Nationality USA Institution Colorado College | Institutions Colorado College | |
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Born December 26, 1961 ( 1961-12-26 ) Alma mater BSc Carleton College
MSc University of Arizona
PhD University of California-Santa Barbara Notable awards Fellow of the Geological Society of America
Antarctic Service Medal Fields Structural geology, Tectonics | ||
Christine Siddoway is an American Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on the geology and tectonics of the Ford Ranges in western Marie Byrd Land. She has travelled to Antarctica eleven times for extended field research seasons, and twice to the Antarctic Peninsula to lead educational excursions.
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Early life and education
Siddoway completed her undergraduate education at Carleton College, where she made the acquaintance with Laurence M. Gould, then in his 90s. The friendship with Gould continued while she was an MSc student at University of Arizona (Gould was an emeritus professor of both institutions). Her foray into research in West Antarctica was inspired in part by Gould's long contributions to Antarctic science, and amplified by her work on terrane maps with Peter J. Coney of University of Arizona. Siddoway then attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where she earned her Ph.D. At UCSB she began her Antarctic work with Bruce Luyendyk. Her dissertation focused on the only known gneiss dome in Antarctica, in the Fosdick Mountains, Marie Byrd Land. As graduate student, she began the first of a series of studies in the Fosdick Metamorphic Complex in Marie Byrd Land with her PhD advisor and project principle investigator Bruce Luyendyk.
Career and impact
Siddoway’s career includes multiple research seasons in the Antarctic since 1989. The central issue was when and how mid crustal rocks found here became exhumed. Her work demonstrated a role for doming and diapir intrusion, within a regional context of right lateral strike slip-- leading to a model of rapid exhumation via transtension rather than orthogonal extension as in a core complex – that had been the working model that proved to be incorrect. She continued to refine the fundamentals of process of gneiss dome emplacement authoring a special publication on that topic with the Fosdick range as a type model. An outgrowth of the early work explored the Fosdick Mountains gneiss dome as a repository of information about crustal differentiation leading to stabilization of the landmass of Marie Byrd Land within the Antarctic continent.
Siddoway co-founded the ANTscape project which aims to reconstruct the bedrock topography of Antarctica in the geologic past – an important parameter for understanding ice sheet evolution on the continent.
Siddoway’s Antarctic work has been funded almost exclusively by the U.S. National Science Foundation, with three NSF grants received over five years. The most recent is a collaboration with other researchers from Columbia, UC San Diego, and Oregon State, mostly women, to study the framework of the Ross Ice Shelf and Embayment ([ROSETTA]-ice). This is project includes airborne geophysics and on-ground investigations and is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Moore Foundation.
Along with her work in Antarctica, Siddoway has pursued a research program centered on the tectonics of the Front Range in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. This work led to a surprising result for the age of Cryogenian sandstone dikes within granite host rock, a matter that had been unresolved for more than 125 years.
Siddoway has served on committees of the Geological Society of America, including as Associate Editor for the GSA Bulletin. She has also served twice on the Organizing Committee for the International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences (1995, 2007) and on the Transantarctic Mountain Science Planning Committee (2015).
Awards and honours
Siddoway was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2009 and received the Antarctic Service Medal in 2003.