Blase Reardon

Expertise:

• Forecasting for natural snow avalanches
• Reconstructing natural snow avalanches from historic and dendrochronological records
• Glacier monitoring and mass balance research
• Operating remote weather stations
• Technical writing and editing

Research interests:

I'm curious about snow and ice in mountains. Snow and ice accumulate and melt in regular cycles, yet vary wonderfully in time and space. Though solids, their material properties change dramatically with just slight changes in conditions. Mountains magnify both the regularity and variability of snow and ice. At the same time, snow and ice shape mountains and drive mountain ecosystems, with plants and animals limited by and supported by snow and ice. My research explores the patterns and variability of snow and ice at time scales ranging from seasons to centuries, and spatial scales from slopes to mountain ranges. Past studies analyzed weather and snowpack patterns contributing to wet snow avalanches, the interannual variability of snowpacks in the Crown of the Continent ecosystem, and the relationships between climate variability and natural avalanches. As a masters candidate, I am studying the conflicting influences of climate and topography on the mass balance of Sperry Glacier in Glacier National Park as a way of examining whether small cirque glaciers like Sperry can serve as reliable indicators of current climate variability.