In June and July I’ll be a PolarTREC teacher, working with a research team at the Toolik Field Station, above the Arctic Circle. We’ll be studying the effects of climate change, trying to better understand what’s going to happen to carbon frozen underground as the permafrost melts. Some might wash out to sea, while some might form greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. The fate of this carbon is important, because there’s twice as much of it frozen in Arctic tundra as there is in the entire atmosphere.
I was absolutely thrilled when I was selected to work with Dr. Rose Cory of the University of North Carolina and Dr. George Kling of the University of Michigan. They‘ve been working at Toolik for years and have made great progress in understanding how melting permafrost is affecting the global carbon cycle and its implications for the earth’s climate. This summer I’ll be learning from them and their students first-hand, collecting samples in the field and working in the lab. I find there’s no better way to educate yourself about the environment than to put your boots on, look, listen, and soak it all in. One of the great things about Toolik is that there’s a lot of Arctic research based there, so in addition to working on permafrost with Rose & George I may also get to learn about the role of Arctic wolf spiders in the tundra food web with Nell Kemp and the circadian rhythms of Arctic ground squirrels with Alicia Gillean, two other PolarTREC teachers who’ll be at Toolik this summer.
I hope to come back from Alaska with new knowledge of the tundra and the earth’s climate, and a new appreciation of how scientists are working to understand the changes taking place in those systems. I’m looking forward to bringing the Arctic back into my classroom at Mendham High School and, hopefully, encouraging a new generation of scientists to put on their boots and get outside.
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