Palaeo ice streams
 Ice streams are fast flowing corridors embedded within slower flowing ice sheets. For Antarctica they are responsible for around 90% of ice mass lost from the system, even though they occupy only a small part of the perimeter (12%). Their activity largely determines the stability and response of ice sheets to climate perturbations, and accordingly their functioning receives intensive research activity, and constitutes the greatest challenge to knowledge within glaciology.
Over the last 5 years I have contributed to this field, by making theoretical advances with regard to the geomorphological and geological imprint that ice streams should leave behind, and using EO to search for them in former ice sheets. We are currently searching and investigating the tracks of ice streams that drained ice sheets during the last glaciation. Once found and investigated their geomorphological signature provides information on ice stream basal characteristics that can be used for parameterising or testing numerical models. We can make inferences about the basal controls on ice stream functioning, which are relevant to both contemporary and palaeo glaciology. The first International sympoisum on palaeo-ice streams was held in Denmark in 2001. A special issue of Boreas (Vol. 32, No 1, edited by myself and collegues) reported some of the key papers.
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