Expedition Search

The research team studied the foraging behavior of seabirds nesting in the Pribilof Islands. Specifically, they were interested in two piscivorous seabirds – the Thick-billed Murres and Black-legged Kittiwakes – on St. George and St. Paul Islands.

The team conducted this research to determine how climate warming and sea ice retreat from the southern portions of the Bering Sea will impact seabird nesting success and population growth rates on these islands.

To help gather data, team researchers used Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to track breeding seabirds when they foraged at sea. They also employed time-depth recorders (TDRs) to determine the amount of time the birds spent on the water surface, as well as how deep and often they dived.

The information they gathered using this equipment and their direct observation helped to confirm where birds from each island find food and how sea ice extent affects the feeding locations and trip length. They also got a better understanding of the effects of foraging behavior on colony diet, reproductive success, and adult survival.

This project contributed to a larger collaborative effort between the National Science Foundation and the North Pacific Research Board called the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program.

The research team, which included undergraduate geoscience students participating in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program, traveled to Svalbard, Norway, to investigate how climate change affects sediment transport and deposition associated with the tidewater glaciers, icebergs, meltwater streams, and marine currents. Tidewater glaciers are among the fastest changing systems in the Arctic, offering the team the opportunity to monitor rapidly changing and dynamic systems.

The research team sampled glacier and iceberg ice for debris concentrations and performed CTD casts to define where the sediment from the glacier was being transported and deposited. Glacial sediments deposited on the bottom of the fiord were collected to identify the structures forming on the fjord floor and their relation to observed glacial processes. Bathymetric maps of the seafloor were obtained by using a small sub-bottom profiler and established baseline data allowing researchers to determine the rate of sediment infilling of the fjord by the glaciers. The team also utilized aerial photographs and GPS mapping to determine the position of the glacier as well as its rate of retreat compared to 2005 data. Using this data, the team determined if relationships can be derived between sedimentation, meteorological, glaciological, and oceanic variables that allow for the historic sedimentation record to be better interpreted.

The Svalbard archipelago has been marked by the retreat of glaciers, reductions in sea ice, and measurable warming throughout the Holocene period, and more specifically during the past 90 years. The region is an ideal location for this study because it has preserved the geologic records of climate change since the last ice age and into the 20th century. The Arctic is particularly sensitive to climate change and climatically induced environmental changes in this region can instigate further changes of global consequences. Melting glacial systems and their contribution to sea level rise will have consequences on shorelines globally.

The expedition members visited several research sites in Greenland as part of an initiative to foster enhanced international scientific cooperation between the countries of the United States, Greenland, and Denmark.

The expedition members spent several days learning about the research conducted in Greenland, the logistics involved in supporting the research, and they gained first-hand experience conducting experiments and developing inquiry-based educational activities.

The 2009 expedition built on the 2008 expedition and was supported by the National Science Foundation. The project was developed through cooperation with the U.S.-Denmark-Greenland Joint Committee, which was established in 2004 to broaden and deepen cooperation among the United States, the Kingdom of Denmark, and Greenland.

A diverse research team aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGS) Healy conducted sampling along a series of transects over the eastern Bering Sea. Research on the ship was multidisciplinary, with scientists using a variety of techniques to document ocean conditions and the productivity of the Bering Sea ecosystem. Researchers measured the temperature, salinity, and nutrient content of the sea water and the concentration of nutrients used and released by phytoplankton. They also conducted surveys of zooplankton, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals such as walruses and seals to assess the health of these populations.

These measurements helped give scientists an indication of the status of the Bering Sea ecosystem and any changes that might affect the use of its resources, and the economic, social, and cultural sustainability of the people who depend on it. This was the third 2009 cruise in support of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP).

Much of our knowledge of past climate comes from ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice sheet. These records stretch back more than 100,000 years, but existing ice cores do not include clear records from the Eemian stage, the second-to-latest interglacial period, which occurred about 130,000 years ago. During this period, evidence indicates that temperatures were about 3-5 ˚C warmer than present, so more information would help us understand and predict how our climate is likely to evolve in the warming future.

Under the North Greenland Eemian (NEEM) ice drilling project, an international team of researchers worked to obtain complete and undisturbed layers of ice from the Eemian by drilling a new core in northwest Greenland. Choosing the right spot to drill was critically important to the project’s success. NEEM scientists collaborated with researchers from the Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas. The CReSIS team provided Radar Echo Sounding profiles over the ice sheet, which provided information on ice layer thickness and variability over time and space and helped NEEM researchers select the drill site.

The NEEM team began deep drilling at the site in 2009, and CReSIS scientists were able to compare the detailed information collected from the core with their radar data in order to better understand variations in snow accumulation and other environmental parameters. This helped improve the accuracy of the Radar Echo Sounding profiles.

For this project, the research team collected and analyzed archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from three widely separated but environmentally comparable sites within the northern circumpolar region, the Yli-li area of Northern Finland, the Wemindji area of James Bay, Canada, and in the Kamchatka Peninsula region of Russia.

The circumpolar North is widely seen as an observatory for changing relations between human societies and their environments. The goal of the research team was to learn about the prehistoric society and economy of these areas in order to better understand human adaptation to significant environmental changes that took place between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago. Data gathered from this project helped enable more effective collaboration between social, natural and medical sciences.

This project was part of a the first circumpolar humanities research initiative called Histories From the North: Environments, Movements, Narratives (BOREAS), which involved collaboration of researchers from Europe, the US, Canada, and Russia and is part of the International Polar Year.

A diverse research team aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Healy conducted sampling along a series of transects over the eastern Bering Sea. Research on the ship was multidisciplinary, with scientists using a variety of techniques to document ocean conditions and the productivity of the Bering Sea ecosystem. Research teams measured the temperature, salinity, and nutrient content of the sea water, changes in sea ice cover, and the concentration of nutrients used and released by phytoplankton. They also conducted surveys of zooplankton, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals such as walrus and seal to assess the health of these populations. A major focus of this cruise was characterizing the phytoplankton bloom associated with the edge of the melting sea ice.

These measurements helped give scientists an indication of the status of the Bering Sea ecosystem and an indication of any changes that could affect the use of its resources, and the economic, social, and cultural sustainability of the people who depend on it. This is the second 2009 cruise in support of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP).

An international team of researchers from the United States, Germany, Russia, and Austria traveled to northeast Russia to conduct a large-scale scientific drilling project in Lake El'gygytgyn (pronounced el'geegitgin), a crater lake created 3.6 million years ago by the impact of a meteorite measuring about 18 km in diameter. The team worked on the lake ice throughout the winter, using a customized light-weight drill rig to obtain drill cores of layered muds from two sites in the lake.

Lake El'gygytgyn possesses a unique record of prehistoric climate change in the arctic. Because this basin was never glaciated, an uninterrupted sediment sequence of nearly 400 m (1312 feet) has accumulated at the bottom of the lake. Sediment cores collected during this expedition were used to gather information about the history of the basin and were compared with similar paleoclimate records from other parts of the world, helping researchers to better understand the arctic's role in global climate change.

The team also drilled a short distance into the highly fractured rock layer below the sediments to learn more about meteorite impacts. Because of the particularly well-preserved rock structure in Lake El'gygytgyn, the team was able to learn how igneous target rocks in this area responded to impacts, potentially providing the basis for important understanding related to cratering processes on Mars.

Geologists used the data collected from the project to reconstruct past climate records on longer time scales, improve understanding of the climate system, and better inform scientists who predict future climate change.

Team researchers investigated air-surface chemical interactions in the Arctic, and how these might evolve in future climates. Their efforts were part of the Ocean, Atmosphere, Sea Ice, Snowpack (OASIS) program – an international program that involves scientists from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK.

To gather data, the team used state-of-the-art chemical and biological sensors, micrometeorological instrumentation, Lidars, and tethered balloons to measure chemical and biological exchanges between the atmosphere and ice, ocean, and snow surfaces. The study focused on the impacts of these chemical reservoirs on tropospheric chemistry, climate, and their feedbacks in the Arctic. By seeking the answer to key questions about the nature of these surfaces, including how, where, and which chemical substances and aerosols are processed and activated in snow surfaces, the team pursued big-picture climate issues and contributed to predictions about climate change in the arctic.

A diverse team of researchers participated in the first of three research cruises in the 2009 season in support of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP). Scientists on board the ship documented late winter ocean conditions, studied the biological communities found in sea ice, monitored the early spring plankton bloom, and investigated light penetration through open water and ice cover. Additionally, researchers examined the benthic communities living on the seafloor and observed an important benthic predator, the walrus. The region of the Bering Sea where the team worked is biologically rich and supports highly productive ecological communities of bivalves, gastropods, and polychaetes. These benthic communities have been changing over the past several decades, perhaps as a result of competing fish species moving north as the Bering Sea's waters warm.