“We use time-lapse photography – we’ve been doing that forever. Pettit and her team use both high-tech and low-tech approaches. There is a reason that slow events are referred to as moving at a “glacial” pace: glaciers usually creep rather than sprint, so slowly that their movement is not readily observable without repeat visits to a site, either in person or via imaging technologies. She is interested in this movement, the forces that control it, and its consequences. It flows, usually slowly, and changes the environment around it even as it is subject to change. What she meant is that ice moves and changes. “Ice is alive,” Pettit once said in a public talk sponsored by National Geographic. While some glaciologists focus on the glacier as a sort of “black box,” examining how ice forms and melts and how that balance relates to the climate system, Pettit is more interested in the inner workings of the glacier. After recent years on the faculty at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she arrived at Oregon State in December of 2018. So Pettit set out in a new direction, studying glaciers at University of Washington. These principles apply to the natural environment too. Mechanical engineers use their knowledge of material science, fluid dynamics and heat transfer to figure out what causes things to move, work and break. Luckily, she had some seriously transferable skills. Part of the problem was that she was spending too much time indoors. Sporting an undergraduate mechanical engineering degree, Pettit was happy to satisfy her long-standing interest in environmental conservation by taking a job building a “green” product. How did she transition from high-tech to high altitudes? What on Earth ties these seemingly disparate fields together? Now she scales glaciers, examining their dynamic movement in places ranging from the Cascades to the Antarctic. New CEOAS Associate Professor Erin Pettit began her professional life designing and building parts for hybrid electric cars.
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