What can we learn from the many forms of water? From oceans to floods, ice, snow and permafrost to avalanches, the Evening at Egan series has returned to University of Alaska Southeast to explore this theme.
The five-part lecture series is already underway. The next installment, “Researching the Mendenhall Outburst Flood: 2025 and Beyond” will take place Friday, Oct. 10. Glacier scientists Eran Hood and Jason Amundson will talk about what they’ve learned in researching the glacier.
“Looking back, when this happened in 2011, the first glacier outburst flood, it meant it all was a huge surprise to everyone,” Hood. ”Knowing what we know now, it actually shouldn’t have been a surprise, but we weren’t looking.”
Now that they know what to look for, Hood and Amundson plan to use glacier modeling techniques to identify other glaciers in Alaska that may be prone to similar outburst floods. The pair have a five-year project from the National Science Foundation to support their work.
Hood expects that attendees of the presentation walk away with a better understanding of the science and mechanics behind the outburst floods, and how they evolve over time and eventually end.
“One of the really challenging things about these glaciers, outburst floods, is that they have lifespans that last for decades,” Hood said. “So, this flood at Mendenhall Glacier could be around in 2050. That’s a possibility.”
The lecture series will run through mid-December, featuring science and art from a range of perspectives.
“We always really want to speak to the needs of a community, which is one reason why we have this talk coming up on researching the Mendenhall outburst flood,” said Alison Staudinger, one of the lecture series’ organizers. “But we also want to bring things to the community that might not have had as visible an impact, but that are also really important.”
In the first series installment, filmmaker Vu Pham took the audience from Juneau to Vietnam in his forthcoming film, “Sea Rose Ashes: A Filmmaker’s Meditations on Memory, Identity, Trauma, and Violence.”
Arctic ecosystems may feel far removed from Juneau, but ecologist Logan Berner will explain the broad effects of far North climate change at his lecture on Friday, Nov. 14.
Visit uas.alaska.edu/eganlecture/ to learn more about these lectures and see the full series schedule. The talks will take place at Egan Library — cookies provided in person — and will be live streamed on Zoom.
