Luke Zoet

@lzoet.bsky.social

Geoscientist at UW-Madison who studies glacial, coastal, and planetary processes https://surface.geoscience.wisc.edu/

Check out this new paper we have in @pnas.org ! It’s got some big findings about glacial erosion. Namely that quarrying is ~5x more efficient at eroding bedrock than abrasion and that power based erosion laws are the most appropriate for modeling erosion www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

pnas.org

UW-Madison has almost 52,000 students. It has a dairy farm, dairy sciences, forestry and top notch humanities. It also works closely with dairy and other farmers throughout the state to improve their output. Big publics do it all.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3mo ago

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com The problem on college campuses is not just that students lack civility, Michal Leibowitz writes, but that “our college education does almost nothing to develop the sense that what we do in our day-to-day lives resonates with people beyond ourselves.”

Honored to begin serving as interim chancellor of @uwmadison.bsky.social. Our excellence shines through our students, research, and impact across Wisconsin and beyond. Excited to listen, learn, and work together to advance the Wisconsin Idea. On, Wisconsin! 🔴⚪

Getting to work in service to an extraordinary university

In a first-day message to UW–Madison faculty and staff, interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots looks to move the university forward, together.

news.wisc.edu

“What’d you think when people first mentioned that you could surf out here?” “I thought they were kind of stupid honestly,” he says. “It looked really bad, and I thought no way they’re having fun out there.” www.michiganpublic.org/podcast/beyo...

Beyond the Shore: Surfing Lake Michigan

Michigan Public's Dustin Dwyer dons a wetsuit, borrows a surfboard, straps on a GoPro, and heads into the waves of Lake Michigan. In November. All in the name of finding out: How does anyone have fun ...

michiganpublic.org

A 1959 peer review. It's of Fred Thwaites' manuscript, "Evidences of dissected erosion surfaces in the Driftless Area," submitted to GSA Bulletin. I wonder who anonymously said it was "a re-hash of older opinions without any new data". Published later in the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy.

Typed text: "It is my belief that this paper should not be published in its present form. For the most part it is a re-hash of older opinions without any new data. As a matter of fact, there is no new interpretation either as the author comes to the same conclusion as Martin did long ago. There are many references to earlier opinions without stating specifically who expressed them. Some of these are clear cut cases of beating dead horses. Others are apparently the result of a grudge against the Geological Survey and perhaps still other sources that are less apparent. If this paper is ever to be published it must be carefully rewritten. I have made no effort to correct the many grammatical and typographical errors. So far as I can tell, there is nothing publishable in this report. However, some additional work might make it worthy of a note in the Bulletin."

🌊🧪I am honored to be the 2026 recipient of the Selby Fellowship, awarded by the Australian Academy of Science. Looking forward to speaking to (& with!) the public about climate change, sea level rise & coral reefs, drawing upon my field work in AU & around the world science.org.au/news-events/...

Academy fellowships link conservation and climate expertise worldwide | Australian Academy of Science

Three researchers – with work spanning human behaviour, invasive species and ancient climate patterns – will share conservation and climate science across Australia and internationally thanks to prest...

science.org.au

A study in Science reveals an extensive precolonial agricultural landscape in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, suggesting Indigenous American communities cultivated maize intensively between 1000 and 1600 CE, despite a cold climate and marginal growing conditions. https://scim.ag/49voBGO

Archaeological evidence of intensive indigenous farming in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, USA

We describe archaeological evidence of intensive ancestral Native American agriculture in the now heavily forested Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Recent LIDAR (light detection and ranging) and excavatio...

scim.ag

Grad student Tanner May has a new fun paper out in the Journal of Glaciology that is kind of magical. The magic trick that Tanner performs is that he manages to estimate thickness of glaciers using only surface elevations and nothing else. This shouldn't work, but it does. Let me tell you why.

Estimating glacier ice thickness and yield strength using surface elevation and the perfect-plastic approximation | Journal of Glaciology | Cambridge Core

Estimating glacier ice thickness and yield strength using surface elevation and the perfect-plastic approximation - Volume 71

cambridge.org

The bathymetry of eastern Lake Superior, the part that would be crossed by an ore carrier coming from the NW, trying to make Whitefish Bay in a storm, is fascinating. I have heard those N-S troughs explained as subglacially eroded tunnel channels, but there are probably other ideas out there.

Map of Lake Superior bathymetry, which shows multiple deep north-south troughs in the easternmost part of the lake.

New video: A glacier on Antarctica’s Eastern Peninsula experienced the fastest retreat recorded in modern history—in just two months, nearly 50 percent of the glacier disintegrated. Watch this video to understand what happened. Study by @ciresnews #Antarctica #glaciermelt