Faculty Highlights - Denali Ice Feature
Karl Kreutz, Associate Professor, Earth Sciences: “These kinds of environments represent a really sort of unique archive information for looking at climate variability in the past. These glaciers around us that we’re traveling over and ultimately collecting samples from have a really kind of a unique archive of what’s happened to the atmosphere over time as the snow falls and accumulates in these glacier basins that preserves climate information with it. It is in some ways an extreme environment and it takes a lot of work to get here and collect the samples. But on the other side of the coin, if you like this kind of environment, it’s a great place to work and it’s a very unique place to get that kind of information.”
Ben Gross, Graduate Student, Earth Sciences: “The goal out here is to start examining this area in Denali National Park for possible deep ice core sites.”
Erich Osterberg, Post Doctoral Fellow, Dartmouth: “We’re particularly interested to see if pollution from Asia is making it all the way across the Pacific Ocean and actually landing here in North America and polluting North America. And so that is what we actually found on Mount Logan; we could see pollution, particularly lead pollution, coming all the way across from countries in Asia that are still spewing quite a bit more pollutants than we now are in America.”
Cameron Wake, Research Associate Professor, UNH: “Understanding the way climate change is here over the last several thousand years provides us with additional information on the operation of our climate system and that’s what’s really important. As we look to the future, as we see that humans are changing climate, we want to understand how the entire system operates.”
“On this particular trip, we have a drill that is strictly hand powered, so we have to use…we basically turn the drill ourselves.”
Seth Campbell, Graduate Student, Earth Sciences: “You know changes in climates are going to affect so many different individuals. For me in Maine, part of me is really interested to see where we are going to be 20 years down the road and see what the Maine climate is like. Are we going to have snowstorms in the winter? Or is it going to be a lot of rain–are we going to be like the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.? I’m curious about where we are going, 20, 30, 40 years down the road, when I have kids.”
Ben Gross: “It’s just a great place to come out, come out into the mountains, into the hills. You get a look at Forker like that and do just incredible science, good science and a great area to do it.
Man Cooking Dinner: “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner.”
Ben Gross: “Life in camp is great. You go, you work hard and come back and relax in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The food is spectacular, absolutely spectacular.”
Karl Kreutz: “You’re away from you know all the ringing phones and the email, and we’re really focused on our job and you know it makes for busy days, but this is about as good as it gets with scenery like this around us.”
