EAGER: Constraining the Expected Brittle-ice Behavior for the Hercules Dome Ice-core Site.

Brittle ice has been a long-standing and consistent challenge for ice-coring projects, complicating sampling, and introducing the possibility of contamination. Several procedures have been tested to reduce brittle damage to recovered cores, but many come with high monetary and time costs. Our background research suggests that bubble size and c-axis fabric are primary drivers for brittleness and are predictable from site characteristics, enabling prediction of brittleness before coring. We propose to improve understanding of the mechanisms involved in brittle ice onset and behavior, through targeted investigations of various ice physical properties, in carefully selected samples across multiple ice-core sites, in order to guide the upcoming Hercules Dome ice-core drilling and science communities. This project will involve collaboration between Northern Arizona University, the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility, and Pennsylvania State University, and will utilize new and existing ice-core physical properties data from several previously drilled sites. This is a high-risk, low-cost project that could yield important results, and thus is well-suited for EAGER funding. This proposal utilizes existing ice cores and does not require Antarctic fieldwork.