Summer in Siberia
Rising Star scientist Karen Frey leads Clark student researchers studying the effects of global climate change to a remote Arctic outdoor laboratory
By Jane Salerno | Photos by Rob Carlin and Katey Walter
At press time, the Clark Polaris Project team was about to leave for Siberia. To learn more about their experiences, visit www.thepolarisproject.org/blog. Learn more about Clark's environmental science department.
Clark geographer Karen Frey is among a select group of scientists working on the Polaris Project: Rising Stars in the Arctic. In July, Frey and TWO of her students traveled to Siberia, one of Earth 's most remote and beautiful places, a natural laboratory revealing the effects of global climate change on an exceptionally diverse environment.
The Polaris Project is funded by the National Science Foundation and led by the Woods Hole Research Center. It is designed to coincide with the International Polar Year (IPY), a large scientific program organized through the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization and focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic from March 2007 to March 2009. IPY will involve over 200 projects, with thousands of scientists from over 60 nations examining a wide range of physical, biological and social research topics. This is actually the fourth polar year, following those in 1882-1883, 1932-1933, and 1957-1958. The intent of the project is to support and develop the next generation of polar scientists.
Three Clark students – Claire Griffin '10, Boyd Zapatka '09 and Kate Willis '08 – were among only seven undergraduates in the nation to earn slots in the inaugural Polaris Project field course. Zapatka and Willis spent July 5 to 28 based at the Northeast Science Station above the Arctic Circle in the town of Cherskiy, Russia, near the Kolyma River. Griffin, unfortunately, broke her arm in a horseback-riding accident and could not make the trip.
Dramatically changing Arctic
"The Arctic is warming faster and more intensely than anywhere else on Earth," says Frey. "And I'm interested in things that are changing, things that are dynamic, time series analysis and things like that. There really is no better place to study change these days than in the Arctic. It provides the perfect outdoor research lab because it has large seasonal climatic variability and large variations in landscape as well."
Temperatures in Cherskiy can swing from 70 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer to minus 50 degrees in the winter, Frey notes. The Siberian landscape is heavily impacted by permafrost, and her group focused on the carbon cycling changes brought about by the thawing process, collecting field samples and using measurement tools including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to explore the dramatically changing region firsthand.
Frey and 10 faculty colleagues from institutions in the United States and Russia are engaged in the Polaris Project, all working to understand the connections between the vastly different ecosystems in the Siberian Arctic. The principal investigators each taught an Arctic-centric course at his or her home institution. Students taking those courses were eligible to apply for the field course experience in Siberia. This year, Willis and Zapatka spent just three weeks as the pilot student group. Next year students will spend a month and, in subsequent years, the program expects to place students in six-week field experiences.
Before embarking on the summer excursion to Siberia for this project, Zapatka said, "I'm looking forward to an experience with fellow students to do field work in such a changing and vulnerable environment. You read about changes in the Arctic, but few get to experience it. I feel very fortunate to have been given this opportunity."
Frey's Arctic System Science course at Clark is cross-listed through Geography and Global Environmental Studies. Her students studied many aspects of the Arctic region, including the hydrological cycle, the cryosphere, glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost, the marine system, as well as the human dimension of the region. The class also studied impacts of climate change on indigenous cultures, Frey explains, noting the importance of geopolitical and human health ramifications of arctic climate change, especially with the recent dramatic declines in sea ice.
"Taking this class has changed my ideas for what I would like to do after college," said Willis. "I would like to become an arctic scientist and perhaps pursue a Ph.D. in this field after Clark."
Fieldwork in remote places
In addition to her research interests in impacts of permafrost thaw on land-ocean linkages of carbon and nutrients in Siberia, Frey, who came to Clark in 2007, investigates carbon dynamics in coastal and shelf environments in the Arctic. In March, she studied sea-ice dynamics and associated spring phytoplankton blooms in the northern Bering Sea from aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, a 420-foot icebreaker that spends up to eight months each year carrying out National Science Foundation-funded scientific missions in arctic marine environments. Her students were treated to frequent updates from aboard the ship as well as teleconferencing with Frey and other esteemed scientists. In fall 2008, she will also teach a graduate-level course called The Climate System and Global Environmental Change.
As the spring semester drew to a close, Frey and her student research team answered the oft-heard question, "What are you doing this summer?" They learned to deal with the shocked reaction to "I'm going to Siberia." Although Cherskiy is not on travel posters, it is actually a city of several thousand, Frey says. The Northeast Science Station is remote, indeed, but it hosts scientists from around the world. The Clark team slept indoors, in bunkhouses.
"This is a very exciting and unique experience for all of us, even for those of us who have been to Siberia before," she adds. Frey did not mind roughing it, she says. "Conducting fieldwork in remote places is what attracted me tothe earth sciences in the first place."
|
 |
|
Clarknews Summer
2008 |
|
|
 >
Kate Willis '08, Professor Karen Frey and Boyd Zapatka '09
|
|
