How Glaciers Still Shape Colorado's Mountains

Suzanne and Bob's talk will address Colorado’s cold landscapes, its “cryosphere”. This will include discussion of the past occupation of our mountains by normal glaciers, the last major glaciers leaving our mountains by 14 thousand years ago.  The subsequent icy history entails “rock glaciers”, rock-mantled bodies of ice of which Colorado has thousands. We will talk about our work on Mt Sopris, on Rawah Peak, and most recent work on a glacier near Ouray. We’ll talk about how these odd objects work, how fast they go, how old they are, and what role they play in the water cycle of alpine watersheds.

Speaker Bios:

Suzanne grew up in the Pacific Northwest. She found the field of geomorphology (and eventually found Bob) at the University of Washington.  She received her PhD from UC Berkeley and did a post-doc at University of Wyoming. Suzanne has been on the faculty of University of Colorado since 2004. Her interests lie in cold and alpine environments, particularly the interactions of water, ice, and rock in those settings.  Bob and Suzanne co-wrote a textbook called Geomorphology: The mechanics and chemistry of landscapes, which is still in print after 15 years, and still sells to a handful of classes around the globe.

Born in Denver, educated at Williams, Stanford, University of Washington, Bob taught at University of California Santa Cruz 1988-2003, then came to CU Boulder where he has been since.  He is a geomorphologist focused on the evolution of terrestrial landscapes, most recently mountains and the glaciers that have sculpted them.