This lesson will provide students with an opportunity to design and carry out an experiment that mimics the conditions causing accelerated ice melt along the face of the Thwaites Glacier off the southwest coast of Antarctica. Created by Sarah Slack during her expedition to Thwaites aboard the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer, this activity aligns with the Science and Engineering
This lesson about the factors affecting water density in the Amundsen Sea was developed by educator Sarah Slack during her PolarTREC expedition aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker. Part of the science mission was to create a detailed map of the seafloor at the face of the Thwaites Glacier, which revealed a series of channels that were conducting a
PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is a program funded by the National Science Foundation that partners K-12 teachers in the United States with scientists doing research in polar regions. The goal of the program is for teachers to be authentically integrated into scientific expeditions in order to gain new skills and experiences that they
The objectives of this lesson are:
* Students will know that climate change is happening most quickly in Arctic regions.
* Students will know that a warming climate is causing permafrost to thaw.
* Students will know that thawing permafrost is impacting infrastructure in Alaska, including roads and buildings.
* Students will design an engineering solution to create stable
Students will use a model to explore the relationships between sunlight and release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from thawing Arctic watersheds.
After studying the carbon cycle, students are asked to reflect on how natural phenomena – thawing of permafrost, interactions of soil microbes on dissolved carbon, and amount of sunlight – interconnect and influence the release of CO2
The report is written by teacher participants upon return from their field expedition portion of the PolarTREC program. It summarizes the benefit of the expedition to the teacher, a description of activities, and a summary of how teachers plan to link this experience in classrooms and communities. This is a public document that will be posted in teacher portfolios and
Article in regional newspaper describes Regina Brinker's PolarConnect event and invites readers to participate at home or as the event is projected at the main public library branch.
This scientific article, focuses on one of the largest pools of global carbon that is, the organic C stored in permafrost (perennially frozen) ground, and on the vulnerability to change under an increasingly warmer climate.
A scientific report describing the results of the CiPEHR Experiment as of 2011. This report attempts to answer these questions:
(1) Does ecosystem warming cause a net release of C from the ecosystem to the atmosphere?,
(2) Does the decomposition of old C that comprises the bulk of the soil C pool influence ecosystem C loss?, and
(3) How do
The Geophysical Institute Permafrost Laboratory (GIPL)
The Permafrost Laboratory deals with scientific questions related to the circumpolar permafrost dynamics and feedbacks between permafrost and global change. At the Permafrost Laboratory, data related to the thermal and structural state of circumpolar permafrost is collected and analyzed. The focus of our research is the development of methods to physically and mathematically model