The Dry Valleys Ecosystem project (a Long Term Ecological Research program - LTER) has been a continuous line of research since the inception of the McMurdo Dry Valley LTER since 1992. This project seeks to test hypotheses regarding the response of Antarctic biotic communities to changes in climatic conditions over time. I participated in the 30th
Teacher Bill Henske describes the science and fieldwork behind the Dry Valleys Ecosystem Study from McMurdo Field Station in Antarctica. This presentation took place on 24 January 2023.
For this activity, the students are going to draw on their own knowledge and experience with weather to predict the current temperatures around the world and then compare their predictions with real-time weather data from selected locations around the world. The students will then be provided with several factors that affect both daily changes in temperature and climatological temperature
Never, in my 27 year career as a teacher, have I had so many students so interested and enthusiastic in so many broad and varied topics that they would have immediately dismissed as “boring” had I not participated in PolarTREC. I was happily mystified by the curiosity of the students and the depth of their interest in
PolarTREC Teacher Mike Penn and team leader Lee Welhouse discuss the science and their experiences while working in Antarctica on the Automatic Weather Stations. This event was broadcast live from South Pole Station on 17 December 2018.
This is an article in a local quarterly magazine (IN Shaler Winter 2018 ed.) about Mike Penn's PolarTREC deployment to Antarctica with the 2018 Automatic Weather Stations project.
This is a newspaper article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that ran on 10/5/18. It is about PolarTREC teacher Michael Penn's expedition to Antarctica in November and December of 2018.
This is a radio interview with WESA (Pittsburgh Public Radio) on "The Confluence" with PolarTREC teacher Mike Penn and Kevin Gavin. Penn's interview starts at approximately 18:05.