Comments (0) Feb 01 2012

2011 PolarTREC teacher, Susy Ellison, samples spruce trees for a dendrochronology study in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. All photos: Susy Ellison

Susy Ellison is the high school science teacher we all wish we’d had. With projects like designing and building an energy-efficient straw-bale classroom, installing solar panels on the school’s roof, and building a greenhouse (and growing things in it), Ellison is infusing her students with a strong sense of what she calls environmental literacy. Now in her 15^th year at Yampah Mountain High School in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Ellison spent the summer with two teams of Alaskan researchers as a PolarTREC teacher, so this year’s class will, no doubt, be in for some fun and interesting science activities.

Ellison’s love for Alaska goes back to graduate school when she spent time in Prudhoe Bay studying how arctic foxes interact with nesting shorebirds and small mammals. Her field experience served her well this year as she traveled to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for a six-day NSF-funded tree-ring study with Kevin Anchukaitis and Angie Allen (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory),  and to the Raven Bluff Site for two weeks with Jeff Rasic (UAF/NPS), William Hedman (BLM), and Ian Buvit (Central Washington University) for a NSF-supported study on early human settlement in arctic Alaska.

For the tree-ring study, field team members spent their time extracting straw-sized cores from standing white spruce trees in five sites spread over a few miles; Anchukaitis will compare annual growth rings from these cores with samples taken from fallen trees. By analyzing the thickness of annual rings, they will reconstruct North Slope climate and ultimately determine controls on the extent of arctic forest growth.

Traveling light - Ellison and Allen congratulate themselves on hauling all their gear in one trip.

“The tree-ring study was really interesting. Many scientists think that with climate warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees might just grow and grow and grow, but new research says this may not be true. You can keep feeding someone, but it’s not going to make them taller,” explains Ellison. “I was impressed with how pretty simple science can provide pretty big answers. There were only three of us and we were just out there. We travelled light and fast. It was fun!”

Following a 10-day break exploring the Kenai Peninsula, Ellison joined Jeff Rasic’s team for a rainy and cool two week archaeological excavation near Kivalina.  Despite the soggy weather, the group made the best of things and worked hard to maximize their field time. In addition to searching for artifacts in one-meter square pits started during the 2010 field season, Ellison participated in a soil survey and in reconnaissance flights wherein the group looked for new archaeological sites.

“We usually hear that the first people to North America came from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge and then headed south. The Raven site is about the same age, about 12,000 years old, as the Clovis culture sites farther south. At Raven we looked, in particular, for these fluted spear points so that they can be dated and compared to similar Clovis-age points. The idea is that people may have moved back and forth between Alaska and southern North America rather than unidirectionally,” says Ellison.

“The similarity in these projects is that we were looking at old stuff, attempting to get information that can be applied to the present and, perhaps, predict future changes in the Arctic,” Ellison says. “The scientists were so passionate about their studies and the field season in Alaska is so short – they had to get it done. Everyone worked really hard to complete the work required in the short time period.”

Ellison tries to stay dry while recording soil profile data.

Now that a new school year is underway, Ellison is thinking about ways to share her PolarTREC experiences with Yampah. So far, she’s considering having students look at tree rings to determine Colorado’s long-term fire history. She would also like to take a group backpacking in Utah to see some archaeological sites close to home while considering what clues they might leave behind for future archaeologists to find.

Ellison’s school is run by the Mountain Board of Cooperative Educational Services, and serves students from four public school districts.  The school serves as an alternative to students who have been unsuccessful in other area high schools for one reason or another.

“Teaching science at Yampah is very challenging,” Ellison says. “Our classes are ungraded, which means that in one class I have students from all grades with all levels of science proficiency. I teach life, physical, and earth science so I have a lot of information to distill. Then, I put my own spin on it. I like to have an environmental focus with very hands-on projects. My experiences with PolarTREC have given me so many new ideas for how to communicate climate change issues and science research  to all my students, regardless of their science background.”—Marcy Davis

PolarTREC (Polar Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and managed by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, or ARCUS. The program aims to give teachers professional development experiences conducting research in the polar regions with career scientists to boost the teachers’ content knowledge and to give them hands-on experience in scientific inquiry. ARCUS is accepting applications through the end of September from teachers and researchers interested in participating in the PolarTREC program during the 2012-2013 research season. Visit the ARCUS PolarTREC website for more information: http://www.polartrec.com/

Comments (0) Sep 23 2011

PolarTREC teacher spent his summer “under this mass of moving ice”

PolarTREC teacher Michael Lampert at the Engabreen Glacier. All photos: Michael Lampert

Buried two hundred meters below Engabreen Glacier, one of a handful of outlet glaciers that drain northern Norway’s Svartisen ice cap, is the Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory, one of the world’s most unique settings for glaciological research.  Just north of the Arctic Circle, the facility came online in conjunction with a new hydro-electric power plant in 1993. An elaborate network of more than 100 km of subglacial tunnels funnels glacial meltwater through the mountain to turbines at the Glumsfjord Kraftverk power station near the glacier base—and allows researchers direct access to the underside of the glacier.

Living quarters and a science lab are housed within barracks-like structures in a tunnel below the surface near the glacier’s origin. The only light is the eerie yellow glow emitted from sodium vapor lamps and headlamps affixed to scientists’ hardhats.

The Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory houses underground labs and living space.

Michael Lampert, a 2011 PolarTREC teacher* from West Salem High School in Salem, Oregon, who joined PI Neal Iverson (Iowa State University) and team on this year’s field expedition, describes his first impression of the lab:

“A helicopter took us up to the top of [the] glacier where we were to enter the tunnel to the Laboratory. I kept looking for a grand entrance, but when we arrived it was just a post with a doorway. We shoveled out a bunch of snow so we could get the door open then walked about 100m through a corrugated pipe that opened into a large room,” Lampert explains.  “It was a little like being in a sewer – dark, drippy, cold, humid air that is very still. You can always hear water rushing through the tunnels. It’s a very odd feeling. There was this unbelievably strange emptiness. I wasn’t expecting it.”

Svartisen's foyer...

Lampert joined Iverson on the latter’s NSF-funded project to understand how, and how fast, Engebreen Glacier moves. During underground stays of up to three weeks at the subglacial lab, the group works at the glacier-bedrock interface, measuring water pressure and microseismicity, tiny earthquakes associated with glacier movement. Data obtained at Svartisen provide fundamental information about variability in glacier movement, information Iverson hopes will translate to long-term predictions about the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, and their potential contributions to sea-level change.

Lampert mucks out the tunnel.

“The idea here, the overall goal, is to stimulate a rapid glacier movement event by pumping water under the glacier for an hour while measuring the resulting microseismicity,” explains Iverson. “We measure water pressure in pump tests and embed accelerometers in the glacier to monitor ice acceleration. We then correlate these motion data to seismicity measured in the tunnel and on the glacier surface. We manipulate the system to try to understand it better. We are trying to calibrate motion in a very large-scale laboratory so we can apply results to other glaciers.”

Melting last year's ice.

Donning rubber boots and suits to protect them from mud and water, researchers worked to free instruments left in the glacier ice last summer for maintenance and repairs. To get at the equipment, the team first had to melt free a steel door separating the tunnel from the glacier. Using relatively hot water (sixty degrees) from a fire hose directed at the door for an hour, Lampert , who has a background in physics, got his first up-close glimpse of the Engabreen’s underbelly. In a May 2 PolarTREC journal entry he wrote:

“The very bottom of the glacier is a mix of sediment and debris but there is a sudden line of clear glacier ice, often you see lines like this on icebergs that have calved into the ocean. The blue ice has a magical appearance when illuminated with a flood light.”

The glacier's base is mixture of ice and sediment.

Next, the team melted horizontal and vertical shafts through the ice to expose boreholes in the rock through which instrumentation, cables, and wiring pass from instruments embedded in the glacier to lab computers. During the year, the holes become clogged with ice that must be removed periodically. It’s a constant fight against moving ice, which can close off passageways at rates of 1-2 meters a day.

“Ice [that is] under 200 meters of pressure oozes like toothpaste. [It’s] not brittle like the ice in your freezer,” explains Lampert. “Once the sensors are in the glacier and we stop melting, the ice moves back in. The glacier is moving so the ice will ooze around you in the course of a day. You can see a difference within an hour. It’s kind of creepy. Sometimes I would sit in a space in the ice and close my eyes. I would think about just exactly where I was – under this mass of moving ice and that really put me in touch with Earth’s geology. That was one of the coolest things ever!”

Enjoying the view from outside the lab entrance.

Instrumentation includes a friction plate, a granite-topped metal disc about a foot in diameter and loaded with sensors that measure the force of the glacier as it slides over bedrock. The plate, the only one of its kind, also contains a water pressure sensor and an acoustic sensor that ‘listens’ to the glacier’s sounds as it moves past. Other sensors include accelerometers in palm-sized capsules that monitor ice motion.

“Some accelerometers have cable tethers that are fed through boreholes in the underlying rock to lab computers.  Some transmit wirelessly through the tunnel. Both types have advantages and disadvantages. There is lots of screwing around with electrical stuff in conditions a degree above freezing and 100% humidity,” Iverson says.

Accelerometer maintenance is serious business.

Once instrumentation is tested and reinstalled, the shafts are left alone so that the ice “heals.” Then water is pumped through the tunnel at the base of the glacier and the team waits for data.

“We know for certain that moving ice produces seismicity and the character of our data seem to indicate motion of ice as opposed water, “ explains Iverson. “We are still working out what our data mean. The signals look like we are recording the basal motion of the glacier as it slides over rock, but we are working through the details as the data can be very noisy.”

Other sampling efforts include ice coring, sediment and geologic analyses.

Miriam Jackson takes an ice sample.

As for Lampert, he’ll bring lots of stories back to his community and classroom this fall.

“The whole thing was out of the world – so totally surrealistic! These scientists are getting at the real fundamentals of science. I want my students to really understand that applying science in the field is the best part. Then there’s the living in a tunnel – there’s a psychological effect with it that I didn’t expect. When we finally walked out from this place of 24 hours of darkness into the 24-hour day of the polar summer, it was wild…quite a metaphor to walk out of total darkness into light, from nothingness to life.”—Marcy Davis

PolarTREC (Polar Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and managed by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, or ARCUS. The program aims to give teachers professional development experiences conducting research in the polar regions with career scientists to boost the teachers’ content knowledge and to give them hands-on experience in scientific inquiry. ARCUS is accepting applications through the end of September from teachers and researchers interested in participating in the PolarTREC program during the 2012-2013 research season. Visit the ARCUS PolarTREC website for more information: http://www.polartrec.com/

Comments (1) Sep 16 2011

Summit Station Images Featured on Atmospheric Optics

Greenland Glory. Photo: Ed Stockard

The above photo, and the one just below, have been featured recently as the Optics Photo of the Day on the Atmospheric Optics website (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/). Ed Stockard shot both images at Summit Station on Greenland’s ice sheet, where he is working this fall.

The Atmospheric Optics website is devoted to explaining and exploring the visual results of light playing on particles in the air–ash, dust, and in Ed’s case, ice. The rainbow-colored rings encircling the building form a “glory,” explains website curator Les Crowley, the result of “sunlight diffracted almost directly back along its path by very small fog droplets.” Click the picture for a better view. Glory indeed.

Visit the Atmospheric Optics website to learn more about optical effects in the atmosphere, and to find out when, how, and where you might be able to see some in person.

A short description of the science behind the optical effect accompanies each image. You may also visit Ed Stockard’s flickr page, which he is updating with more lovely images from Summit (http://www.flickr.com/photos/coastaleddy/ ).–Kip Rithner

Greenland Halos. Photo: Ed Stockard

Comments (0) Sep 12 2011

Laura Lukes, teacher and arctic adventurer! Photo: Laura Lukes

For science and geology teacher Laura Lukes, witnessing the moment a student’s face lights up when a new discovery is made or a confounding problem is finally solved is one of the most rewarding moments of teaching. And this summer Lukes experienced those moments time and time again with an international group of two-dozen students at the Kangerlussuaq Field School in
Greenland.

2011 marked the summer field school program’s inaugural semester. For Lukes, it was the culmination of a year of hard work that began as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Polar Programs. While a fellow at NSF, she took the U.S. lead role on the Joint Science Education Project (JSEP). Her mission: to help organize a field school to bring together students and scientists from the U.S., Greenland and Denmark for hands-on scientific and cultural experiences.

“I really love the ‘aha moments’ where somebody finally understands something or learns something and it completely changes the way they feel,” Lukes said. “To me those are the best moments and with programs like JSEP, you have those moments constantly.”

The JSEP group puts their map-reading skills to the test. Photo by Hans Christian Sivertsen

Teaching Hands-on Science from Arizona to the Arctic

Before joining NSF, Lukes taught science and geology at a community college and high school in Scottsdale, Arizona where she first started coming up with ideas to take science from the textbook to the field. One of those initial ideas was a museum of minerals featuring displays tied to materials the high school students were studying in the classroom.

Lukes noticed there were several stock science samples from previous teachers collecting dust in storage. Since builders had just finished a new addition to the high school, Lukes had a bit of an “aha moment” herself. She and some students quickly got to work planning and building the mineral museum exhibits together.

“Although I’m no longer with the school, the long-term idea was for the students to help create rotating displays for the museum.  It would be like a class project for them,” Lukes explained.

A Door to Teaching in the Arctic

After five years as a teacher in Scottsdale, Lukes applied for, and was awarded, the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship that started her on a path to the Arctic. The opportunity to develop the fledgling Greenland field school piqued her interest because she recognized the value of field research experience in a young person’s life and thought the JSEP field school could be a huge success.

“From talking with scientists over the years, I’ve informally figured out that a lot of them have had some sort of field or research experience themselves early on and that’s what got them interested in it [science/research],” Lukes said.

Over the course of the next year, Lukes teamed with other teachers and scientists to create a unique educational opportunity for high school students around the county and the world. Not only would her experiences in Greenland change the lives of the field school students, but it would open her eyes to a whole new world of interests.

On Their Way

A 2010 planning trip to Greenland was Lukes’ first time in the Arctic. Just figuring out what to pack was an eye-opening experience. By the time late June 2011 rolled around, Lukes and 24 high school students were boarding planes for the tiny settlement of Kangerlussuaq in western Greenland.

Laura Lukes (far right) and some of the field school students are all smiles. Photo: Laura Lukes

Not Your Ordinary School Days

Lukes and her colleagues organized the field school so that the students would experience every step in the scientific process—from brain-storming project ideas and organizing data collection outings to analyzing data and presenting their findings. The students worked in research teams to get the feel for what it’s like to collaborate with people from different countries, backgrounds and interests.

“The students came up with the idea for their own projects. The teacher really served as a guide for their own exploration, meaning I helped them stay focused and instructed them on how to do research properly. But the students really drove the questions and how they were going to collect data to answer them,” Lukes said.

Along the journey several scientists already in the area collecting data stopped by to teach the next generation of scientists a thing or two.  Visiting scientists from various universities and agencies, including the Danish Meteorological Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, presented their research and invited the field school participants out for data collection field trips or back to their field research site for a tour.

Research scientist Julia Bradley-Cook (a Fellow in an NSF-funded interdisciplinary, graduate research program in polar studies called IGERT) gives the JSEP students a lesson on how to measure carbon dioxide in soil. Photo: Taylor Estabrooks

Two unexpected visitors were a particular thrill for the Danish and Greenlandic students. A change in the day’s flight schedule allowed the Danish minister of science and Greenland’s minister of education to pay a visit to the field school. “They happened to be stuck in Kangerlussuaq for a while so they stopped by to hear the students’ presentations! So the students really got a quality experience,” Lukes said.

Surprise! Denmark's Minister of Science (left) stops by to listen to student presentations. Photo: Laura Lukes

Teaching (and Learning) More Than Science

The once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring students from three very different cultures together was a big part of the field school experience. Lukes and the students were in a camp-like setting for roughly four weeks.

“Personally for me, the most meaningful moments were talking with the Greenlandic students and having them start conversations about their culture and watching them get excited about talking about their culture,” Lukes said. She recalled them being very shy at first, but as time wore on they came out of their shells.

Now, Lukes still keeps in touch with many of her students. Two of the students from the U.S. recently started their first year of college and decided to choose engineering majors as a result of their experiences at the field school. Still other students are presenting their findings at professional conferences—the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union—this fall and winter.

And what’s next for Lukes? The sky’s the limit. She is currently working on her doctorate at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. In between classes she still finds time to teach an online course at a community college in Arizona. She plans to remain involved and continue to grow the JSEP field school program now and in the future.

“Regardless of where I end up, I feel really passionate about student research experiences in the field and I really believe in developing this program and showing the evidence part of why these types of programs are so important.”

Here’s to great teachers!

To learn more about the Kangerlussuaq Field School and check out Lukes’ daily blog, visit: http://www.polartrec.com/expeditions/greenland-education-tour-2011. –Alicia Clarke

Comments (0) Sep 06 2011

2011 PolarTREC orientation participants pose for a group photo after dinner. Photo courtesy of Mike League

During the last week in February, thirteen educators from across the United States convened in Fairbanks, Alaska, to participate in the 2011 PolarTREC Orientation and ShareFair. The annual orientation is the kick off for this rigorous and rewarding National Science Foundation-funded professional development opportunity. Now in its fifth year, PolarTREC improves teacher content knowledge and instructional practices through intensive two-to-eight-week research experiences in the polar regions. While working closely with polar scientists across many scientific disciplines, PolarTREC teachers share information about polar science and the polar regions with their students and communities.

National Science Foundation Einstein Fellow, Laura Lukes tries a reindeer antler on for size at the UAF Reindeer Research Station. Photo courtesy of Janet Warburton

Orientation events included presentations from ARCUS staff who described the PolarTREC program, requirements, and technology. Three PolarTREC alumni and one past PolarTREC researcher attended the orientation to share their experiences and words of wisdom with newly selected teachers.

University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, Katey Walter Anthony, clears snow from a small pond to try to find methane bubbles trapped in the ice. Photo courtesy of Zeb Polly

A large part of orientation is preparing teachers for the logistical situations unique to the polar regions. Robbie Score from CPS and Roy Stehle from SRI both attended to ensure teachers had a good understanding of typical procedures and the use of satellite phones. Several additional PolarTREC alumni, researchers, and other experts joined the orientation in-person and virtually to present on their areas of expertise.

ARCUS Website Developer Ronnie Owens helps a small group of teachers learn how to post journal entries to the PolarTREC website. Photo courtesy of Zeb Polly

During the orientation’s communication technology training, teachers learned to post online journals, complete with photos and video, from their field camps and stations. Participants also listened to presentations and discussed ideas for sharing the PolarTREC experience with their classrooms, schools, and communities. Between intensive training and hands-on work sessions the whole group also got outside, explored Fairbanks, and learned a little about the Arctic.

Field trips included a visit to the University of Alaska’s (UAF) Museum of the North, the UAF Reindeer Research Program, the World Ice Art Championships, and a visit to a nearby thermokarst pond where Katey Anthony Walter discussed the role of methane in a warming arctic. Teachers also visited the CPS warehouse where Polar Field Service’s Matt Irinaga performed his popular “dressing for work in the Arctic” fashion show.

Matt Irinaga actively describes methods for dressing to work in the Arctic. Photo courtesy of Mike League

Despite the long days, many teachers expressed that the PolarTREC orientation and ShareFair was one of the best professional development workshops they had experienced. At the end of the week they felt well-prepared and enthusiastic about sharing their upcoming experiences.

PolarTREC teachers take photos and record videos as they feed lichen to the reindeer at the UAF Reindeer Research Station. Photo courtesy of Janet Warburton

PolarTREC teachers venturing into the Arctic this year include John Wood, who worked with Susan Natali (University of Florida) studying carbon balance in Healy, Alaska; and Mike Lampert, who is now based at the Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory in Norway with researchers from Iowa State Unversity. Paula Dell is spending April to early June in the Antarctic studying ice fish with Kristin O’Brien from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

In coming events, Jim Pottinger will soon return to Greenland to work with Koni Steffen (University of Colorado) at Swiss Camp, while Jim Miller will visit Barrow, Alaska in June to study microbial activity in thawing permafrost  with David Lipson of San Diego State University.

Teacher expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic will be ongoing throughout the year.

Comments (0) May 03 2011

A Chukotkan family sitting down to enjoy a meat sampler (aged walrus, aged seal, whale skin fat) with fermented seal oil (in a cup to the left of the tray) being used as dipping sauce. Photo: Sveta Yamin-Pasternak

While processing backyard chickens last summer, Sveta Yamin-Pasternak thought how nice it would be to bury those fresh carcasses in the ground and let microorganisms preserve her food the easy way. When the time was right, she could dig up the fermented fowl and enjoy them.

Though she instead decided to use a freezer for her chickens, Yamin-Pasternak is a student of the “tastefully rotten” foods of people who live in far-east Russia. She admires the simpler, if smellier, way of doing things.

Originally from Belarus, Yamin-Pasternak now lives in Alaska, but has traveled for the last decade to villages in Chukotka, the part of Russia that rubs noses with Alaska’s Seward Peninsula. There, the anthropologist studied a return to fermented food preparation. She recently gave a talk at the University of Alaska Fairbanks detailing her “marvelous stinky path.”

For ages, native peoples of northern Russian and the Arctic have included some partially decomposed foods in their diet. One example from the west coast of Alaska is “stink flipper,” the paw of a bearded seal buried in the tundra and later retrieved and eaten when it has attained the proper level of rottenness, a measurement learned from experience.

Yamin-Pasternak described how these foods had waned in popularity in Russia’s far east during the height of the Soviet regime. Government-sponsored boarding schools in the villages featured menus similar to those in central Russia.

“There was lots of pasta, sweetened condensed milk and sausages (rather than marine mammals and reindeer),” Yamin-Pasternak said. During the peak of Soviet control, government officials made it illegal for hunters to go out on the ocean before first signing in with border guards on the coast—a law that still exists.

“(Government decision makers) didn’t regard Native foods as food,” Yamin-Pasternak said.

The change in diet that came with the powerful Soviet regime was hard for some people to stomach, Yamin-Pasternak said.

“Rice and porridge and bread didn’t satisfy their need to feel full,” she said. “They needed certain foods, like seal oil and whale skin fat (known in Alaska as maktak), to quench their hunger.”

People still ate foods like fermented walrus meat, but they partook on the sly. Things began to change when the carbohydrate-rich staples of the regime diet became hard to find during the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Village stores that supplied the sweetened condensed milk lost their government subsidies. The shelves went empty, forcing villagers to rely more on subsistence foods. There began a “rotten renaissance,” Yamin-Pasternak said.

“The generation gaps created by the Soviet system started to break down. People were going back to their grandparents, asking how to prepare (the ‘tastefully rotten’ foods).”

When she visits the Chukotka villages today, Yamin-Pasternak knows when she’s around walrus flipper fermented in a bag made of bearded seal skin (“it does not do this talk justice not to smell it,”), and she knows which dipping bowl is full of seal oil and which contains the reindeer blood. She can partake in some of the fermented foods, but said she can’t get past her gag reflex with others, and has noticed the same reaction in some of the younger generations of the Chukotka Yupik and Chukchi, raised with more Russified tastes. She thinks that, over time, she could adapt to even the most fragrant menu items, because she has seen so many people in the villages grow to love the foods of their ancestors.

“It really illuminates the power of socialization,” she said. “Food practices are learned.”  —Ned Rozell

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.

Comments (0) Mar 09 2011

Part of the 2010 UW Clean Snowmobile Challenge Team. All photos from the University of Wisconsin Snowmobile Team website

We recently spoke with Jay Meldrum, Director of the Keweenaw Research Center at Michigan Technical University, about the annual Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) in Houghton Michigan, and the conversation left us wanting to know more about what it’s like to participate in the engineering contest.

To find out more, we talked with Ethan Brodsky who participated in the Clean Snowmobile Challenge while a graduate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison during the early 2000s. Now a staff scientist in radiology and medical imaging at his alma mater, Brodsky became the “unofficial advisor” (Glenn Bower is the official advisor)  to the school’s CSC team in 2008. He offers a unique perspective on the past, present, and future of the Society of Automotive Engineers Clean Snowmobile Challenge competition.

Ethan Brodsky and the University of Wisconsin zero emissions snowmobile, the Silent BuckEV, at Summit Station.

“Participating in these student vehicle competitions was one of the highlights of my college career,” relates Brodsky. “Each event culminates in a week-long competition that is exhilarating like nothing else I’ve experienced. It’s a sleep-deprived rush that can only end in two ways: either you win and it was all worth it, or somebody else does, and those weeks of late nights in the garage were all wasted.”

Brodsky said most students participate as an extracurricular activity out of personal interest, although some receive independent study credit. Brodsky became the pseudo-advisor to UW’s Clean Snowmobile Challenge team in graduate school. The team consists of about 15 students who spend the year tweaking snowmobile engines to reduce emissions without sacrificing performance in preparation for the competition.

“Most students do it a couple of years for fun or as a resume builder or to help get into grad school,” explains Brodsky. “But some people really get into the leadership roles and stick around for their entire college career.”

Today Brodsky is one of UW’s CSC team advisors who has helped lead the team to championships for gas-powered snowmobiles in 2009 and 2010. The zero-emissions snowmobile won the 2008, 2009, and 2010 competitions.

The Silent BuckEV at competition in the Zero Emissions category of the Clean Snowmobile Challenge.

“The UW College of Engineering has had a tradition of excellence across our automotive student design projects dating back over a decade. We’ve won five hybrid vehicle competitions, taken home seven first-place trophies at the CSC, and won a number of other national SAE events.  A lot of the credit goes to Dr. Glenn Bower, the senior student vehicle projects advisor—his dedication to the projects and the students is immeasurable. He expects a lot from everyone and drives the students to do their best.

In 2008 Brodsky was invited to bring the winning zero emissions snowmobile to Summit Station, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research station on Greenland’s ice sheet summit, where it would be rotated into the station’s snowmobile fleet (The NSF has supported the zero-emissions competition for years, most recently through this NSF grant.  It was a whirlwind trip—three days in which he tested the snowmobile in the harsh Greenland environment. At Summit, Brodsky did a lot of test-driving. He also taught Summit staffers to run, handle, and maintain the retrofitted machine. In all, the staff learned how to take the snowmobile apart and put it back together, how to charge the 350 volt batteries and keep them running, and how to download data (how many miles driven) from the attached data logger. In 2009, UW again loaned its winning snowmobile to Summit Station, where it was used all summer.

“Greenland was the most other-worldly place I’ve ever been,” says Brodsky. “Just the white landscape as far as I could see against the blue sky.  It was a very lonely-feeling place, far from everything, very alien. It was an awesome trip!”

Looking ahead, Brodsky says he would like to see opportunity for riskier design in future Clean Snowmobile Challenges. When the competition began in 2000, students’ snowmobiles were better than anything sold in the market. In the interim, snowmobile manufacturers have adopted myriad changes and cleaned up their machines. Meanwhile, the rules of competition have changed very little in the last 10 years. Teams are allowed only to alter the engine but Brodsky says this is somewhat limiting now in terms of innovation as many technologies developed in the last decade may not yet be applied to competition designs.

The UW team prepares battery packs.

So, Brodsky says in the meantime, his zero-emissions team will focus on trying to build a more robust snowmobile that’s more useful in Greenland and, hopefully, Antarctica. The next step, Brodsky says, is to develop a better battery management system with batteries that can run all the way down and that can better handle Greenland’s cold temperatures.  He would also like to develop battery packs that can last five years. In any case, he’s still having fun.

“It’s funny—because of these projects, my friends seem to get younger and younger. Or, I guess I’m just getting old. We still stay up all night working together on snowmobile designs. It was the most exciting part of my college experience and of my life in general.”—Marcy Davis

For more, visit the Clean Snowmobile Challenge website.

Comments (0) Mar 01 2011

Testing 1,2,3....Natalie Boelman does a sound (recording) check after setting up the first acoustic monitoring station. All photos by Natalie Boelman.

Satellite images show that since the early 1980s Arctic North America has been “greening.” To date, most research on the causes and effects of greening have dealt with how vegetation changes affect energy budgets and how nutrients like carbon and nitrogen cycle between plants and soil. How vegetation changes influence the distribution of arctic animals and birds is less well-understood, but Ecosystem Ecologist Natalie Boelman (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University) along with colleagues Laura Gough (University of Texas at Arlington), and John Wingfield (University of California, Davis) want to change this, with NSF support, by learning more about arctic phenology—how climate warming-induced changes to tundra vegetation and earlier snowmelt dates affect the reproductive success of migratory songbirds.

Field Technician Carol Moulton and graduate student Matthew Rich haul a tripod across the tundra.

“Our overall goal is to characterize the interactions between tundra vegetation and migratory songbirds in habitats that differ in shrub dominance over five consecutive growing seasons that will differ in timing of snow melt and severity of weather events,” explains Boelman. “I think that it’s important for readers to know that we are establishing a baseline to which future vegetation-songbird interactions can be compared, for a system in which such data are virtually non-existent. This baseline will be critical to our ability to measure how migratory songbirds are being, and will continue to be, impacted by warming-induced changes in shrub cover and changing seasonality. We are testing a series of predictions related to songbird populations and communities and their interactions with vegetation and insects, to begin to untangle the complex relationships among these groups in the context of a changing climate.”

Boelman and colleagues focus on two bird species: the Lapland longspur and the White-crowned sparrow. Both species are songbirds, included in a group of more than 4000 species having specific and often elaborate bird songs which communicate territorial and mating information. Both species migrate to the Arctic each summer to breed—the longspur from the central North America and the sparrow from southern North America, and even Mexico.

Setting up a "mist net" to catch birds. Once the birds were caught, the team took blood samples and made measurements to assess their overall condition (then they let them go).

“While the White-crowned sparrow builds its nest in shrub vegetation, the Lapland longspur selects non-shrubby, open tundra for its nest. We wanted to explore how these two species, with contrasting nesting requirements, are each going to be impacted by increasing shrub cover on the tundra.”

Taking a blood sample from a White-crowned sparrow.

In 2010, the team based out of Toolik Field Station and worked in nearby Atigun Valley, near Imnavait Creek and just south of Happy Valley. Boelman’s team set up four experimental field sites, each with a “shrub plot” and an “open plot.” They also installed weather stations and acoustic monitoring stations at each site and sampled flora and fauna along 100 m transects weekly, between mid-May and the end of July.

Listen to a songbird recording here

Teams of 10 or so, including Principal Investigators, undergraduate and graduate students rotated in and out during the summer. Each day the entire crew would visit one or two field sites. At each they completed a long list of tasks. Boelman says, “We’d typically divide and conquer, helping each other out when need be, before heading back to camp.”

Jesse Krause catches insects using the "sweep netting" method.

Daily field chores included:
• Maintenance of weather, snow cover, and acoustic monitoring stations
• Vegetation measurements including species makeup and cover, berry and catkin abundance
• Collection of ground and flying insects
• Bird-specific measurements such as census counts, nest locating, blood sampling, and body condition assessment

Acoustic monitoring stations included a microphone set to record sound in the frequency range of 140-18,000 Hz. The team set stations to turn on four times a day – at 2, 6, and 9a.m. and 6p.m.—and record whatever was making noise (hopefully, the Lapland longspur and/or the White-crowned sparrow as well as other songbirds). Recordings helped the scientists track the presence (or absence) and numbers of the migratory songbirds as well as their activity levels from when the birds arrive on the tundra in mid-May until their southward migration in the fall.

Stations also included a camera for monitoring snow cover during the melt period between spring and summer, as well as weather sensors which measure and record temperature, wind speed and direction and precipitation. All equipment was assembled on large tripods at Toolik Field Station and driven to the field sites, which were located along a short latitudinal gradient along the Dalton Highway. From the drop off points, the team carried or dragged the tripods using a sled over the tundra to the field sites. Tripod bases were left to spend the winter on the tundra, but rented monitoring equipment will be re-installed each field season.

Sometimes getting tripods to their site is challenging.

“Because we are interested in how changing arctic seasonality is impacting migratory songbirds, we will track these parameters for five consecutive years, so that we can better understand their responses to inter-annual variability in spring snow-melt timing,” says Boelman. “Since snowmelt has been found to be occurring earlier as a result of arctic warming, their response to variation in snowmelt date from one year to the next will provide us with important hints as to how we should expect songbirds to respond to increasingly earlier spring snow melt dates.”

Getting ready to record plant species using a "percent cover" grid.

Boelman and her colleagues will be working with two teachers from Fairbanks, Alaska (who spent two weeks in June working with scientists at Toolik Field Station) and educational staff from the Alaska Bird Observatory to develop educational materials that meet science curricula standards for high school students. They will also set up a long-term monitoring site in Fairbanks where students will learn to follow the scientific protocols used in the Toolik-based field study.

The five-year study will mean a lot of time away from home, but Boelman clearly enjoys her field work and colleagues.

“Leaving my husband and children for weeks at a time is the hardest challenge for me. At the same time, it’s really great to get out of the Urban Jungle (aka New York City) and head up to the beauty of the Alaskan tundra to focus on nothing but tundra ecology,” she says. “It’s incredibly fascinating and inspiring to be up there, learning and improving my understanding of the interconnectedness within the ecosystem. To boot, I get to do all this in collaboration with a very knowledgeable and friendly assemblage of researchers, students, support staff and friends. Finally, having the luxury of working out of and living at the Toolik Field Station is something that any Arctic field ecologist can certainly appreciate, and I for one certainly do!”—Marcy Davis

For more information and photos from the 2010 field season, visit the project website.

Comments (1) Feb 23 2011

The Virtual Zooarchaeology of the Arctic Project (VZAP) is an online archive of hundreds interactive of 3D and 2D images of animal bones from the Arctic. This 3D model of a musk ox skull reveals useful details for archaeologists, students and others who may not have physical access to such bone collections. Image rendered by Nicholas Clement, VZAP, Idaho Virtualization Laboratory (IVL), ISU 2009

The Internet can send information from one hemisphere to another in a matter of seconds.  It can connect people thousands of miles away just as fast. Now there is an online resource that can connect scientists, students and educators with thousands of 3D images of animal bones from all over the North American Arctic and Greenland. 

The Virtual Zooarchaeology of the Arctic Project, or VZAP, is the brainchild of Idaho State University’s (ISU) Herbert Maschner and Matthew Betts from the Canadian Museum of Civilization. VZAP is a fully interactive online tool that lets users examine the skeletal anatomies of more than 128 different arctic taxa, including fish, birds, and major terrestrial and marine mammals. 

“It’s very hard to get a good comparative collection if you don’t already have it. That meant that this [comparative] science was only available to a very limited number of people,” Maschner said. “Further, people across the Arctic today—local and indigenous peoples—are finding animal bones all over the place and want to identify them, but have no place to do it. In an attempt to democratize science and make this kind of data available to anyone who wants to do it, we designed VZAP as a virtual, three-dimensional reference collection.”

Nicholas Clement, a VZAP team member, creates a seamless, detailed 3D model from hundreds of scans and high-resolution photos that are stitched together using special software. Photo: Robert Schlader, VZAP, IVL, ISU 2009

Maschner and Betts’ own limited access to animal bone collections is what sparked the idea for VZAP. While collaborating on a large archaeology project from the Eastern Aleutian Islands it became apparent specimens and resources were limited and forced them to spend quite a bit of time and research funds traveling to other museums to work with their reference collections. “The project was born out of frustration with the lack of reference materials to conduct our own research—we had a crucial need for a virtual aid, and we knew that many of our colleagues did as well,” Betts said. 

From that point, and with funding from the National Science Foundation, the two developed a plan to make use of ISU’s state-of-the art 3D scanning facility to bring arctic zooarchaeology to the masses. 

Building an Online Image Archive  

In order to make VZAP a reality, Maschner and Betts had to tap zooarchaeological resources housed in museums across the U.S. and Canada. Specimens from the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, the Idaho Museum of Natural History and the Canadian Museum of Civilization are all included in the VZAP archive. 

Selecting samples and borrowing them from partnering institutions was only the first step. The researchers had to determine how best to serve the materials online. Initially, the pair worked with 2D images, but quickly realized that more detail was necessary. They then partnered with Corey Schou of the Informatics Research Institute at Idaho State University to develop techniques to present detail rich 3D images and models in a searchable on-line environment. 

“Once we had teamed with Corey and discovered what he could do to deliver our images and models over the web, we knew we had something that was groundbreaking,” Betts said. 

Shown here is a range of skulls, from animal to human, which can be examined at the click of a button. Image rendered by Nicholas Clement, VZAP, IVL, ISU 2008

A 3D scanner that looks much like an old camera is used to scan specimens from multiple angles and directions. Hundreds of high-resolution photographs are also taken to overlay on the scanned images if necessary. From there, the scans and photos are stitched together to create one, seamless 3D image. 

Scanning and image processing doesn’t always occur at ISU’s scanning facility. The VZAP team can take the equipment to the specimen if needed. This is especially helpful when dealing with large animal bones. “I just sent a crew to Port Townsend, Washington, where they had an entire orca skeleton,” Maschner said. “It was huge. It took them a week to scan the orca, but they did the whole thing.” 

Once the images are online, VZAP users have a number of custom analytical tools at their disposal.  The website allows users to simultaneously stream hundreds of digital images in an interactive image wall, generate didactic models and view dynamic 2D and 3D images. 

“VZAP is designed to ‘fill in the gaps’ in the many limited collections that exist, and can be used to quickly sort through remains prior to a final comparison against a real collection. In the field, VZAP may be the only comprehensive source available for the study of a collection,” Betts said. 

As the project enters phase II, Maschner and Betts are making adjustments and gathering user feedback. They also are actively thinking about and perusing the next steps in this living, evolving project.  

Users can view and manipulate bone remains from top museums in North America. Here is a selection of bones from a sea lion displayed next to each other. Image rendered by Nicholas Clement, VZAP, IVL, ISU 2009

Virtual Science in Action

So far, VZAP users are very pleased and the image archive is reaching audiences that Maschner and Betts never expected. Not only are scientists using the software for research purposes, VZAP is proving to be an effective teaching tool in universities across the country. 

“The software is currently only in beta form and it is already being used by researchers around the world. One of the most surprising aspects of the project is its adoption in classrooms, where professors are using the 3D models to teach comparative skeletal anatomy. We know that students are using it at home to study, and that is a very encouraging sign that we have produced something that is accessible. The fact that it is already being used, both by researchers and students, proves its value to us,” Betts said.

As Phase II of the project presses forward, the team hopes to redevelop the user interface, incorporating new features, and add an additional 130 or more new species. The arctic portion of the collection is scheduled for completion by the end of 2012. And it doesn’t stop there. VZAP is a project with great potential for future growth through existing and new collaborations.

“My vision for VZAP is a data repository, a place where scientists can do analysis on any collection in the world,” Maschner said.

Visit http://vzap.iri.isu.edu/  to try VZAP for yourself. –Alicia Clarke

Comments (0) Feb 14 2011