Welcome!

I am an NSF Postdoctoral Scholar working in Mike Lamb's research group at Caltech. My research uses simulations of glacial isostatic adjustment and non-traditional sea-level records to revise models of both ice growth and decay. I explore how landscapes respond to solid Earth deformation over the ice age in order to use histories of erosion or deposition as a constraint on past ice sheets. In addition, I quantify how sediment erosion and deposition influence observed regional sea-level. By integrating global and local processes of sea-level change I work on reconciling paleo-sea-level observations with model calculations, with the goal of refining global and regional ice volumes over glacial timescales.

News

May 2020: I am excited to announce that I will be starting as an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz in July 2021. To learn more about my group please visit my website: https://tamarapico.github.io/

February 2020: Science Advances just published our paper, showing that the Bering Strait flooding history can be used to fingerprint the timing of North American saddle melting. Read the Harvard Gazette article on the study here!

January 2020: EOS published an article about my AGU poster presentation on sexualized language in geology: Body-based jargon can be harassment when it turns sexual, by Kimberly Cartier.

December 2019: At AGU, come by for my talk on using ice stream retreat to infer past ice loads, my poster on language and sex/gender-based harassment, or my talk on MIS 3 sea level and Indo-Pacific hydroclimate! I'll also be presenting Becca Cleveland-Stout's poster on using coral distributions to constrain Last Interglacial sea level!

October 2019: Two papers out this month: GJI has just published my article on the impact of sediment loading on Last Interglacial sea-level markers, and GRL published our study leveraging the retreat of the Amundsen Gulf Ice Stream to constrain deglacial ice histories.

September 2019: Scientific American published an article I wrote on John Wesley Powell's lesser known research in anthropology, which presupposed the inferiority of Native Americans. Read it here or check out my poster on it at GSA!

July 2019:  Our paper on the effect of glacial-isostatic adjustment on U.S. east coast rivers during MIS 3 was published in Earth & Planetary Sciences Letters! Read it here!

July 2019:  At INQUA I will be giving a talk about using GIA modeling and dynamic ice sheet modeling to understand the Laurentide Ice Sheet during MIS 3.

January 2019: In a study published in Geology led by April Dalton, we compile evidence that suggests a significantly reduced MIS 3 Laurentide Ice Sheet. Read it here!

December 2018: At AGU I will be presenting work on the Bering Strait, U.S. east coast rivers, and first author gender gaps!

November 2018: I'll be giving a talk at GSA on the response of U.S. east coast rivers to glacial isostatic adjustment, with a focus on the Potomac River! 

July 2018: We published a paper in Quaternary Science Reviews that uses MIS 3 sea-level bounds in Canada to assess the robustness of a late growing Laurentide Ice Sheet. Check it out here!

June 2018: Our paper was published in Geology and is freely available here! We show the diversion of the Hudson River ~30 ka can be explained by the adjustment of the peripheral bulge to a rapidly growing ice sheet (highlighted in the Harvard Gazette).

February 2018: I'll be giving a talk at AGU Ocean Sciences in Portland, OR titled Linking the timing of the Cordilleran-Laurentide ice saddle retreat to the inundation history of the Bering Strait

December 2017: Come by to hear my talk at AGU titled Using ancient landscapes along the U.S. mid-Atlantic to assess the influence of glacial isostatic adjustment on river evolution

November 2017: I'll be giving a talk at the PALSEA2 Workshop on the flooding of the Bering Strait, and how this history tells us about the timing of North American deglaciation.

June 2017: I was lucky to join the science crew on a coring cruise with Oregon State University on the R/V Oceanus. We were collecting sediment cores to better determine the timing of post-glacial floods drained by the Columbia River.

May 2017: Our paper was published in Nature Communications and is now freely available here! We use sea-level markers, dated to mid-MIS 3, along the U.S. mid-Atlantic to constrain the growth phase of the Laurentide Ice Sheet leading into the Last Glacial Maximum. 

December 2016: I'll be giving a talk at AGU titled Coupling landscapes to solid-Earth deformation over the ice-age. Check it out to learn about the ancestral Hudson river and how its capture may be related to ice-age deformation. 

October 2016: Scientific American Blogs published a guest post that I wrote in collaboration with Greta Shum on the role of the English language in science! Read it here!

October 2016: Our paper is now available online in Quaternary Science Reviews! In this study we use sea-level indicators in the Yellow River Delta region, China to estimate peak global mean sea level during MIS 3. Check it out here!