John Smellie

I am interested in volcanism associated with ice, snow and meltwater (i.e. glaciovolcanism) and its inter-relationships with climate and global change. Establishing lithofacies-based methods to derive critical parameters of past ice sheets (e.g. thickness, age, surface elevation, stability).

My research is principally conducted in Antarctica (the largest & longest-lived glaciovolcanic province in the world) and Iceland.

Some major long-term objectives include:

promoting glaciovolcanic studies as an important new proxy methodology for studying past ice sheets

utilising glaciovolcanic-derived and other information to quantify past ice volumes and determine just how closely mass fluctuations in ice sheets impact on global sea levels

using the rock record to significantly improve our understanding of glaciovolcanism and enable societal impacts of subglacial eruptions to be better assessed & mitigated