Journal Entry
We had our first team meeting on May 8 at the Oulu University main building café. Eighteen students, researchers and teachers from at least six countries were present. Three universities are involved: the **State University of New York at Buffalo**, **McGill University** in Montreal Canada, and the **University of Oulu** here in Finland.
Professor Ezra Zubrow, our leader, is the guy in the black hat and jacket. When researchers from the United States, Canada, Finland, France, Spain and Lithuania get together the conversation is mostly in English.
The topic of our research is long-term human adaptation to climate change in the Arctic.
We use **computerized climate models**, ancient **plant pollen **from sediments, and other proxies for climate to learn how the climate was changing just below the Arctic Circle five thousand years ago. Then we **survey** and **excavate** ancient living sites to find out how people lived, and how their lives changed as the climate did. We don’t know the answers in advance. We have ideas, but we don’t yet know if they are correct. Answers emerge slowly in this field of science!
Actually, GPS (global positioning system), GIS (geographical information system software) and soil chemistry analyses are just as important to us as trowels.
Our work here is part of a larger, multi-year International Polar Year project. There are two other sites being studied too: one on James Bay in Canada, and one on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. Hey! Maybe I’ll get to go to Russia!?
All this is paid for by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the European Science Foundation, and the Finnish academy of Sciences.
This is one of those airports where you get to step out of the plane right onto the runway.