PolarTREC

Last updated

PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is a program for K-12 teachers to participate in field research in the polar regions in order to improve their knowledge of polar science and expand the reach of current scientific research beyond the scientific community. Teachers involved in PolarTREC spend about two to six weeks at their polar sites, collaborating with scientific research teams and connecting with students and the public via online media. [1] PolarTREC is funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by the Arctic Research Consortium. [2]

Contents

Overview

The purpose of PolarTREC is to stimulate polar science education and awareness. [1]

Expeditions

Notable past PolarTREC expeditions include:

•Carbon Balance in Warming and Drying Tundra (2013), which studied the effects of warming and drying on tundra carbon balance [3]

•Airborne Survey of Polar Ice (2013), a six-year NASA mission, which is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever conducted [4]

•Tectonic History of the Transantartic Mountains (2012), which deciphered the tectonic history of the Transantarctic Mountains and the Wilkes Subglacial Basin [5]

•Greenland Education Tour (2012), part of an initiative to foster enhanced international scientific cooperation between Greenland and the US [6]

•In 2011, PolarTREC teacher John Wood lived in a tent at the top of Mount Erebus, an active volcano in Antarctica. The average temperative was -20 F. [7]

Teacher experience

Teachers must apply to the program and only the top 100 applications make it to the PolarTREC selection committee. Researcher also must apply and be selected as a PolarTREC research team. After researchers are selected, a selection of the top 30-40 teacher applications are sent to the various research teams. Researchers select which of the teachers to interview, after which they invite a teacher to join the team. There are usually 12 research teams—6 in the Arctic and 6 in the Antarctic—so out of the over 200 applicants each year only 12 get chosen.

Once accepted PolarTREC covers the costs of the expedition. The teachers are given special training through webinars and a week long orientation in Fairbanks, Alaska. While on the trip teachers are expected to communicate through the Virtual Home Base and give updates using message boards, photo albums, podcasts, "PolarConnect" events and presentations from the field. [8] Using the message boards and journals, teachers can document what the students get excited about and how they learn. This data can be used to shape science curriculum. [9] Teachers are encouraged to share their experiences with a wider audience by writing articles and speaking at conferences. Teachers also encouraged to develop lessons based on their expedition for the Learning Resources section of the website. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tundra</span> Biome where plant growth is hindered by frigid temperatures

In physical geography, tundra is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. The term is a Russian word adapted from Sámi languages. There are three regions and associated types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine tundra, and Antarctic tundra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arctic</span> Polar region of the Earths northern hemisphere

The Arctic is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway, northernmost Sweden, northern Finland, Russia, the United States (Alaska), Canada, Danish Realm (Greenland), and northern Iceland, along with the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas. Land within the Arctic region has seasonally varying snow and ice cover, with predominantly treeless permafrost under the tundra. Arctic seas contain seasonal sea ice in many places.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polar climate</span> Climate classification

The polar climate regions are characterized by a lack of warm summers but with varying winters. Every month a polar climate has an average temperature of less than 10 °C (50 °F). Regions with a polar climate cover more than 20% of the Earth's area. Most of these regions are far from the equator and near the poles, and in this case, winter days are extremely short and summer days are extremely long. A polar climate consists of cool summers and very cold winters, which results in treeless tundra, glaciers, or a permanent or semi-permanent layer of ice. It is identified with the letter E in the Köppen climate classification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W. Brian Harland</span> British geologist (1917 – 2003)

Walter Brian Harland was a British geologist at the Department of Geology, later University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences, England, from 1948 to 2003. He was a leading figure in geological exploration and research in Svalbard, organising over 40 Cambridge Spitsbergen Expeditions (CSE) and in 1975 founded the Cambridge Arctic Shelf Programme (CASP) as a research institute to continue this work. He was first secretary of the International Geological Correlation Programme from 1969 until UNESCO could take over in 1972, and was a driving force in setting criteria and standards in stratigraphy and producing 4 editions of the geological time scale in 1964, 1971, 1982 and 1989. He also edited the international Geological Magazine for 30 years. In 1968, he was honoured with the Royal Geographical Society Gold Medal for Arctic exploration and research.

<i>Oden</i> (1988 icebreaker)

Oden is a large Swedish icebreaker, built in 1988 for the Swedish Maritime Administration. It is named after the Norse god Odin. First built to clear a passage through the ice of the Gulf of Bothnia for cargo ships, it was later modified to serve as a research vessel. Equipped with its own helicopter and manned by 15 crew members it has ample capacity to carry laboratory equipment and 80 passengers, functioning independently in harsh Polar ice packs of the Arctic and Antarctic seas. It was the first non-nuclear surface vessel to reach the North Pole, together with the German research icebreaker Polarstern. It has participated in several scientific expeditions in Arctic and Antarctica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peary Land</span> Peninsula in northern Greenland

Peary Land is a peninsula in northern Greenland, extending into the Arctic Ocean. It reaches from Victoria Fjord in the west to Independence Fjord in the south and southeast, and to the Arctic Ocean in the north, with Cape Morris Jesup, the northernmost point of Greenland's mainland, and Cape Bridgman in the northeast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wally Herbert</span> British polar explorer

Sir Walter William Herbert was a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man fully recognized for walking to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's disputed expedition. He was described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as "the greatest polar explorer of our time".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change in the Arctic</span> Impacts of climate change on the Arctic

Due to climate change in the Arctic, this polar region is expected to become "profoundly different" by 2050. The speed of change is "among the highest in the world", with the rate of warming being 3-4 times faster than the global average. This warming has already resulted in the profound Arctic sea ice decline, the accelerating melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the thawing of the permafrost landscape. These ongoing transformations are expected to be irreversible for centuries or even millennia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauge Koch</span> Danish geologist and Arctic explorer

Lauge Koch was a Danish geologist and Arctic explorer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extreme Ice Survey</span> Global warming survey

The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), based in Boulder, Colorado, uses time-lapse photography, conventional photography and video to document the effects of global warming on glacial ice. It is the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography. Starting in 2007 the EIS team installed as many as 43 time-lapse cameras at a time at 18 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, the Nepalese Himalaya, and the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. The cameras shoot year-round, during daylight, at various rates. The team supplements the time-lapse record by occasionally repeating shots at fixed locations in Iceland, Bolivia, the Canadian province of British Columbia and the French and Swiss Alps. Collected images are being used for scientific evidence and as part of a global outreach campaign aimed at educating the public about the effects of climate change. EIS imagery has appeared in time-lapse videos displayed in the terminal at Denver International Airport; in media productions such as the 2009 NOVA Extreme Ice documentary on PBS; and is the focus of the feature-length film Chasing Ice, directed by Jeff Orlowski, which premiered at the Sundance film festival in Utah on January 23, 2012. Major findings were published in 2012 in Ice: Portraits of the World’s Vanishing Glaciers by James Balog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fram Strait</span> Passage between Greenland and Svalbard

The Fram Strait is the passage between Greenland and Svalbard, located roughly between 77°N and 81°N latitudes and centered on the prime meridian. The Greenland and Norwegian Seas lie south of Fram Strait, while the Nansen Basin of the Arctic Ocean lies to the north. Fram Strait is noted for being the only deep connection between the Arctic Ocean and the World Oceans. The dominant oceanographic features of the region are the West Spitsbergen Current on the east side of the strait and the East Greenland Current on the west.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index of Antarctica-related articles</span>

This is an alphabetical index of all articles related to the continent of Antarctica.

The Dark Snow Project is a field and lab exploration to measure the impact of changing wildfire and industrial soot and snow microbes on snow and ice reflectivity.

Jason Eric Box is an American glaciologist who is professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. For 10 years (2002-2012) he worked at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, eventually a tenured physical climatology and geography associate professor in the department of geography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Bell (scientist)</span> American geophysicist

Robin Elizabeth Bell is Palisades Geophysical Institute (PGI) Lamont Research Professor at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and a past President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2019–2021. Dr. Bell was influential in co-ordinating the 2007 International Polar Year and was the first woman to chair the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board. She has made numerous important discoveries with regard to subglacial lakes and ice sheet dynamics, and has a ridge, called Bell Buttress, in Antarctica named after her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Huffman</span> American teacher

Louise Tolle Huffman is an American teacher with over 30 years of teaching experience with many years focused on polar science and climate studies, and has written educational outreach books and articles on Antarctica. She is the Director of Education and Outreach for the US Ice Drilling Program Office (IDPO), responsible for outreach efforts highlighting IDPO scientists and their research results.

Walter C. Oechel is a researcher who studies the areas of plant eco-physiology, systems ecology, global change, and biosphere-atmosphere interaction. At the San Diego State University he is as a Distinguished Professor of Biology, as well as at the Open University, UK. He is also co-director of the Center for Climate and Sustainability Studies (C2S2) and the director of the Global Change Research Group at SDSU.

Kirsteen Jane Tinto is a glaciologist known for her research on the behavior and subglacial geology of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Sarah Das is an American glaciologist and climate scientist. She works at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

References

  1. 1 2 www.polartrec.com
  2. "ABC News". ABC News: PolarTREC.
  3. "PolarTREC Expeditions".
  4. "Airborne Survey of Polar Ice 2013 | PolarTREC". PolarTREC Expeditions.
  5. "Tectonic History of the Transantarctic Mountains | PolarTREC". PolarTREC Expeditions.
  6. "Greenland Education Tour 2012 | PolarTREC". PolarTREC Expeditions.
  7. "YouTube". YouTube PolarTREC Expedition.
  8. "Frequently Asked Questions for Teachers | PolarTREC". www.polartrec.com. Archived from the original on 2010-10-04.
  9. "PolarTREC Lets Teachers Instruct from Poles". ABC News .
  10. "About PolarTREC | PolarTREC".

See also

Arctic exploration

Research Experiences for Teachers