The team traveled to Svalbard, Norway, located in the High Arctic, to investigate how high latitude glaciers, melt-water streams, and sedimentation in lakes and fjords respond to climate change. The Svalbard region has been marked by the retreat of glaciers, reductions in sea ice, and measurable warming throughout the Holocene period, and more specifically during the last 90 years. The Svalbard archipelago has preserved geologic records of climate change since the last ice age and into the 20th century, which made it an ideal location for this study.
The team worked on and around the glaciers and lakes of Kapp Linne near their field camp at Isfjord Radio on western Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard arctic archipelago. The Svalbard archipelago is situated in the Arctic Ocean, north of mainland Europe, approximately mid-way between Norway and the North Pole.
Missy Holzer has been teaching for over 20 years and currently teaches Honors Earth System Science and A.P. Environmental Science at Chatham High School in Chatham, New Jersey. Ms. Holzer believes in using hands-on, minds-on, and data driven inquiry activities as a way to promote life-long learning in her students. She enjoys field research immensely and has assisted in data collection in places such as Nicaragua, Kenya, Ecuador, Jamaica, off the coast of Chile, and Oregon. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Planning and Design and Masters degrees in Secondary Science Education and in Physical Geography. In the classroom, Ms. Holzer uses her field experiences to develop units of study that inspire students to get out and explore their natural world. Outside the classroom she enjoys learning, traveling, running, hiking, kayaking, and spending time with her nephews.
Dr. Steve Roof is an Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Science at Hampshire College. Professor Roof's teaching and research focus on environmental issues such as climate change, pollution, and land conservation. He consciously integrates the scientific, political, and social aspects of environmental problems in his classes and projects. He teaches and supervises projects in geology, climate change, resource conservation, land use planning, geographic information systems, environmental chemistry, and the evolution of scientific thought. He and his students travel frequently to Death Valley and the Southwest for climate change field research. He also coordinates the Svalbard REU program, taking undergraduate students to the High Arctic. To learn more about Dr. Roof, please visit his faculty biography page [http://www.hampshire.edu/faculty/sroof.htm]
Dr. Mike Retelle is a Professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Dr. Retelle teaches courses that focus on Earth surface environments and records of environmental change. Currently Dr. Retelle is involved in several research projects in high latitude areas of the North Atlantic region. He has worked in the Canadian Arctic since 1981 focusing on glacial and sea level history and records of climate change preserved in annually layered sediments in lakes. Dr. Retelle has been working in Svalbard since 2005 and has previously mentored numerous undergraduate students in the field through the National Science Foundation’s REU program (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) as well as several past PolarTREC teachers.
Dr. Al Werner is a Professor of Geology at Mt. Holyoke College. His areas of research are in geology and climate change. As a kid he was told "not to play in the mud," but now he makes a living doing just that! Werner's fieldwork has taken him across the circumpolar world. He and his students conduct their research in remote locations—from Alaska to the Canadian Arctic to Spitsbergen, an island in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea—bringing recovered sediment cores from lakes back to the laboratory to learn more about past environmental change. To learn more about Dr. Werner, please visit his faculty biography page [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/alan_werner.html]