20 September 2018

Outstanding PhD student from IGN receives honor

EXCELLENCE

Mette Bendixen, from the Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management, has provided groundbreaking research in arctic coastal morphology and demonstrated that the Greenlandic delta is growing due to the warmer climate. At SCIENCE's annual graduate event for PhD candidates, on September 21, she received a prize of 25,000 for her work.

The Greenlandic delta is growing due to the warmer climate

Mette Bendixen
Mette Bendixen has in her PhD-dissertation shown that the coasts of Greenland respond to climate change in a completely different manner than the remaining Arctic coasts.

By comparing aerial photos from World War II with modern satellite imagery, Mette Bendixen has together with colleagues shown that the deltas of Greenland are expanding as climate changes. Warmer temperatures cause a melt of the Greenland Icesheet, which transports increased amounts of sand and gravel to the coast, causing the deltas to extend out into the sea.

This research fills out a knowledge gap in coastal research and shows, that climate change affects the coasts of Greenland in an unprecedented way.

“Mette Bendixen has delivered groundbreaking research on Arctic coastal morphology. She has used different techniques to understand changes occurred during recent decades. Mette has upscaled her results and has produced the first study showing how climate change has a profound influence on the Greenlandic coasts”, says supervisor and associate professor Aart Kroon from from Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management.

Mette Bendixen has received the Carlsberg Foundation Internationalisation Fellowship and lives in United States with her husband and son, continuing her research at University of Colorado.