rivers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1619729429027-MG5YYHT2L83LCV2UR5V9/Screen+Shot+2021-04-29+at+21.48.14.png Home - Ice Rivers Ice Rivers is my first book for a wide audience, published by Penguin Press (Allen Lane) in May 2021 and Princeton University Press in September 2021. You can find out more by clicking the button below. https://www.jemmawadham.com/about-me daily 0.75 2021-10-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1615307823338-6U4IU8G7LRLNLJ3ZUXFH/IMG_1693.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1615308149441-VMQTDH9EC8V4N06MOXFQ/Jemma2.jpg About Jemma at Joyce Glaciers, Antarctica (credit: JL Wadham) https://www.jemmawadham.com/books daily 0.75 2022-07-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1619729163648-0MKK1UO8CREVE0RL0EW1/IceRiver_Facebook_Announcement_B.jpg Books - Ice Rivers (Penguin Press, Allen Lane, UK) The ice sheets and glaciers that currently cover one-tenth of the planet's land surface are today in grave peril. Locked up within them is a vast proportion of Earth's freshwater - but the ice is fast melting as our climate warms at an accelerating rate. High up in the Alps, Andes and Himalaya, once-indomitable glaciers are retreating, even dying; meanwhile, in Antarctica, thinning glaciers are releasing meltwater to sensitive marine foodwebs, and may be unlocking vast quantities of methane stored for millions of years in the deep beneath the ice. The potential consequences for humanity are almost unfathomable. As one of the world's leading glaciologists, Professor Jemma Wadham has proved that glaciers, previously thought to be freezing, sterile environments, in fact teem with microbial life - a discovery which demonstrates them to be active processors of carbon and nutrients, just like our forests and oceans, influencing crucial systems and services upon which people depend, from lucrative fisheries to fertile croplands. A riveting tale of icy landscapes on the point of irreversible change, and filled with stories of encounters with polar bears and survival in the wilds under the midnight sun, Ice Rivers is a memoir like no other - a passionate love letter, no less, to the glaciers that have been one woman's lifelong obsession. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617729905173-MWEN7Q0DV6GXO1WL1XRT/Screen+Shot+2021-04-06+at+18.16.11.png Books - Ice Rivers (global) Ice Rivers has been published by Princeton University Press (N. America), and by Aboca (Italy), and will be published by Moonhak Soochup (Korea), The Commercial Press (China) https://www.jemmawadham.com/research daily 0.75 2021-05-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1615308827161-YA0ZCL0K88CLL1S9DAWU/P1090406.JPG Themes Journey to a hidden underworld (credit: G. Lis) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617628295998-K9HG119V53WF6YG92ZNR/P1020972.JPG Themes Chhota Shigri Glacier (credit: P. Nienow) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1615308474183-L8A95JU4DOVWMUVPLNQ9/DJI_0064.JPG Themes Greenland Ice Sheet (credit: S. Hofer) https://www.jemmawadham.com/ice-art daily 0.75 2021-04-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617733345808-AHWUON0IEBVZKMK62TIG/shallapglacier-13.jpg Ice & Art - Becoming the Glacier Solving some of the worrying problems emerging from the global retreat of the Earth’s glaciers often requires working across national border, diverse disciplines, and armed with powerful new ways to communicate the stories of our research. Here is a beautiful film made by Jon Spaull (shortlisted for an AHRC research in film award) about the water quality impacts of glacier retreat in the Peruvian Andes (image credit above/below/right: J. Spaull). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617733037735-L37L099LVDCI7VQUD8V0/Screen+Shot+2021-04-06+at+18.37.06.png Ice & Art - The Sad Tale of the Dying Glacier Through a collaboration between the Natural Environment Council in the UK and Hay Festival, I had the incredible opportunity to work with Peruvian actress and writer, Erika Stockholm, to create a play about the rapid demise of Shallap Glacier in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru, and the impacts its retreat is having on water quality in the region (image credit: Hay Festival). https://www.jemmawadham.com/contact-1 daily 0.75 2021-04-30 https://www.jemmawadham.com/subglacial daily 0.75 2021-04-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617630647933-9F1QTXS6NO73L6231JPA/Screen+Shot+2021-04-05+at+14.49.57.png Deep icy ecosystems - Antarctic Subglacial Lakes Over 400 lakes exist beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet bed. While two shallow, actively draining lakes have recently been cleanly penetrated and sampled at the margins of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (Mercer and Whillans), the direct and clean access of deeper and more hydraulically stable lakes within the continental interior has yet to be achieved. These inland lakes embody one of the most extreme life habitats on Earth since they are very isolated, have slow rates of ice/water flow and with infrequent re-supply of organic matter by marine flooding during deglaciation. This means their energy, carbon and nutrient inputs will be extremely limited, shaped by the reactivity of ancient organic matter and the availability of redox pairs via rock flour to support chemolithoautotrophy. ATLANTIS aims to determine microbial life support mechanisms and biogeochemical cycling in an inland lake (Subglacial Lake CECS) in West Antarctica, and will inform plans to detect microbial life on Europa via the ESA JUICE mission to Jupiter’s icy moons. Image credit: Subglacial Lake CECS (SLC) location (Makinson et al, 2021) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617631236782-6MWROQCZ2W2EA6QK9NE1/Screen+Shot+2021-04-05+at+14.59.37.png Deep icy ecosystems - Glacier and ice stream beds The beds of large glaciers and ice streams are often highly erosive, hosting variable thicknesses of rock ground-up by the ice and linked to active hydrological systems. Thus, meltwaters here have prolonged contact with reactive rock material from anything from months (Greenland) to many years (Antarctica). The combination of glacial grinding and water flow favour microbes which rely on rock as a source of energy and carbon. The cycling of elements such as silicon and iron are likely to be important here, where long flow paths for meltwater create the potential for high export of rock-sourced nutrients. Very little data exists on microbial communities and solute/nutrient cycling from the interior of Greenland and Antarctica. The BAS/NERC-funded BEAMISH drilling project has recovered sediments from the bed of the Rutford Ice Stream, which should provide some first clues. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1618047320191-HU7UF2DC5IKVNXTUI6ZN/SN852803.JPG Deep icy ecosystems - Extreme engineering to delve deep into ice sheets Ice sheets are vibrant habitats for life but are frustratingly challenging to study - cold, remote and with some kilometres of moving ice, they require innovative technologies to gather data and to go where we cannot. The NERC-funded DELVE project, in collaboration with the National Oceanography Centre Southampton, aimed to develop and adapt novel marine technologies for use in understanding how life and biogeochemical processes operate within and beneath ice sheets, and what impact they may have on other parts of the Earth system. https://www.jemmawadham.com/biogeochemical-cycles daily 0.75 2021-04-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617525346246-UU69LVK6QSFA0PMX7U6I/DSC_2118.JPG Biogeochemical cycles - Ice sheets as methane sources The basal regions of ice sheets are dark, cold and often contain the fossil remains of organic matter (e.g. ancient soils, marine muds, lake sediments, rock carbon) - all entombed beneath the ice when the glacier grew. Just like a landfill site, these conditions are ideal habitats for an anaerobic microbe called “a methanogen”, which produces the powerful greenhouse gas - methane. Furthermore, some deep parts of ice sheets lie in geothermally active zones where heating of ancient carbon at depth in thick sediments produces a “thermogenic” form of methane. We do not currently know how much methane is locked beneath ice sheets, what form it is in and what its fate might be if ice thins and retreats. Could this be an important positive feedback to climate? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617527079405-KA9WAREACFFPP290EVVT/IMG_0334.JPG Biogeochemical cycles - Water flow beneath our ice sheets 25 years ago, we weren’t sure how water flowed within ice sheets or even whether meltwater produced on their surfaces made it to the ice sheet bed, where it could influence glacier flow by lubrication. One of the challenging things about working out how water flows within ice sheets is that meltwater has to be followed deep beneath kilometres of ice. Chemical tracers have been used to trace ocean currents across entire basins. In Greenland, we have used similar tracers to show that beneath the ice sheet lies a complex hydrological system not that dissimilar to beyond the ice. This includes the evolution, by mid summer, of a network of fast flowing sub-ice rivers which shunt meltwater, sediments and their carbon and nutrients to the ice edge. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617546522027-SA0ZWK5ZQTDEL5PQNV5I/P1090522.JPG Biogeochemical cycles - Ice sheets, nutrients and ocean productivity. The Greenland Ice Sheet annually discharges around 1000 cubic kilometres of water to the oceans as subglacial meltwater and icebergs (in a ratio of about 50/50 at present). The Antarctic Ice Sheet (whose surface only melts at its fringes) releases a similar amount of freshwater via icebergs plus a small amount of subglacial melt produced by slow heating of its sole. Dissolved within this water are important rock-sourced nutrients such as iron, phosphorus and silicon, which are delivered to fjords and oceans. Further nutrient is supplied at marine-terminating glaciers where upwelling subglacial meltwaters entrains nutrient-replete ocean water as they rise to the ocean surface. Understanding these forms of “life support” to ocean food-webs is important in a warming world when freshwater discharge is likely to rise. https://www.jemmawadham.com/mountain-ice daily 0.75 2021-04-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617550113634-8UZ0LBW5IB6PCHSLC3H7/Steffen+Glacier+%28J.+Hawkings%29 Mountain glaciers - Impact of melting Patagonian glaciers on downstream fjord ecosystems The Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Fields are the largest masses of glacial ice in the Southern Hemisphere outside of Antarctica and are melting at world record rates. Their accelerating melt is driving increased discharge of glacial meltwater (and sediment) to fjords, causing freshening. The impacts on fjord and marine life are poorly unknown, but will likely impact productivity and biodiversity of these fragile ecosystems. The NERC/CONICYT-funded PISCES project is showing that the retreat of Patagonia’s glaciers will have large impacts on freshwater, sediment and nutrient input to fjords and their valuable food-webs. Image credit: J. Hawkings. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617551474314-2XYR4AO6CQB4MPJ26KMH/IMG_2146.jpg Mountain glaciers - Retreating glaciers and toxic rivers in the Peruvian high Andes The Peruvian Andes hosts the largest concentration of tropical glaciers in the world, a quarter of which lie in the Cordillera Blanca. Here, almost a third of glacier area has been lost in the last two decades due to climate warming, but it is thought to be having an unusual impact on water quality. As glacially-ground up sulphide-rich rocks are exposed in front of the retreating ice, oxidation of these sulphides is causing acidification and metal toxicity in lakes and rivers - a kind of glacier “acid-mine-drainage” effect. What will happen in the future and what is the solution? The Newton-Funded CASCADA project seeks to work this out. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604673527b488b04b660930a/1617626815905-TID6ZLY6Z5NAQZYZ4CTG/P1020964.JPG Mountain glaciers - Himalayan glaciers and glacial flour power The Hindu-Kush-Himalaya hosts more than 50,000 glaciers which traverse astonishingly diverse climates, geologies and nations. It is becoming well-established that glacier retreat here has been widespread here over the past century, and that this will cause a reduction in river flows in the coming decades. Pressures on land and water resources are high across this mountain range which hosts a quarter of a billion people. Here, our interdisciplinary GCRF/UKIERI-funded Glacial Flour Power project is investigating novel methods of soil care. Glaciers that flow by sliding over water-lubricated rock, grind this rock into very fine flour - “glacial flour”. This compresses the normal cycle of rock breakdown in a soil from hundreds to thousands of years to < 1 year. The foundation of nutrients in most soils is rock - can glacial flour provide a novel natural soil fertility treatment for crops? Image credit: P. Nienow.