Emily Backman'04 presented her poster titled "Depositional Architecture and Seafloor Mapping of the Vega Drift, Erebus and Terror Gulf, Antarctic Peninsula " at the December American Geophysical Union Meeting in San Francisco.
The poster was the culmination of her summer research and National Science Foundation-funded marine expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula. While on board the U.S. Antarctic Program vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, Backman helped collect swath seafloor bathymetry and seismic reflection data across the Vega Drift. The Vega Drift is the largest accumulation of interglacial sediment so far discovered on the continental shelf of Antarctica. It holds a promising record of past ocean and climate change so the dimensions and construction of the drift (the focus for her senior thesis in Geology) is vital to attempts to locate and recover the sediment archive.
The AGU meeting attracts more than 10,000 international scientists and its mission is to advance "through unselfish cooperation in research, the understanding of Earth and space for the benefit of humanity."