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My CV

Thesis

field-pics.
Glaciology
current &
past work

Glaciology Group UCSC

 

Just in the moment I am out of town. I am in Mc Town. Mc Town means MC Murdo the US Antarctic Base at the bottom of Mt. Erebus.
Here is a link to my Antarctic Homepage There you will find much more informations about what's going on? Where I am and What I am doing in the momemt? Also you will find some pictures on this page.

See you there.

My general research interest and research history

My undergraduate and graduate years

Since I am a child I loved being outdoors and doing a lot of fun sports activity like mountaineering, skiing, biking or swimming. After getting rejected in Architecture and Design I started my studies of Physical Education (sports) and Geography at the Albert-Ludwigs Universitätin Freiburg (Germany) in fall 1993. Spring 1995 I left the time as undergraduate behind me by passing the Zwischenprüfung with an excellent.

It was that year when I first got involved into research. During the austral summer 1995/1996 I went down to the argentine base San Martin, 68° south at the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Margerite Bay (Baja Margerita). The plan was to obtain meteorological field data for modeling the energy balance of snow covers and data of glacier movement. Due to the rough conditions in Antarctica and a little bit of "too" much sea ice the field work shrunk from 6 to 8 originally planned weeks to exactly 24 hours, maintaining our year around automatic weather station at the base and gathering glacier velocity data from GPS-measurements of certain points on Mc Clary glacier, a valley glacier next to the Base San Martin. In this way two exciting months of my life with many many new impressions passed away creating my big passion for Antarctica and Polar Regions.

The actual field data for my thesis I obtain less exciting but as interesting closeby at the Schauinsland, which is located within a 30 minute drive from Freiburg in the Black-Forest. After a winter of monitoring the snow cover quite closely I knew a lot of how a snow cover evolves over time, which is not even scientifically interesting also of practical use for skiing in the backcountry. Out of the field data my thesis evolved to its full. The meteorological data was used to estimate the energy balance of the snow cover including the heat flux from the soil. From the estimated energy balance we computed the snow melt and compared it to the actual measured snow melt.

During these times I worked partially as research assistant and teaching assistant and trained my skills in all kind of outdoor activities. I worked as skiing and climbing instructor, as field guide for rafting, kayaking and canyoniering and taught some course hours diving in a university swimming course.

After passing my exams in Geography (spring 1998) and Sports (fall 1998) I started studying medicine one of my other great passions, which is sometimes quite useful when working or being in remote areas like mountains or the arctic. During this one year (1998/1999) of medical studies I applied for Ph.D.'s , taught at the Albert- Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg a course in Climatology and Analysis of Maps and was involved in a lecture about Polar Regions. During this year I also participated in a number of international courses from the EU in Scandinavia. So I spent 3 weeks in spring 1999 on a course about Snow in North-European Environment (Lammi, Finnland) and a Glaciological Field Course (Tarfalla Research Station, Kiruna, Northern Sweden) and another 3 weeks in July 1999 at the IRISEN-Course (Abisko Scientific Research Station, Northern Sweden).
 
My first year as Ph.D. student

In August 1999 I finally started working on my Ph.D. for which I had to move to Lexington, Kentucky USA. I still don't know the exact reason why my advisor S. Tulaczyk chose me as one of his students but it I think it was a good decision. Geology wasn't completely an unknown for me at this time but still as more a geographer , glaciologist and climatologist I had to catch up with some of the specific geological questions. Very interesting is the combination of all these areas, which can be seen as a goal of mine to incorporate into my research many parts of these subjects and use each individual advantages in the way of a good Symbiosis.

During my first year as a Ph.D. student in Kentucky I analyzed a set of Landsat 7 images for the evolution of snow patches in the Abisko-Region (Northern Sweden) and started to work on the use of a long term sequences of the minimum extend of snow patches as an fast indicator of small climatic changes. This project is part of my general interest in the Arctic and might lead to comparative studies of the european and north american Arctic. Fortunately some people from the GSA student research grant saw the importance of those studies and partially financed my project on "Varve chronology and past climatic variability of the Abisko-Region (Northern Sweden) as an example for a mountainous, low-arctic site".

I translated my Staatsexamen thesis "One-Dimensional Energy Fluxes of a Snow Cover in Winter 1996/97 at the Schauinsland , Black-Forest (Germany)" and published it in the preprint volume of the "14th Symposium on Boundary Layer and Turbulence (August 2000, Aspen)".

As part of my Ph.D. I started working on a lab experiment to quantify subgalcial abrasion. To conduct these experiments I first used my mechanical skills acquired years ago while working as a mechanician during vacations and weekends in Gymnasium (High School) times and later during my apprenticeship as carpenter. I started in Kentucky with planning and organizing a machine shop to work on tools for our experiments. To know the exact composition of the till we are using in our the experiment we mixed three distinct till's. In a ring shear device we sheared the till over different rock types (granite, limestone, shale and sandstone) under variable pressures. The abrasion on the rocks was measured by the weight loss of our specimens. First results of these tests will be presented at the annual GSA meeting in Reno (2000). Momentarily we are running more tests to and methodely working on the test for a better quantification of subglacial abrasion.

This first year of my Ph.D. ended with my transfer from the University of Kentucky to the University of California, Santa Cruz.
 
The second year of my Ph.D.

Passing Kansas, Denver, the Rocky's with the Great Sanddunes, Mesa Verde, Arches and Canyonland N.P. Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon our TRAIL WEST ended on July 3rd 2000 when we arrived in Santa Cruz just in time to celebrate the 4th of July. No so bad wasn't the first year in Kentucky. I had a lot of fun got many nice and friendly people known, experienced how to struggle with american bureaucracy and learned a lot from my prof's there. So I am thankful to all people who helped me in one or another way.

July 2000 I spent on settling down in my new office and organizing all the eqipment for my first own fieldwork in Scandinavia. August I spent mostly in the field fighting with the uncertainties of fieldwork. Early September after I returned to the states I spent another week in the field measuring bedrock elevations at Olympic Mountain N.P..

Since then I am working again on the quantification of subglacial erosion rates and further on subglacial sediment budgets including subglacial sediment production and storage. In the moment I am also preparing myself for departure to Antarctica, where I hopefully will spend starting November 2000 a field season on Ice-Stream C drilling through the ice and exploring subglacial conditions.
 
My general research interests

My overall research interest is therefore located in the wide field of Glaciology, Climate Change and Earth Processes. Hereby I like to include into my work new tools like remote sensing, image processing and computer modeling . Always open for new stuff.

One point of interest for me is the behavior of glaciers by itself and through time, including the mass balance of glaciers once seen from the side of snow accumulation and ablation (grad. thesis) as also seen from the side of what else controls the flow of glaciers like subglacial conditions. As part of my Ph.D. thesis I am looking here in particular on the bed of glaciers and processes a long it. Of particular interest is it to quantify different subglacial erosion processes and it's influence on the flow of glaciers.

Another point of interest is the behavior of snow patches over time and its influence on the regional climate. This study will include the vice versa influence between snow patches and climatic changes. Here the question rise how can a snow patch evolve to a glacier or how does it disappear? For this study I want to use remote sensing studies as studies of snow cover and snow patches itself (like my grad. Thesis). Here a link between the growth of snow patches and erosion might be possible.

In the global scale of climate change the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere coupled with the changes in the pattern of the ocean currents and the coupling between chemical weathering, sink of Co2 in the ocean and increase of Co2 in the atmosphere.

So who ever will be interested in offering me a Post Doc. position or even a permanent position. I might be available in two to three years. So just keep me in mind.

So I hope you enjoyed me short introduction to my scientific life and I hope you will enjoy the links to the right to more detailed pages about my work and about interesting research topics. I would like to hear from you doesn't matter if you liked some part very much or you liked some of this not at all or you just having some comments on. just e-mail me svogel@es.ucsc.edu
If there is coming up more I will post it here on this site as soon as it is either done or so far evolved that I can write it down.

See you back on this page.

Stefan Vogel