On April 15, APU Masters of Science in Environmental Science student David Wolfe presented his Master's research on dammed glacial lakes to to the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria.  His thesis research features a study of the largest group of these lakes ever looked and analyzed in one study to yield predictive information on where they occur, and how they change over time.  It also is one of the first to use the ASTER satellite imagery for a large area of Alaska mountain to collect data on glacier-related features.  The research has implications for infrastructure development downstream, such as new gas pipeline routing, as these lakes flood-release catastrophically on a repeating basis.  The $5m damage in the Soldotna area in Jan 2007 is a recent example of flooding initiated by a lake release.

David will defend his thesis here on campus at Carr-Gottstein 102 at 1:30 on Wednesday, April 23rd.