Thin Ice

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Alex has for over 30 years designed and managed drilling systems that have recovered continuous records of past environments in the most challenging situations imaginable, most recently coring over 1200 m below the Antarctic sea floor and millions of years into the past. These records have allowed scientists to report on times when there was no Ross Ice Shelf and even earlier when the Antarctic coast was forested, contributing directly to our understanding of the history and behaviour of the world’s largest ice sheet. Additional drilling related activities include drilling permafrost cores, ice cores and designing coring equipment in shallow lake and wetland environments in New Zealand. Alex was awarded the New Zealand Antarctic Medal in 2010 for services to Antarctic engineering.

www.victoria.ac.nz/antarctic/about/staff/alex-pyne