{"id":173,"date":"2019-12-08T00:21:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T05:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/?page_id=173"},"modified":"2020-01-15T11:51:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T16:51:48","slug":"dr-kira-olsen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/people\/dr-kira-olsen\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Kira Olsen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Post Doctoral Associate - PhD Columbia University, 2019<\/h3>\n
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Kira Olsen is a seismologist interested in ice deformation, including fracture,\u00a0calving, and rifting within Earth\u2019s polar ice sheets and on ice-covered moons\u00a0within our Solar System. Kira grew up in Homer, Alaska and earned a\u00a0bachelor\u2019s degree in Geology from Colorado College. She received her\u00a0master\u2019s degree and Ph.D. in Earth & Environmental Sciences from Columbia\u00a0University, defending her Ph.D. thesis in 2019.<\/p>\n

Kira\u2019s graduate research focused on investigating Greenland\u2019s largest\u00a0glaciers and how they are changing. Kira uses the seismic signals generated\u00a0by large, rotational iceberg-calving events (up to 1 km\u00a03\u00a0of ice) to understand\u00a0the physics of iceberg calving and glacier retreat. Kira has demonstrated that\u00a0these glacial earthquakes are increasing annually at a number of Greenland\u00a0glaciers and has developed new models of the glacial-earthquake source.\u00a0This work improves understanding of the relationship between iceberg size\u00a0and glacial-earthquake magnitude, moving us closer to using these seismic\u00a0events as a remote-sensing tool for analyzing ice loss around Greenland.<\/p>\n

Kira\u2019s current postdoctoral research centers on testing hypotheses for the\u00a0formation of surface features on the icy moons Enceladus (of Saturn) and\u00a0Europa (of Jupiter) and working to understand the state of stress within these\u00a0icy bodies. She uses analog seismic data collected on Earth\u2019s ice sheets for\u00a0this work, specifically focusing on tidal deformation of interior rifts within the\u00a0Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. This work advances understanding of rift-generated fracture within ice here on Earth, and helps prepare the planetary-science community to collect seismic data directly on icy worlds as part of\u00a0future NASA lander missions.<\/p>\n

Kira joined the Planetary Seismology group at University of Maryland in\u00a0November, 2019 as a CRESST II Postdoctoral Fellow through Howard\u00a0University. She collaborates closely on her postdoctoral work with Dr. Nick\u00a0Schmerr at UMD and Dr. Terry Hurford at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight\u00a0Center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Kira Olsen is a seismologist interested in ice deformation, including fracture,\u00a0calving, and rifting within Earth\u2019s polar ice sheets and on ice-covered moons\u00a0within our Solar System.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":31,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[2],"class_list":["post-173","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/173\/revisions\/198"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geol.umd.edu\/facilities\/planetarygeophysics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}