Hi Folks- this is Bill Schmoker checking in from my home base at Centennial Middle School in Boulder, CO. It’s Wednesday, May 12 and I’m settling back in to my teaching routine here. We got a few inches of snow in Boulder last night and the white covering on grassy and shady areas will help keep the polar theme alive around here at least a little longer.
I’m not sure if I’ll have the bandwidth onboard the USCG Cutter Healy to do video journals from the ship but I thought I’d try one here. I just wanted to take a moment to thank the staff at Arcus and PolarTREC for the great orientation and training they put together last week. I came away with a mind full of new knowledge, new skills, new ideas, and new friends and colleagues. In particular, I’d like to acknowledge the leadership of Janet Warburton and Kristin Timm, the Education Project managers. It is clear that they invest a ton of time and energy organizing PolarTREC each year, coordinating with other Arcus and PolarTREC staff, teachers, researchers, equipment suppliers, and so on. I’d also like to thank Ronnie Owens for developing the incredible web interface you are now visiting, making it user friendly for PolarTREC teachers and researchers and for all of our visitors. Rounding out the tech team, I’d like to thank Zeb Polly, our systems administrator, for making our online journaling, photo, audio, and video management, email, chat, and ftp sites work so well! All of the other Arcus staff was so friendly and helpful, too- it is great to be so well supported, and it eases my mind to know they will all be right behind me, if only virtually, on the icebreaker.
It was fantastic to meet the other PolarTREC teachers for the upcoming year, and I gained a lot of insight and inspiration from them all. I’ll be following each of their expeditions with great anticipation from the Virtual Base Camp in the coming year and I hope you’ll visit their pages or subscribe to their RSS feeds, too. Better yet, you can subscribe to all team member journal entries at this feed: http://www.polartrec.com/expeditions/all/journals/feed
Check them out (they are listed in chronological order of the expeditions):
Claude Larson: Prehistoric Response to Climate Change (Kamchatka, Russia)
Cheryl Forster: High Arctic Change (Svalbard, Norway)
Karl Horeis: Early Human Settlement in Arctic Alaska (NW Alaska)
Keri Rodgers: Tundra Plants in a Changing Climate (Barrow & Atqsuk, Alaska)
James Pottinger: Solar Radiation on the Greenland Icesheet (Summit, Greenland)
Josh Dugat: Long-Term Circumpolar Permafrost Monitoring (North Slope, Alaska)
Bettina Sander: Antarctic Seafloor Ecology (McMurdo Station, Antarctica)
Katey Shirey: IceCube: In-ice Antarctic Telescope (South Pole Station, Antarctica)
Anne Marie Wotkyns: Oden Antarctic Expedition (Oden Icebreaker, Southern Ocean)
Lesley Urasky: Glacial History in Antarctica (Remote sites, Antarctica)
Chantelle Rose: Bering Ecosystem Winter Sampling Study (Polar Sea Icebreaker, Bering & Polar Seas)
Michael Lampert: Glacial Movement and Seismicity (Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory, Norway)
Finally, I’d like to thank Craig Beals, Michele Cross, and Jeff Peneston for mentoring us during the week-long training. Each was a PolarTREC teacher on an expedition last year, and their practical tips and suggestions were invaluable, along with their assurance that we’ll all be able to successfully follow in their footsteps to remote areas in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Heading back happy, with plenty of new knowledge, skills, ideas, and friends!
Alpine Glaciers and Mountains Northwest of Juneau, AK
As my flight from Fairbanks was descending into Seattle I was enjoying the unfolding scenery along the waterfront. Near Safeco field, the home of the Seattle Mariners, I suddenly realized that I was seeing a few red ships at the Coast Guard docks. One of them was instantly recognizable as the Healy, my home away from home this coming August and early September. I took that as a sign of transition from the theoretical realm we were in last week to the practical reality of my upcoming trip this summer. Below is the Healy's webcam view from 9 May. You can see the Polar Star in front of the Healy and Safeco Field further inland.
USCG Healy Webcam View at Seattle Dock 9 May 2010
I’ll be intermittently journaling between now and then and I hope you’ll stay in touch through my Extended Continental Shelf Survey page here at PolarTREC.com. Feel free to pop questions or comments on the Ask the Team page, which you can access through the button near the top of this page. Then click on the New Topic button over on the right side and type away! We’ll get a response up ASAP.
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Thanks again, & best- Bill