Christine Siddoway


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.

Early life and education

Siddoway completed her undergraduate education at Carleton College in 1984. Siddoway received a master's degree in 1987 from the University of Arizona, then attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where she earned her Ph.D in 1995. 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 principal 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 the 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 in 2009 which stimulated research in the reconstruction of bedrock topography of Antarctica for key intervals of the geologic past – an important parameter for understanding the origins and evolution of the Antarctic ice sheet.
Siddoway's Antarctic work has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, with received over ten years. The recent ROSETTA-Ice Project was a collaboration with investigators -mostly women- from Columbia University, UC San Diego, and Earth Space Research, to study the framework of the Ross Ice Shelf and Embayment. The project used airborne geophysics and on-ground investigations and was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Moore Foundation.
Along with her work in Antarctica, Siddoway has pursued research in the Front Range of 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. The Tavakaiv quartzite formation contributes to new appreciation of the time of formation of The Great Unconformity in Colorado.
She is currently working on Ice sheet erosional Interaction with Hot geotherm in West Antarctica, International Ocean Discovery Program 379, 2019-2021 Amundsen Sea – West Antarctic Ice Sheet History, for Rodinia, and – International Geodesign Collaborative.. A recently completed project is Collaborative Research: A systems approach to understanding the Ross Ocean and ice Shelf Environment, and Tectonic setting Through Aerogeophysical surveys and modeling.
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 and on the Transantarctic Mountain Science Planning Committee.

Awards and honours

Siddoway was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2009 and received the Antarctica Service Medal in 2003.

Selected works