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

Drawings and renderings by The Glosten Associates

Assembly of Alaska’s new research vessel, the R/V Sikuliaq (see-KOO-lee-auk), is in full swing. The ship, owned by the National Science Foundation, will be operated by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, as part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System. The Sikuliaq is under construction at Marinette Marine Corporation’s shipyard in Marinette, Wisconsin. Following a summer 2012 launch, the vessel will undergo a series of sea trials before transport through the St. Lawrence Seaway, through the Panama Canal, and north to Seward, Alaska, which will become the vessel’s home port. Science operations are scheduled to begin in 2014 and will focus on the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Arctic Ocean.

The R/V Sikuliaq's hull model at Marinette Marine Corporation's shipyard. All photos http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/arrv/

An initial design collaboration (between UAF, Seattle’s The Glosten Associates, naval architects, Guido Perla and Associates, and the Marinette Corporation) identified science needs in context of engineering constraints. Next, the Marinette Corporation created full-scale mock-ups of the hull, bridge, main laboratories, the ADA-compliant stateroom, and aft science control room. The models allowed for troubleshooting unforeseen design and engineering issues and resulted in a six-foot addition to the ship’s mid-section in order to accommodate technical equipment and add deck space.

A life-size mock-up of the science lab.

Ship fabrication is modular. Sections are built separately and pieced together in the shipyard.

On April 11, 2011, Marinette hosted the Sikuliaq’s keel-laying ceremony. The keel is a large steel beam around which the hull of the ship is constructed. Traditionally, when the keel is placed in the construction cradle, a ceremony is held to commemorate the start of construction and to recognize a ship sponsor.

Photos from the R/V Sikuliaq keel-laying ceremony http://www.youtube.com/user/ARRVUAF

More than 80 people attended the Sikuliaq keel-laying ceremony, including UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers, Marinette Marine Corporation CEO Richard McCreary, Congressman Reid Ribble of Wisconsin, State Senator Dave Hansen, and David Conover, NSF Ocean Sciences Division Director. Fanfare centered on recognition of the Sikuliaq’s co-sponsors, UAF School of Fisheries dean emeritus, Vera Alexander, and professor emeritus, Robert Elsner. Ship sponsors are chosen based on their willingness to support the ship, metaphorically speaking. In the Sikuliaq’s case, Alexander and Elsner both had careers in arctic research and have been active in planning for an Alaska-based research vessel since the 1970s.

Following a number of speeches, Alexander and Elsner participated in the traditional welding ceremony wherein ship sponsors initial a steel plate that will later be affixed to the keel. For permanence, their initials are welded into the steel plate. A reception was held following the ceremony.

Stay tuned…

–Marcy Davis

Sikuliaq site: http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/arrv/

Comments (0) Aug 22 2011

Image of a well-preserved mummified stump at the Musk Ox River field site on Banks Island, Eocene age. Photo: Bill Hagopian

More than 45 million years ago, the area we know as the Arctic was saturated in carbon dioxide (roughly 1,200 parts per million). Scientists studying that time period agree that the region was dominated by lush deciduous forests and animals that require tropical environments—crocodiles, turtles—thrived in waters that now sustain polar bears.

Evidence of Coniferous Forests

Now scientists have found evidence that coniferous forests also grew in the region, and the fossils of those trees are providing important clues to the Arctic’s rainfall, climate, and general environment during the Eocene era, says Brian Schubert, a faculty researcher of geology at the University of Hawaii.

Bill Hagopian holds a 54 million year old tree trunk excavated from Ellesmere Island. Photo courtesy Brian Schubert

Schubert works closely with Dr. Hope Jahren, also of the University of Hawaii, researching the forests of the Eocene. Their collaborators include Jaelyn Eberle (University of Colorado) and Leonel Sternberg (University of Miami).

“Seeing evidence for evergreen forests means we can determine seasonal precipitation with more specificity than we could by sampling deciduous trees,” says Schubert.

Well-preserved wood from Banks Island, Musk Ox River field site. Photo: Bill Hagopian

Seeing the Tree Rings

Evidence for evergreen trees comes from high-resolution carbon isotope measurements across fossil tree rings, which differ greatly between deciduous and evergreen species. The within-ring isotopic pattern measured in deciduous trees reflects a switchover from stored carbon at the beginning of the growing season (carbon used to start leaf production) to actively photosynthesized carbon, once the leaf canopy is mature. Because evergreen trees keep their leaves year-round, their uptake of carbon is related to climate, rather than a change in their carbon pool.

An Ancient Record of Climate Change

In short, the evergreen forests provide a comprehensive record of climate change, and Schubert and his team are analyzing samples at a micron level to get the most thorough view yet of the Eocene climate. Specifically, the team slices mummified wood with a razor blade into tiny pieces (between 30-100 microns thick). Within a single tree ring, they make dozens of isotopic measurements.

“The variability within rings is so great,” says Schubert. “The pattern is quite distinct.”

Results Question Status Quo

This distinctive pattern helps develop for the team a picture of the climate during the Eocene. And their results have challenged the conventional wisdom of the Arctic climate during the Eocene.

Whereas previously climate was believed to resemble the Pacific Northwest—dry summers and wet winters—Schubert and his colleagues believe they have evidence which points to wet summers and dry winters.

Ancient Climate Similar to Modern-Day East Asia

“The interpretation from mean annual conditions described an environment similar to the Pacific Northwest,” Schubert says. “The problem with that is in the winter in the Arctic there is complete darkness and in the summer you have photosynthesis. Our model for the seasonal precipitation shows it was wetter in the summer and drier in the winter, which yielded the maximum amount of sunlight and precipitation at the same time.”

Essentially, their research suggests that some 50 million years ago, the Arctic resembled East Asia.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions for scientists. How did so much moisture get to such high latitudes during the summer? What purpose did the evergreen forests serve? (Scientists hypothesize they provided a food source for non-migratory mammals). How did the climate change over the course of the Eocene, an approximately 20 million-year period?

“Getting the grasp of time is always a difficult thing,” says Schubert. “When you think about how different the climate was then, it’s like studying a whole different planet.”

Arctic Field Work

For two years, the researchers have sampled forests in the eastern High Arctic (Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere Island, Canada) and the western High Arctic (Banks Island, Canada). This summer a field crew will sample forests near Anchorage, AK.

The team will collect and excavate fossils, catalog their samples, then send them to the lab for preservation. After that is completed, they will begin their analysis.

Ultimately, they hope to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how the Arctic has changed due to rising and falling carbon dioxide levels, says Schubert.

“This will give us a better picture of what happened the last time in earth’s history when we had CO2 levels that are similar to the levels that are forecasted for the future,” he says.  —Rachel Walker

Comments (1) Mar 27 2011

Many school children never see the night sky, let alone the magical auroras on display at the Earth's poles. Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears' unit Polar Patterns explores day and night, seasons, temperature, and auroras. Photo: Jason Cullis, National Science Foundation

The online magazine Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears seeks to address Americans’ lack of knowledge about the Earth’s polar regions by providing elementary school teachers with tools to teach about these cold, wild places in a fun, interactive way that combines science with literacy, mathematics, art and social studies.

“As part of the International Polar Year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) was looking for proposals designed to enhance our understanding of the Earth’s polar regions,” says Jessica Fries-Gaither, the project director for Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears. “ Kim Lightle [the director of Digital Libraries in the College of Education and Human Ecology at the Ohio State University] decided to try to secure some of this funding to help develop curricula for elementary school teachers to use to educate their students about polar science.

“She received funding for a 20-issue online magazine, and I was hired to be the project director, which equates to being the editor-in-chief for a paper magazine. I did everything from writing articles to overseeing layout and working with contributors.”

International Polar Year Project

Icebergs factor into our collective lore—everyone knows they sank the Titanic and we only see their tips for example—but for children, these sculpted towers of ice remain outside the realm of their imagination. Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears examines icebergs within the larger context of water, ice and snow. Photo: Kris Kuenning, National Science Foundation

Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears was just one of more than 200 projects that came out of the International Polar Year (IPY), which ran from March 2007 to March 2009. The effort, organized through the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization, brought together efforts from thousands of scientists representing more than 60 countries and was the fourth IPY to be held following celebrations in 1882-83, 1932-33, and 1957-58.

Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears was produced at Ohio State University but relies heavily on the findings of NFS-supported scientific research in both the Arctic and Antarctica.

From the classroom to the edit room

Fries-Gaither was a schoolteacher in Anchorage before she came to work for Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears. She said living in Alaska meant she knew something about the Arctic, but her own knowledge was limited. How limited she did not realize until she delved into the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears project.

“Armchair” exploration

“I knew better than to misplace penguins, but I honestly didn’t know a lot. It was wonderful to have three years to explore the subject,” she said. “There is so much amazing science going on and exciting stuff to do with children to help them understand it.”

Discovering a new world

She said she remembered the sense of wonder and excitement she felt as she began to understand the immense scale of things in the Arctic and Antarctica.

“I’m awed to think about icebergs the size of states floating around on the ocean,” she said. “And the fact that some of the melt ponds on the Greenland ice sheet can drain in a matter of days in rushes of water that are comparable to Niagara Falls. It’s just amazing.”

Inspiring elementary students

The iconic Emperor penguin symbolizes Antarctica for many Americans raised on movies, National Geographic and Disney. Photo: Robyn Wasserman, National Science Foundation

“My hope is that through Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, schoolchildren will experience this same kind of wonder and awe as they learn more about our incredible planet,” Fries-Gaither said.

The website is vast, linking together original articles and curriculum guidelines with activities, links to online resources, photography, podcasts, reading lists, videos, and a blog for the exchange of ideas and feedback. The site also includes a matrix illustrating how the magazine’s curriculum can be used to support National Science Education Standards.

“Teachers are pretty bound by state regulations and national standards,” Fries-Gaither said. “We wanted to make sure the magazine wasn’t just an add on—that it also brought value to the classroom experience and reinforced educational standards. We wanted to provide teachers with something fun they could do with their students while still supporting the basic concepts we knew they had to teach.”

Oceans explained

 An example of the magazine’s diverse approach is the unit on oceans. One activity involves creating a life-sized mural of an ocean habitat and its inhabitants to help children understand what lies beneath the sea. Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears suggests different ways to accomplish this task, such as taking the kids outside and letting them draw with chalk on the playground so they can create a life-sized blue whale or having them paint a scaled rendition of their ocean scene on sheets of butcher paper that can be mounted on the classroom walls.

Sounds straightforward enough, but as you delve into Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears’ plan for the unit, you begin to find all sorts of hidden topics that can be addressed through the exercise. Teachers can explore the mathematical concept of scale; they can talk about underwater environments and habitats, or oceanic currents and the life they support; and the children get to explore their artistic creativity as well as develop social skills by working together as a team to complete the project.

From reading to action

 Fries-Gaither and the contributors to Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears have taken the broad topic of the Arctic and Antarctica and used it as a jumping off point to explore a wide variety of subjects in a way that integrates the work of countless scientists, artists, writers, and educators.  The resulting online magazine feels like an intricate web, which is both its strength and its weakness. It’s easy to get pulled off in one direction—from the aurora to painting to Impressionism to the use of complementary colors for example—and find yourself a bit lost from the original intent of the article and a long way from the Earth’s polar regions.

All inclusive

 “If I were to do this over again,” Fries-Gaither said, “I might have pared back the amount of content we included. An online magazine is different from a print magazine. It can be easy to get lost as you move from page to page. We’re working with a graphic designer now to create a printable version of each issue of the magazine. We think it will be easier for teachers to flip through a real magazine—or at least a virtual magazine—to find something they can use and to get a sense of each unit as a whole. This magazine version will not contain everything we have on the website, but teachers can then go back online to get more details.”

The production team worked with a group of teachers during the website construction stage to get a sense of what was working and what was not, and to provide evaluations on how the curriculum affected their students.

Inspired students are good learners

“The two most noteworthy things I took from the feedback were that teachers were more likely to have students write about science after working with Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, and that third graders, in particular, were more likely to say they were good at science and to believe writing was important to science after going through our activities.”

A broad audience

Since the launching of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears in March 2008, the site has had more than 700,000 page views, with the monthly average falling between 20,000-30,000. October 2010 saw a sharp increase with close to 37,000 page views, something Fries-Gaither hopes indicates a growing audience rather than a one-month blip. She also says they have had a lot of positive feedback through the website’s blog and through personal conversations with teachers.

Embraced by teachers

For example, Erica Parker, a fourth grade teacher from Lander, Wyoming, said she was eager to experiment with using Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears in her classroom.

“Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is an incredible resource for teachers and one I will share with my colleagues. One thing that I’m beginning to see happen in elementary education is a push for expanded reading time by limiting or eliminating science and social studies curriculum. As educators many of us find this disheartening; science and social studies both provide real world reading for students. So, I was excited to see a focus on science and literacy on the site,” she said.

Continuing education

For those who are not immersed in polar field sciences, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is a great place to learn more. The website provides a wealth of fun facts, beautiful photography, videos, information and activities. For those who are intimately familiar with the subject, the website demonstrates a creative way to explore the world’s cold regions with kids, which can be a useful tool for helping your family and friends understand the allure of polar science and the strange addictive attraction the great, white empty spaces at the Earth’s poles seem to have for so many scientists, explorers, artists, writers, and people who just love wild, harsh and beautiful places.  -Molly Absolon

Comments (0) Jan 31 2011

PolarTREC teacher Jim Pottinger does the hokey-pokey at Summit Station. All photos: Jim Pottinger

“Sleeping in a tent in the Arctic was a new experience for me. Temperatures dipped below 0°F and the winds were consistently blowing against the tent.”– Jim Pottinger, 2010 PolarTREC teacher

Jim Pottinger enjoys cold weather, so living at Summit Station’s Tent City on the Greenland ice cap for a week was fine by him. Camping atop 3200 meters of ice was one of several new experiences for the Pennsylvania native who travelled to Greenland last summer as part of the PolarTREC Program. Pottinger’s team, which is led by PI Konrad Steffen (CIRES), travelled to Summit to maintain instrumentation for the NSF-funded BSRN – Compatible Irradiance Measurements and the Stable Boundary Layer

At Summit Station, Pottinger worked with Karl Schroff and Hansjoerg Frei (from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and Nikko Bayou (UC Boulder).

After a long day of shoveling snow Nikko Bayou reaches the APTU at last.

Their first task was to locate and retrieve an Automated Temperature Profiling Unit (APTU), which started its mission recording high altitude weather data in 2007.

“After a four-mile bone-chilling [snowmobile] ride, we arrived at the site. It was a beautiful location in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet. The sky was blue, the terrain was white and there was nothing as far as the eye could see,” Pottinger wrote in his August 14 journal.

They located the unit by GPS. Only two feet of the ten-foot tall APTU tripod was sticking up out of the snow. It took six hours and digging down about twenty feet before they freed the tripod and data logger using snowmobiles and ropes.

Elevating the Automatic Weather Station - turns out it looks tougher than it is.

The team’s next task was to elevate Summit’s AWS, one of eighteen such stations in Greenland. First, the scientists attached cable extensions to accommodate the station’s new height. Next, they erected a tripod over the station, attached a rope to the top of the AWS, and lifted the station ten feet while inserting an extension tube to the base. Once the station was secure, they removed the tripod and later verified data transmission. The entire data transmission process only took one hour!

Next, they dug a 140-centimeter deep snow pit next to the AWS. Pottinger recorded the pit’s snow structure, making notes of density, snow crystal shape and size, layer thickness and volume  every ten centimeters. These measurements will help ground-truth the AWS and ensure that sensors were working properly over the two previous years.

Pottinger becomes an old hand at snow pit measurements.

Pottinger also assisted in elevating and calibrating BSRN instrumentation and learned about ongoing NOAA weather experiments.

Pottinger’s visit coincided with Summit’s transition between seasonal crews. This meant a busy couple of days while winter preparations were made. Following a great end of season dinner, Pottinger spent his last night in the Big House and flew out with a jubilant summer crew the next morning.

Summer crew kicks back at the end of the season party at Lake Fergueson.

Pottinger, who has a background in geology, coordinates the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program at Gateway High School in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. He acts as an academic advisor, making sure students are on an academic path consistent with their post-secondary goals, and as a science teacher, giving periodic guest lectures in science classes.

Pottinger hopes to return to Greenland’s Swiss Camp next May with Steffen. He will again be involved in systems maintenance and hopes to learn more about how the collected data is being used in various science projects. In the meantime, he’s keeping busy sharing his experience with students, teachers and community. Pottinger hopes he can begin to correct some of the misconceptions people have about climate change, the Arctic, and the people who live there.—Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Jan 20 2011

Sergey Zimov surveys his Pleistocene Park, mammoth bones at his side. Photo: Arthur Max, Associated Press

 
Due to the current shortage of mammoths, Sergey also periodically takes matters into his own hands: He drives his Soviet [era] personnel carrier, which he describes as the equivalent to two male mammoths, through the forest. His only complaint about this substitution is that it does not produce any excrement, an essential component.—joint blog post for the NSF-funded Polaris Project by Anya Suslova, student, Yakutsk State University; and Tyler Llewellyn, student, Western Washington University. (Max Holmes, Woods Hole, PI.)

During the Pleistocene Epoch between about 10,000 and 2,000,000 years ago, nearly half the world’s land mass was covered with tundra-steppe, a cold, dry grassland spanning the distance between forest and desert ecosystems. In these grasslands lived large herbivore populations—mammoth, bison, and musk oxen. These behemoths naturally maintained the landscape through grazing, fertilizing, and tilling the soil with their hooves.

Pleistocene fauna thrived in open grasslands. Image: Mauricio Anton

But as the Pleistocene reached its end, the animals died off and less productive forest ecosystems took hold. Scientists have long maintained that climate change caused the die-off, but Russian scientist Sergey Zimov believes otherwise.

Sergey Zimov, who founded and directs the Northeast Science Station in Cherskiy in northeastern Siberia, believes the animals were overhunted, which led to extinction.  Just as human actions may be responsible for the steppe transformation, Zimov hopes human actions will return the landscape to its prehistoric state.

Specifically, since 1989 he has worked to restore the grassland ecosystem that existed in Siberia during the Pleistocene by eradicating larch trees and reintroducing the animals that thrived during Pleistocene time. Zimov hopes to transform more than 40,000 acres of forest and shrub land along the Kolyma River to grassland steppe.

Located 25 miles from the Northeast Science Station and surrounded by 150,000 acres of Siberian wilderness, Pleistocene Park is accessible only by boat in summer and snow vehicles in winter. The limited Park infrastructure includes a small cabin that houses two caretakers, a couple of storage outbuildings, and a personnel carrier.

Pleistocene Park grasslands. Photo: Erin Seybold

A potential benefit of grassland restoration across northern Siberia, Zimov says, is that it could prevent permafrost from thawing and the subsequent release of stored carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas, due to a warming climate. To help test this hypothesis at Pleistocene Park, Zimov constructed a 105-foot tower with instrumentation that takes constant methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor readings. In addition to Zimov’s own database, readings are fed into a global CO2 monitoring system maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Preventing this [global warming] scenario from happening could be facilitated by restoring Pleistocene-like conditions in which grasses and their root systems stabilize the soil. The albedo—or ability to reflect incoming sunlight skyward—of such ecosystems is high, so warming from solar radiation also is reduced,” Zimov wrote in a 2005 essay. “And with lots of herbivores present, much of the wintertime snow would be trampled, exposing the ground to colder temperatures that prevent ice from melting. All of this suggests that reconstructed grassland ecosystems, such as the ones we are working on in Pleistocene Park, could prevent permafrost from thawing and thereby mitigate some negative consequences of climate warming.”

It’s a gargantuan task. Using controlled burns and targeted bulldozing (simulating mammoths), Zimov clears larch trees and willow shrubs. The labor-intensive process allows sunlight and rainfall to reach grasses while returning nutrients to the poor soils.

Next come the megafauna – large animals typical of the Pleistocene Epoch. Large herbivores like mammoths, horses, moose, caribou, bison, and musk oxen kept grasslands healthy; when these animals devoured older grasses, new shoots could grow. These mammals deposited tons of dung, naturally fertilizing and reseeding the land throughout the year. They trampled trees and shrubs, stunting their growth, and cold winter months exposed the ground to the cold, which helped keep permafrost frozen.

Zimov has reintroduced species like the Yakutian horse, which is native to Siberia. Photo: Sergey Zimov

While some of the animals are extinct, Zimov has found the closest living relative to repopulate his emerging steppe. So far, he has successfully reintroduced small numbers of moose, musk ox, bison and Yakutian horses, a small, native breed well-adapted to harsh Siberian winters with the ability to locate vegetation under deep snow. Smaller mammals including hares, marmots, and squirrels have also been introduced.

Once populations stabilize, Zimov plans to bring in predators like wolves, bear, larynxes, and polar foxes to keep herbivore populations in check. Once the Park reaches proper animal densities, Zimov expects the ecosystem will maintain itself and flourish; the Russian will then begin expanding the park boundary.—Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Jan 18 2011

Alaska Marine Science Symposium

Marine scientists will meet in Anchorage to share results from research projects in the Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea, and Gulf of Alaska January 17-21, 2011. Through workshops, keynote speakers, luncheon events, and poster receptions and oral sessions, scientists will communicate a wide range of topics in ocean science including climate, marine birds and mammals, and socioeconomics.

The conference kicks off January 16 with the Alaska Marine Gala, a “blue tie” banquet and charity auction with a presentation by Joel Satore, National Geographic photographer, and music by Anchorage band H3.

Arctic Frontiers – Arctic Tipping Points

The Northern Research Forum (NRF) will hold their fifth annual Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromso, Norway, January 23-28, 2011. This year’s meeting, entitled “Arctic Tipping Points,” will be split into two two-day sections:  a policy section and a science section.

Launched by Iceland President Ólafur Ragnur Grimsson in 1998, the NRF’s primary objective is to provide a forum for an international and multidisciplinary group of researchers to communicate their science to educators, politicians, and policy-makers from the Circumpolar North. A second objective is to address issues and opportunities important to people living in the northern countries.

The NRF also provides several opportunities for young researchers, students, decision makers and students including the International Forum at the Arctic Circle as part of the Jokkmokk Winter Conference, January 31-February 3 in Jokkmokk, Sweden. This year’s theme:  “Pathway to Sustainable Northern Communities.”

Arctic Science Summit Week

ASSW will be held March 27 – April 1, 2011, in Seoul, Korea, hosted by the Korea Polar Research Institute. The meeting focuses on atmosphere, climate change, modeling, and ecosystem change.

During the meeting the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists will hold a one-day Career Development Workshop to help young researchers network and hone insights into Arctic Science organizations and programs as well as communication and publication skills.

Comments (0) Jan 16 2011

Aquatic Ecologist Linda Deegan of the Marine Biological Lab has been studying arctic grayling for more than two decades. Photo: Nancy Eve Cohen

Last spring,  biologists Linda Deegan (Marine Biological Laboratory) and Alex Huryn (University of Alabama) began a three-year, National Science Foundation-funded study of arctic graylings (Thymallus arcticus), the only fish found in the Kuparuk River near Toolik Field Station. Grayling serve as food for lake trout, birds, and humans, and the biologists are examining how changing climate affects the migration and life-cycle of grayling populations and, consequently, other facets of the ecosystem like insect populations.

Deegan believes there is an urgency to understanding the relationship between tundra lakes and streams and how they function as a system, given the rapid pace and grand scale of climate change. To that end, this project aims to  address 4 questions:

1) How are seasonality, rate and distance of grayling migration affected by climate change?

2) Are the seasonality of life-cycles, life-history and attributes of stream insect populations changing in response to climate change?

3) How does changing seasonality of river discharge interact with insect production to affect availability and transfer of stream production to grayling?

4) What is the effect of climate-driven disruption of the migratory link on the structure and function of winter refugia?

Specifically, the scientists will devote their field work to studying the graylings during downstream migration from Green Cabin Lake at the head of the Kuparuk River. In June and July they will tag fish along a 50 km stretch of Kuparuk. At summer’s end, they will study the graylings as they migrate back upstream for the winter.

This summer, the project was featured on the radio show, Pulse of the Planet, in a series of three field interviews with Heidi Golden, research assistant to Linda Deegan. Follow this link to access the audio reports.  —Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Dec 09 2010

It's not what you said; it's how you said it. This PFS 2.0 staffer is not impressed. Photo: Chico Perales

Tone Matters When Talking about Global Warming  

A new study from Robb Willer, UC Berkeley social psychologist, that’s slated for publication in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science, shows that the majority of people tune out or become skeptical when faced with dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming. Individuals are less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint when the impacts of global warming are cast in “scary messages,” according to a release from the University of California, Berkeley.  

“The scarier the message, the more people who are committed to viewing the world as fundamentally stable and fair are motivated to deny it,” said Matthew Feinberg, a doctoral student in psychology and coauthor of the study.  

However, the researchers found that if scientists and advocates can communicate their findings in less apocalyptic ways and present solutions to global warming, most people can get past their skepticism. 

Armed With Cigarette Lighter and Knife, Russian Scientist Tries to Quantify Methane Release From Melting Ice 

Russian scientist Sergey Zimov walks on a Siberian lake near the town of Chersky, Russia, where methane bubbles are trapped under the ice. Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the last few decades, as the Earth has gradually warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane—a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Photo: AP/Arthur Max

The Associated Press reports on Sergey Zimov, a Russian scientist who, like the University of Alaska’s Katey Walter, studies methane locked inside Siberia’s permafrost. The article opens with Zimov as he “shuffles across the frozen lake, scuffing aside ankle-deep snow until he finds a cluster of bubbles trapped under the ice. With a cigarette lighter in one hand and a knife in the other, he lances the ice like a blister. Methane whooshes out and bursts into a thin blue flame.”  

Gas locked inside Siberia’s frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane – a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.  Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere. (To gauge the efficacy of that last metaphor, see previous news item.) 

Rising Arctic Temperatures Correlate with Increase in Tundra Fires  

The massive Anaktuvuk fire scorched more than 1,000 square kilometers of tundra in northern Alaska. Researchers have found a correlation between warmer temperatures and larger, more damaging fires. Photo: Woods Hole Marine Biological Lab

An article published in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research presents data that correlate even moderate increases in warm-season temperatures on Alaska’s North Slope with the increased likelihood of catastrophic conflagrations. The study’s lead author, Feng Sheng Hu of the University of Illinois, sought to understand if dramatic fires like the Anaktuvuk, which burned 1,000 square kilometers of tundra on Alaska’s North Slope (doubling the area burned in that region since record keeping began in 1950) are anomalies or a regular occurance. After analyzing sediment cores from the burned area for charcoal to assess the ages of the sediment layers, Hu and his team found no evidence of a fire of similar scale and intensity in sediments representing roughly 5,000 years at that locale. So the researchers studied 60 years of fire, temperature and precipitation records from the Alaskan tundra to determine whether specific climate conditions prevailed in years with significant tundra fires. They discovered a “dramatic, nonlinear relationship between climate conditions and tundra fires, and what one may call a tipping point,” Hu said in a press release from the University of Illinois. 

For the past 60 years, annual mean temperatures during this warm season have fluctuated between about 6 and 9 degrees Celsius (42.8 to 48.2 degrees Fahrenheit), with temperatures trending upward since 1995. In 2007, the year of the historic fire, the mean temperature was a record 11.1 degrees Celsius, while precipitation and soil moisture dipped to an all-time low. 

The study team also included researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Neptune and Company, and the University of Washington. The National Science Foundation provided grant funds for Hu’s research; CH2M HILL Polar Services (in which PFS is a partner) supported the field work. 

Comments (0) Nov 23 2010