Source: Getty Images
Oregon State University researchers will lead a team of scientists and engineers on a three-year, $1.5 million project to develop and test a team of robots that could travel under ice shelves and collect critical measurements about the extent of ice cavities and surrounding ocean properties.
The effort, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs, is designed to help advance underwater exploration in confined and hard-to-reach environments such as cavities under ice shelves, said Jessica Garwood, an assistant professor in Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and the project’s principal investigator.
Warming ocean conditions are causing polar ice sheets and ice shelves, which are floating extensions of ice sheets, to melt rapidly and contribute to global sea level rise, but studying the impact of…
