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Department of Geography

Current Postgraduate Students

Professor Mike Bentley, Geology BSc. (Hons) 1st Class, (Edinburgh); PhD (Edinburgh)

Professor in the Department of Geography
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 41859
Fax: +44 (0)191 33 41801
Room number: 216

Contact Professor Mike Bentley (email at m.j.bentley@durham.ac.uk)

Biography


Director of the new Durham University Climate Impacts Research Centre (CIRC).


*** Masters or PhD project on Antarctica. Collaborative with British Antarctic Survey and Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany. ***


My research interests focus on Antarctic environmental history, especially the history of the ice sheet in the Antarctic Peninsula-Weddell Sea region. I have a number of current research themes at the moment:

i) Antarctic Ice Sheet History

This work combines glacial geomorphology and cosmogenic isotope surface exposure dating to try and infer past thickness (and extent) variations of ice sheets. I have also produced the first detailed relative sea level curves for the Antarctic Peninsula, which provide independent constraints on former ice sheet thickness. Areas of ongoing study include the Amundsen Sea area (Pine Island Glacier), southern Antarctic Peninsula and Alexander Island, Ellsworth Mountains, Pensacola Mountains, and South Georgia.

In most of these projects I collaborate closely with modellers, especially Richard Hindmarsh, Anne Le Brocq and Alun Hubbard (ice sheet models) and Pippa Whitehouse and Glenn Milne (Glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) modelling). This is a two-way process that allows the field data to be used as constraints for models and for models to direct site selection in future field campaigns. For example in the Ellsworth Mountains we developed an ice sheet model reconstruction of ice at the Last Glacial Maximum, using geomorphological evidence of former ice heights. The GIA modelling allows us to use new relative sea level data and geomorphololgical evidence of ice sheet change to constrain models of ice sheet history. In turn, these models can be used to correct satellite gravimetry measurements of present-day ice sheet mass balance.

ii) Antarctic Sub Glacial Lake Exploration

I am part of the Lake Ellsworth Consortium. www.ellsworth.org.uk This is a NERC-funded consortium that will drill into subglacial Lake Ellsworth in 2012-13. We will retrieve water and sediment samples with the aim to study life in extreme environments and deciphering long-term climate change and ice sheet behaviour. I am leading the phase of the project that will analyse sediement cores from the lake bed.

iii) Antarctic Ice Shelf History

With colleagues from British Antarctic Survey and Edinburgh University I completed a project on Antarctic Peninsula ice shelf history. We worked on a series of epishelf lakes along the margin of the George VI Ice Shelf, where a multi-proxy palaeolimnological approach provided a long-term perspective on ice shelf behaviour. This work was published in Geology in 2005.

iv) Glacial & Climate History of Southernmost South America

I have worked for several years as part of a team which is determining the glacial and environmental history of southernmost South America using a variety of approaches including glacial geomorphology, palaeoecology, and linked ice sheet-climate modelling. Our work in the Magellan Strait region was published in a Special Volume of Geografiska Annaler in 2005, and I am continuing collaborative research in the region.

Research Groups

Research Projects

  • Determination of a new Global GPS-derived surface velocity field and its application to the problem of 20th Century sea-level rise, The
  • Direct Measurement & Sampling Of Subglacial Lake Ellsworth: Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Life In Extreme Environments & West Antarctic Ice Sheet History
  • Glacial and climate history of South Georgia, sub-Antarctic
  • Glacial Retreat in Antarctica and Deglaciation of the Earth System (GRADES - QWAD)
  • Improved models of West Antarctic glacial isostatic adjustment through new crustal motion data
  • Millennial-scale history of the George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula
  • Thinning History of The Foundation - Thiel Trough Ice Stream: A Key Control On Deglaciation of The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Weddell Sea embayment
  • Timing and rates of ice sheet thinning in the Ellsworth Mountains, Weddell Sea Embayment: constraints on West Antarctic Ice Sheet dynamics

Related Links

Supervises

Selected Publications

Books: sections

  • Ross, N. and the Lake Ellsworth Consortium (incl. & Bentley, M.J.) (2011). Subglacial Lake Ellsworth, West Antarctica: its history, recent field campaigns and plans for its exploration. In Antarctic Subglacial Aquatic Environments. Siegert, M.J., Kennicutt, M.C. & Bindschadler, R.A. American Geophysical Union. 192: 221.
  • Bentley, M.J., Christofferson, P., Hodgson, D.A., Smith, A.M., Tulaczyk, S. & Le Brocq, A.M. (2011). Subglacial lake sediments and sedimentary processes: potential archives of ice sheet evolution, past environmental change and the presence of life. In Antarctic Subglacial Aquatic Environments. Siegert, M.J., Kennicutt, M.C. & Bindschadler, R.A. American Geophysical Union. 192: 83.
  • Hodgson, D.A., and 32 others & (incl. Bentley, M.J.) (2009). Antarctic climate and environmental history in the pre-instrumental period. In Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment. Turner, J. Bindschadler, R.A., Convey, P., Di Prisco, G., Fahrbach, E., Gutt, J., Hodgson, D.A., Mayewski, P.A. & Summerhayes, C.P. Cambridge: Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
  • Bentley, M.J. (2009). Will the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse?. In Thinking about almost everything: new ideas to light up the mind. Amin, A. & O’Neill, M. London: Profile Books. 92-93.
  • Ó Cofaigh, C. & Bentley, M.J. (2007). Late Quaternary Relative Sea Level Changes in High-Latitudes. In Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science. Elias S. Elsevier. 3052-3064.
  • Hjort, C., Ingolfsson, O., Bentley, M.J. & Bjorck, S. (2003). Late Pleistocene and Holocene Glacial and Climate History of the Antarctic Peninsula Region: A brief overview of the land and lake record. In Antarctic Peninsula Climate Variability: Antarctic Research Series 79. Domack, E. American Geophysical Union. 95-101.
  • Bentley, M.J. & Dugmore, A.J. (1998). Landslides and the rate of glacial trough formation. In Mountain Glaciation: Journal of Quaternary Science - Quaternary Proceedings. Owen, L.A. 6: 11-16.

Journal papers: academic

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