Dr. Rebecca “Becky” Totten is a micropaleontologist and sedimentologist who specializes in glacial marine and coastal environments as an associate professor of Geological Sciences at The University of Alabama. Dr. Totten is excited to lead the Marine Biology Team on this expedition, and she will also work closely with the Coring Team to investigate the ecological response to volcanic eruptions in the fjords. Dr. Totten specializes in diatoms and foraminifera, which are protists that live in the water column and on the seafloor and are very sensitive to changes in ocean temperature, salinity, and nutrients.
Dr. Totten grew up nine feet below sea level in the coastal city of New Orleans, making mud pies and playing in flood water after storms as a kid- experiences that she feels are deeply connected to her love of sediment, fossils, and the stories they tell. Dr. Totten’s other field area is in marine basins offshore West Antarctica, where glaciers drain to the sea and are dynamically melting due to warm ocean currents. Dr. Totten uses diatoms, foraminifera, and chemical composition of the sediment to reconstruct glacial and oceanographic history over centuries to millennia to better understand how the climate and the ocean influence glacial stability. Dr. Totten is also funded by NSF to study Thwaites Glacier, so-called the “Doomsday Glacier” by the media due to its potential to drastically raise sea level.
Before joining The University of Alabama, Dr. Totten worked at Shell Exploration and Production Co. as a sedimentologist and stratigrapher in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Totten earned her PhD from Rice University in 2015 on glacial response to the last 14,000 years of climate change in the Antarctica Peninsula. Dr. Totten received her B.S. (Hon.) in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Kansas in 2009, with a Goldwater Scholarship for her senior thesis work on the paleobiology and isotope geochemistry of mosasaurs, giant swimming lizards of the Cretaceous seas.
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