Rodrigo Soteres, a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at Chile’s Universidad Católica, will spend three months at Columbia University’ s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) working with scientists Mike Kaplan and Joerg Schaefer.
His fields of research are paleoclimatology and glacial geomorphology. His thesis, under the guidance of Universidad Católica’s professor Esteban Sagredo, focuses on establishing the glacial history of Patagonia and assessing the climatic changes that occurred during the termination of the Last Glaciation (~18000-11500 years*.)
During his internship at LDEO, he will process glacial sediments collected (March 2017) at Lake Palena/Vintter in Southern Chile to be dated by cosmogenic nuclides techniques, which allow the team to estimate the timing of the advances of the Patagonian glaciers. Since glaciers respond to climate variations, the information will contribute to determining when the region became colder and more humid. These studies help to understand the mechanisms behind natural climate change and provide the basis for assessing the consequences of the anthropogenic climate change.