The Ice & Ocean Group is a research group in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia focused on ice sheet and polar ocean changes. We employ sediments and landforms to explore former ice sheet margin migration, ice-bed interactions, processes that contribute to ice sheet change, and ocean conditions near marine-based ice sheets. 

Funding for our research comes from the NSF Office of Polar Programs, International Union for Quaternary Research, UVA H.G. Goodell Endowment, and UVA Committee on Sustainability. 

We collaborate with colleagues at institutions across the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Poland, and Italy. 

Assistant Professor
PI of Ice & Ocean Group
Department of Environmental Sciences
University of Virginia
lsimkins@virginia.edu

Member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
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Curriculum vitae
​Google Scholar

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Latest publications

Revealing the former bed of Thwaites Glacier using sea-floor bathymetry, published by The Cryosphere in 2020.

Foraminiferal patterns in deglacial sediment in the western Ross Sea, Antarctica: life near grounding lines, published Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology in 2020.

Timing and pathways of East Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat, published in Quaternary Science Reviews in 2020. 

Sedimentary processes at ice sheet grounding-zone wedges: examples from Antarctica and Washington state, published in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms in 2019. 

What we are reading

Quick reads:

• Common barriers to writing, a blog post by H. Kearns & M. Gardiner for the London School of Economics and Political Science on 16 November 2020.
• Recognizing bias, a resource by A. Yarber for the ADVANCEGeo Partnership

Longer reads:

• ​Enhanced trace element mobilization by Earth’s ice sheets, a peer-reviewed article by Hawking et al. published in 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

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Archived readings.

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