The rest of the Healy Crew has arrived! My friend Andres, from last season liked calling the folks who were here for shoveling, the crew! Best of all Dr. Natali is here and ready to go. She has been very busy making plans for this season in Healy while at the same time preparing for a joint project in Russia! It’s good to have her here to talk with and learn science from. Talking with her about the experiments and how the data looks is very interesting and helps me to better understand climate change studies.
Dr. Natali arrived at the study site and is ready to get things going!
Dr. Natali brought with her several young people to help with the shoveling and the data collection. Rachel is from Florida and has her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. She has moved on from school for a while and last season worked as a ski instructor in Colorado. Camilo is originally from the South American country of Columbia. His family moved here when he was in his early teens and settled in Florida. He also has his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. His degree is in wildlife biology. Camilo is working as a laboratory technician at the university helping people with their science and experiments. He enjoys his work and may even look into teaching in the future. Peter is the third person to arrive. Peter worked during last winter here in Healy with Elizabeth. He comes from Minnesota so he knows the snowy weather. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin. Peter is also a laboratory technician at the university. I met Peter at the end of last season, as he was getting ready to work with a research team looking at the effects of forest fires on the Alaskan ecosystems. Peter really enjoys spending time in Alaska.
Rachel was a student at the University of Florida and is back here to help out.
Camilo is ready to shovel!
Peter will also spend the next winter taking measurements with Elizabeth.
We spent the day shoveling out the warming side of the study areas. Of course I was preparing half of the day for my PolarConnect event with all of my sixth grade students and the teachers at Talbert Middle School. It was great to hear everybody and take questions from the students. They could see me but I could not see them. There were also other schools participating in the event with some great questions. I hope that everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!