University of Wyoming postdoctoral research associate, Dr. Dulcinea Groff, was recently part of a team that did research on glaciers, using ‘kill dates’ to reveal how glaciers advanced in the northern Antarctic Peninsula over the past 1,500 years.
Groff was the lead author on a 2023 journal article titled “Kill dates from re-exposed black mosses constrain past glacier advances in the northern Antarctic Peninsula”, which was published recently in GeoScienceWorld.
The study used 39 dead mosses that were collected from rapidly retreating ice margins at four sites along the Antarctic Peninsula to determine the kill dates using radiocarbon measurements and to constrain the timing of past glacier advances.
“Glaciers in the northern Antarctic Peninsula are melting rapidly because of warmer air temperatures. As the glaciers melt back, we find old dead black mosses that were beneath the glacier. This happens, for example, when the temperatures were cooler and perhaps more snowy, which allowed the glaciers to grow,” said Groff.
“When the glaciers became bigger they entombed plants that were growing, which preserved them in ice. This happened three times in the last 1,500 years. We figured out when the glaciers grew because it is the same time that the glacier killed the plant. We collected these dead plants and determined the last time that they were living is also the time that the glacier advanced.”
Groff became involved in this field of research after earning her PhD in ecology and environmental sciences at the University of Maine.
After that, she began working as a postdoctoral researcher at Lehigh University to work on studying the paleoclimate history of the Antarctic Peninsula.
“I had already been working in the Southern Hemisphere, so it was a valuable opportunity to expand my work geographically,” said Groff.
“While I was a PhD student, I was awarded a grant to work with Dr. Dave William in the Botany Department here at the University of Wyoming in 2016 on one of my research projects in the Falkland Islands. I loved this area of the country and knew that I would love to come back one day. Eventually, an opportunity came up to work with Dr. Bryan Shuman in the Department of Geology and Geophysics.”
In April of 2022, Groff was the recipient of the William Skinner Cooper award from the Ecological Society of America. This award is given to honor an outstanding contributor to the fields of geobotany, physiographic ecology, or plant succession.
“I grew up in central Arkansas in the foothills of the Ozarks and I have always had a curiosity and love for plants that I developed in part from my father. I grew up on a tree farm and spent my free time playing outside in the forests and streams near my house” said Groff,
“While I’ve always loved the outdoors, I initially started my undergraduate degree as a Spanish language translator but discovered after my second year of college that I loved biology, and I switched my major in my third year.”
Dr. Groff has been in Laramie working as a postdoctoral researcher since the fall of 2020.
