This award is for support for three years of funding to perform physical and visible studies of ice cores from the Siple Coast drainage of West Antarctica, for paleoclimatic and ice-dynamical purposes. The visible inspection will help to assess the utility of visible annual layering for dating purposes of ice cores from West Antarctica and studies of an ice core from Ice Stream C will provide a calibration of passive seismic measurements being made by another group on Ice Stream C. The results of this study should provide essential information for dating of the ice cores planned from West Antarctica and should lead to a better understanding of the processes controlling fabric development and flow of ice.
