Jared L. Peters

Education

PhD: 2012-present; Marine palaeoglaciology; Ulster University, Coleraine, Northern Ireland; The extent, palaeoenvironments and timing of the last British-Irish Ice Sheet offshore of west Ireland.

MSc: 2010-2012; Palaeoglaciology; Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Late Pleistocene evolution of Glacial Lake Purcell: a potential floodwater source to the Channeled Scabland.

BSc: 2006-2009; Geoscience; Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, USA; (cum laude).

AAS: 2002-2005; Adventure Sports Management; Garrett College, USA; (magna cum laude).

Research Background

I have a broad background in geoscience and Earth-surface processes with specific interests in process geomorphology, palaeoglaciology, micropaleontology and sedimentology.  My previous research has focused on dynamic proglacial environments and allowed me to reconstruct jökulhlaup events, proglacial lake evolution, ice sheet palaeogeography and ice-proximal palaeoenvironments in the Columbia Mountains of Canada.  These data have helped advance our knowledge of Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreat and elucidate complex cryosphere-hydrosphere interactions.

Current Research

I am currently conducting my PhD research at Ulster University with supervision from Sara Benetti, Paul Dunlop and Colm Ó Cofaigh.  My project (The extent, palaeoenvironments and timing of the last British-Irish Ice Sheet offshore of west Ireland) seeks to describe the depositional history of the last British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) on the continental shelf west of Ireland and age-constrain the rate of retreat of two ice lobes that extended westward from Galway Bay and Clew Bay onto the now-submerged continental shelf.  This is being accomplished through a multifaceted analysis of at least 29 sediment cores gathered across the continental shelf offshore of counties Galway and Mayo, Ireland.  The results being generated by this study are helping to remove large knowledge gaps that have hitherto persisted west of Ireland.  This research is validating hypotheses of BIIS extent, advancing our knowledge of the western BIIS’s behaviour, and constraining the timing of ice advance and retreat across the shelf.  These results are important because, given the geography, bathymetry and oceanography of the western Irish continental shelf, it stands to reason that refining our knowledge of BIIS behaviour may improve the accuracy of predictive models of modern marine-terminating ice margins.