Gregor Luetzenburg’s Homepage

Gregor Luetzenburg

Gregor Luetzenburg is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management (IGN), University of Copenhagen. His current research investigates sediment transport in proglacial rivers in Greenland. He is also involved in mapping the extent of the Greenland Ice Sheet and assessing the impacts of climate change on Greenland’s peripheral glaciers. Gregor’s previous work focused on reconstructing Holocene relative sea-level changes in Greenland. His background is in coastal geomorphology, with expertise in coastal cliff erosion, landslides, and the effects of climate change on coastal regions.

ORCiD profile

CV (July 2026)

GEUS webpage

Professional Experience & Education

2026 – ongoing Postdoc at the Departement of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management

University of Copenhagen
2023 – 2026 Postdoc at the Department of Glaciology and Climate

Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS)
2025 – ongoing Guest Lecturer & External Examiner for the course Climate, Glacier and the Human Impact

DIS Study Abroad in Scandinavia
2023 – 2024 Guest Lecturer at the Sedimentology Field Course

The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS)
2021 Visiting Researcher

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2019 – 2022 MSCA TALENT Doctoral fellow at the Departement of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management

University of Copenhagen
2017 – 2019 Master of Science in Geography

University of Vienna
2015 – 2019 Research Assistant at the ENGAGE – Geomorphological Systems and Risk Research Group

University of Vienna
2012 – 2017 Bachelor of Science in Geography

University of Vienna

Impact

I study how Arctic coasts and the Greenland Ice Sheet are changing, and I build the open data and accessible methods that make that change measurable. My work shows how climate change is reshaping the transfer of sediment from the Greenland Ice Sheet to the ocean, with consequences for coastal stability and Arctic ecosystems. My datasets and tools are designed for others to reuse. I develop and fund my own research and work closely with international collaborators to deliver it.

Coastal change: I showed that erosion of Greenland’s coastal cliffs is increasing with climate change, improving how Arctic coastal dynamics are understood and projected. To make such measurements accessible, I introduced a low-cost, easy-to-use surface-change method using iPhone LiDAR, which lowers the barrier for groups without specialist survey equipment.
Ice-sheet change: I produced the PROMICE-2022 Ice Mask, a high-resolution outline of the Greenland Ice Sheet that provides a reference baseline for measuring future change, and I contributed to showing that Greenland’s peripheral glaciers are now retreating twice as fast as in the twentieth century.
Sea-level change: I reconstructed Holocene relative sea level in southern Greenland, revealing evidence of a Holocene low stand, and compiled a Greenland-wide database of marine limit and relative sea-level indicators to constrain how the ice sheet and land have responded to past change.
Open data: I release my datasets openly for modelling, hazard assessment and further research, including a national landslide inventory for Denmark that shows landslides to be an underestimated geohazard.
Collaboration: I secured my own funding, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral fellowship, and led field campaigns in West and East Greenland. I work closely with partners at leading international institutions and contribute to shared projects, datasets and software.

Current Research

Understanding the disproportionate impact of climate change on small peripheral glaciers in Greenland

Peer Reviewed Publications

Luetzenburg, G., Rosenberg, A., Woodroffe, S., Funder, S., Larsen, N. K., & Kjeldsen, K. K. (submitted). A Holocene marine limit and relative sea-level database for Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland. Scientific Data.
Adell, A., Wiechen, P. v., Luetzenburg, G., Almström, B., Kroon, A., & Hallin, C. (2026). Performance of Hybrid Coastal Protection in Extreme Storm Conditions. Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering, 152(5), 05026006. https://doi.org/doi:10.1061/JWPED5.WWENG-2332
Kvorning, A. B., Sicre, M. A., Luetzenburg, G., Schmidt, S., Andersen, T. J., Klein, V., Georgiadis, E., Limoges, A., Giraudeau, J., Bjørk, A. A., Larsen, N. K., & Ribeiro, S. (2026). Cryosphere and ocean variability in Kane Basin since the 18th century: insights from two marine multi-proxy records. Clim. Past, 22(3), 605-624. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-22-605-2026.
Bittner, M. J., Bannon, C. C., Rowland, E., Luetzenburg, G., Bertrand, E. M., Riemann, L., & Paerl, R. W. (2026). Elevated B‐vitamins within a temperate estuary: Strong spatiotemporal dynamics and links to microbial plankton communities. Limnology and Oceanography, 71(9). https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.70508
Luetzenburg, G., Korsgaard, N. J., Deichmann, A. K., Socher, T., Gleie, K., Scharffenberger, T., Fahrner, D., Nielsen, E. B., How, P., Bjørk, A. A., Kjeldsen, K. K., Ahlstrøm, A. P., and Fausto, R. S. (2026). PROMICE-2022 Ice Mask: A high-resolution outline of the Greenland Ice Sheet from August 2022, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 411–427. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-411-2026.
Luetzenburg, G., Ngoepe, N., Farnsworth, W. R., Rosenberg, A., Lewis, E., Brodersen, J., Bennike, O., Siggaard-Andersen, M.L., Woodroffe, S., Milne, G., Kjeldsen, K. K., Larsen, N. K. (2026). Relative Sea-Level Changes and Evidence for a Holocene Low Stand in Southern Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews, 374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2025.109787.
Colgan, W., Fahrner, D., Luetzenburg, G., Løkkegaard, A., Nielsen, E. S. B., How, P., Rutishauser, A., Solgaard, A., Fausto, R. S., Kjeldsen, K. K., Shields, C., Spanggård, H., Smith, P., MacGregor , J. A., P. Ahlstrøm, A., & Karlsson, N. B. (2025). Feasibility of an Ice Sheet Traverse from Pituffik to Warming Land, North Greenland. GEUS Bulletin, 59. https://doi.org/10.34194/ft7sk529.
Luetzenburg G., Kroon A., Kjeldsen K. K., Splinter K. D., & Bjørk A. A. (2024). High-resolution topographic surveying and change detection with the iPhone LiDAR. Nat Protoc 19, 3520–3541 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-024-01024-9. Featured on the cover of Vol. 19 (No. 12).
Svennevig K., Koch J.,Keiding M., Luetzenburg G. (2024). Assessing the impact of climate change on landslides near Vejle, Denmark, using public data. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 1897–1911. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-1897-2024.
Korsgaard N. J., Svennevig K., Søndergaard A. S., Luetzenburg, G., Oksman M., and Larsen N. K. (2024). Evidence of Middle Holocene landslide-generated tsunamis recorded in lake sediments from Saqqaq, West Greenland, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 757–772, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-757-2024.
Larocca, L. J., Twining–Ward, M., Axford, Y., Schweinsberg, A. D., Larsen, S. H., Westergaard–Nielsen, A., Luetzenburg, G., Briner, J. P., Kjeldsen, K. K., & Bjørk, A. A. (2023). Greenland-wide accelerated retreat of peripheral glaciers in the twenty-first century. Nature Climate Change (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01855-6.
Luetzenburg, G., Townsend, D., Svennevig, K., Bendixen, M., Bjørk, A. A., Eidam, E., Kroon, A. (2023). Sedimentary Coastal Cliff Erosion in Greenland. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 128. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JF007026.
Kroon, A., Bendixen M., Luetzenburg, G., Rudd, D. A., Sigsgaard, C. (2023). Morphodynamic Evolution of the Zackenberg Delta in Northeast Greenland. The Proceedings of the Coastal Sediments 2023. Singapore: World Scientific https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811275135_0163.
Luetzenburg, G., Bjørk A. A., Svennevig K., Kroon, A. (2023). Drivers of Coastal Cliff Erosion in Denmark. The Proceedings of the Coastal Sediments 2023. Singapore: World Scientific https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811275135_0118.
Luetzenburg, G., Svennevig, K., Bjørk, A. A., Keiding, M., Kroon, A. (2022). A national landslide inventory for Denmark, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 3157–3165. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-3157-2022.
Luetzenburg, G. (2022). Investigating coastal change with smartphone LiDAR. Nat Rev Earth Environ. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00265-0.
Luetzenburg, G., Kroon, A., Bjørk, A. A. (2021). Evaluation of the Apple iPhone 12 Pro LiDAR for an Application in Geosciences. Sci Rep 11, 22221. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01763-9.
Svennevig, K., Luetzenburg G., Keiding, M. K., Pedersen, S. A. S. (2020). Preliminary landslide mapping in Denmark indicates an underestimated geohazard. GEUS Bulletin 44, 5302. https://doi.org/10.34194/geusb.v44.5302.
Luetzenburg, G., Bittner, M. J., Calsamiglia A., Estrany J., Renschler C., Poeppl R. (2020). Climate and land use change effects on soil erosion in two small agricultural catchmetnt systems; Fugnitz – Austria, Can Revull – Spain. Science of The Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135389.

Science Communication & Outreach

2026 News article on TV2 about our relative sea-level reconstruction in southern Greenland
2025 Copernicus Land Monitoring Service Use case: EGMS reveals previously unknown Danish landslides
2023 Retreat of Greenland’s peripheral glaciers has accelerated; Behind the Paper blog post
2023 We argue for a better legal protection of the biodiversity of plankton; Correspondence in Nature
2022 Presentation of new research at Prosabladet
2022 Cliff falls: using a smartphone to track erosion; Where I work in Nature
2022 Newspaper article in Danish at Ingeniøren about the use of smartphone LiDAR for coastal protection
2022 Press release by the Faculty of SCIENCE at the University of Copenhagen
2021 Meet the fellows, University of Copenhagen, TALENT Doctoral Fellowship Programme
2020 Newspaper article in Danish at Forskerzonen about the impact of climate change on landslides in Denmark
2020 Blogpost at The Landslide Blog – AGU Blogosphere about the recent Gjerrild Klint landslide in Denmark
2020 Report for the International Association of Geomorphologists on the 2019 BSG Windsor Postgraduate Workshop

Research Expertise

Coastal research in Greenland

From decades to millennia, we investigate key processes shaping Arctic coastal zones, including relative sea-level change, coastal cliff erosion, landslides, and tsunami impacts. These processes operate across a wide range of temporal and spatial scales and leave complex geomorphological and sedimentary signatures along Arctic coastlines.

Relative sea-level change research paper

Landslides and tsunami impact research paper

Coastal cliff erosion research paper

The Greenland Ice Sheet and its peripheral glaciers

We present the PROMICE-2022 Ice Mask, a high-resolution outline of the contiguous ice masses of the GrIS and the nunataks in its interior as of late August 2022. The dataset was derived from a true-colour Sentinel-2 mosaic at 10 m spatial resolution.

Data description paper

PROMICE-2022 Ice Mask

In another study, we document length fluctuations of >1,000 land-terminating peripheral glaciers in Greenland over more than a century. We find that their rate of retreat over the last two decades is double that of the twentieth century, indicating a ubiquitous transition into a new, accelerated state of downwasting.

Research paper

Blog post

iPhone LiDAR

We use the iPhone LiDAR to generate high-resolution indoor and outdoor 3D models, providing insights into object size, volume and geometry. The 3D models created by the LiDAR sensor can be used for precise measurement of changes over time