Anna Crawford

Bio:

Anna Relaxing
My geographical and glaciological interests were piqued by an undergraduate elective that I took while majoring in biology at Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, Canada) titled “Geography of the Polar Regions”. I followed this interest to Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) where I conducted my MSc and PhD research on the deterioration of massive, tabular icebergs that are referred to as “ice islands”. I joined the St Andrews Glaciology Group as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in February 2019. I am an avid runner and look forward to exploring trails and races across Scotland and the U.K..

Research Interests:

I am currently working on the DOMINOS project under the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration. I will be using a finite element model, Elmer/Ice, and discrete element model, HiDEM, to investigate the calving, fracture and retreat of the Thwaites Glacier. As a graduate student in the Water and Ice Research Lab at Carleton University, I investigated the deterioration of ice islands from Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland. I put much effort into the collection of field data from these remote study sites; I conducted numerous cruises in the Canadian Arctic on board the CCGS Amundsen, a Canadian icebreaker that was outfitted for oceanographic research by ArcticNet. My field work ranged from the collection of ice island thinning data via the installation of an ice penetrating radar (see a time-lapse of the installation), laser scan and aerial photo surveying for 3D model generation, and the deployment of ice tracking beacons.

Installing kit
I was also intimately involved in the generation of the Canadian Ice Island Drift, Deterioration and Detection (CI2D3) Database, which tracked hundreds of individual ice island fragments with satellite imagery after recent ice island calving events in northwestern Greenland.