Courses:
EARS 46: "STRETCH" Field
Methods in Banff and Glacier National Parks
 In September, 2008, Professor Bob
Hawley and I led a
new 2-week field course to teach undergraduate majors about
polar and alpine glacier-related research in Banff (Alberta,
Canada) and Glacier (Montana, USA) National Parks. We visited
2 glaciers (Peyto and Athabasca) along with many other stops,
covering topics including glaciology, glacier travel and
safety, ice coring, glacial geology (dating moraines using
dendochronology), glacial remote sensing, glacial
sedimentology (till till till!! and outwash deposits...), and
climate change. Check out some pictures from our first
year
!
EARS
86: Earth's Past, Present and Future Climate
This
course investigates the characteristics and causes of short-
(1 yr) to long-term (>1 million yrs) climate change over
the past ~400 million years and ~1000 years into the future.
Future climate change is currently an active topic of
discussion in the scientific community and public policy
arena. In order to make informed predictions about Earth’s
climate and informed decisions about our society’s response,
it is essential to understand how and why Earth’s climate has
changed in the past. We will investigate the climate system
and its forcing mechanisms over three broad timescales: the
tectonic timescale (millions of years), the orbital timescale
(6,000-400,000 years), and the sub-orbital timescale (1-1,000
years). We will see that the climate has always been changing
due to processes such as plate tectonics and changing
geography, variations in the amount of solar energy absorbed
in the climate system, and complex interactions and feedbacks
between the ocean, atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and
cryosphere – many of which are only partially understood. We
will then use this understanding to make reasonable
(hopefully!) predictions of future climate under various
scenarios. View
Syllabus
EARS 37: Marine Geology
This
course investigates the geology, processes, and paleoarchives
hidden beneath the world’s oceans. Major topics
include morphology and history of the sea floor (plate
tectonics), marine geology field and remote sensing
techniques, the origin of ocean crust and sediments,
dynamics at marine crustal margins, hydrothermal vents,
coastal processes including catastrophic events (hurricanes,
tsunamis), and marine records of past climate and sea level
conditions. View
Syllabus
Student Advising:
Tina Praprotnik, Dartmouth College Senior Thesis
-
Tina is working with me on her senior
thesis project investigating mercury (Hg) pollution from
Asia over the past several hundred years. She is
using the ICP-MS in the Dartmouth Trace Element core
facility run by Dr. Jackson to determine the Hg
concentration in archive samples from the Mt. Logan ice core
(Yukon, Canada), as well as new samples from Denali (Alaska,
USA) and Peyto Glacier (Alberta, Canada). She is interested
in the history of Hg pollution, particularly from China, and
differences in Hg concentrations and sources in western
North America. She was able to collect the Peyto Glacier
samples herself during a field expedition in the summer of
2008.
 Dom
Winski, Dartmouth College Senior
Thesis
I am co-advising Dom on his senior thesis
project with Dr. Hawley at Dartmouth. Dom
is investigating recent changes in the volume of Peyto Glacier in Alberta, Canada. He is using
ice penetrating radar, generously loaned by
Dr. Arcone from CRREL, to determine the modern
volume of the glacier tounge and compare it with two
previous published volume estimates from the 1980s and the 1960s. He
will be using aerial photographs and satellite imagery to interpolate the
volume at various intervals between these volume
studies to compare with regional temperature and precipitation measurements. Dom
was able to collect his own ice-penetrating radar data from the
Peyto Glacier during a field expedition in the summer
of 2008.
 EriC Kelsey, University of New Hampshire
PhD
I am on EriC's PhD committee for his
dissertation work with Dr. Wake at UNH on Late Holocene climate change
in the North Pacific using ice
core stable isotope and precipitation records from the
Saint Elias (Eclipse site) and Alaska (Denali) Ranges. Eric will
be developing an understanding of the synopic conditions that contibute
to the isotope and accumulation records in the North Pacific so
as to interpret the 1000+ year ice
core records from this region. EriC was able to collect
ice cores, snowpit, and ice geophysical data on the
Denali massif during a reconaissance expedition in the summer
of 2008.
 Ben Gross, University of Maine, MSc
I have been working with Ben, who is
advised by Dr. Kreutz at UMaine, on his Master's project
investigating the history and sources of Pb pollution in
the North Pacific. Ben has been
measuring Pb isotopes on ice core samples from
the Eclipse Site in the Saint Elias Mountains to determine
if they have a similar Asian source as the nearby
Mt. Logan summit plateau, or if the source is more Eurasian
(former USSR) in origin. Ben collected samples
for his research from Mt. Logan on an expedition with
Gerry Holdsworth in 2007, and was part of the
Denali ice core site reconaissance team in the summer
of 2008.
Teaching
Modules:
As
graduate students, Leigh Stearns and I developed a website on
using "Flubber" to model the flow of the Malaspina Glacier.
Check out our website here.
Leigh has
incorporated this into a site on Glacier Education complete
with K-12 lesson plans here. |
