The K-12 Pipeline & Beyond

Utilizing Juneau, Alaska Area Temperate Glaciers to Train the Next Generation of Climate Scientists and to Educate Alaskan Visitors

Dr. Cathy L. ConnorUniversity of Alaska Southeast, Environmental Science Program

University Students

Alaska Secondary Science Teachers

Cutting EDGE: Teaching Environmental Geology, Bozeman, Montana, June 2012

Educating the Public

Undergraduate Research

UAS faculty transfer climate knowledge to Juneau residents and Alaska’s summer visitors through U.S. Forest Service Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center naturalists. Each spring USFS naturalists receive climate and earth science training from UAS Faculty and pass that along to >400,000 visitors annually. Fireside Chat lectures in the winter enable local Juneau-ites to learn From UAS faculty and students about Mendenhall Glacier and other local glacier research.This outreach has served several millions of people from around the world.

IntroductionThe recruitment of science students into university programs begins with preschoolers with their families and develops further in elementary school.

Introducing young children to the natural world in extreme environments gives them the foundations for wearing proper clothing , and for detachment from electronics, indoor heating, and shelter. Helping young people to learn to observe and listen to what is going on “off grid” sets them on a lifelong pathof discovery.

Young children follow tracks and learnAbout animal adaptations to winter conditions. They learn about heat transferAnd the danger of hypothermia through theirown exertions during designed listening to and mapping of the soundscapes around them, as well as active snow games onsnow shoes teaching coordination, endurance, and teamwork. This sets themup for lifelong active lifestyles and the skillsto observe the world around them.

UAS Glaciation and Climate Change course students Alex Sargent and Nat Kugler observe the

changing Mendenhall Glacier Terminus (Connor 2010 photo)

Never put your tongue on a glacier (Discovery SE photo)

Ancient forest is emerging in ice cave in the Mendenhall terminus. (J. Bradshaw photo 2012.)

Juneau Icefield Research Program students study Vaughan Lewis ice fall above Gilkey Glacier 2011 (JIRP photo) Discovery Southeast Winter 5th Grade Curriculum

Avalanches and Snow ScienceGoals: 1) Students will dig snow pits and record temperature/density data in order to understand heat flow through the snow pack and its effect on stability. 2) Students will acquire an understanding of fundamental avalanche dynamics by examining concepts such as potential energy, gravity, slope angle, and transfer of energy. 3) Students will gain basic avalanche safety awareness.

Laura, Colin, and Erin Flynn check out medial moraine erratic boulders in Suicide Basin circa 1995 (Connor photo)

Discovery Southeast students enjoy 5th grade capstone hike to glacier terminus (Discovery Southeast Photo)

DDR HS Student (David Baker) designed this submersible that was used in Glacier Bay to measure changing salinity and temperature with depth near and far from tidewater glaciers

High school summer science experiences (2006-2012) have enabled study of temperate rainforest glaciers through the Alaska Summer Research Academy (UAF), Design Discover Research (UAS-JEDC), and the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP), and the Experiential Discoveries in Geoscience Education (EDGE)-UAS programs.

These students learn about natural processes, design modest research projects, collect and analyze their data, and present the results of this effort at Science Fairs, local symposia, and to their friends and families.

Learning to climb out of a crevasse in the Cook Shack at Camp 17 High School students in JIRP program.

EDGE teacher workshops 2005-2009 provided Alaska high school and middle school science teachers with GIS skills to utilize for their own geospatial explorations of glaciology, hydrology, and earth science. Teachers developed research questions and worked with their EDGE students to produce field data based science fair projects. Over the years they have taught 100s of Alaska High School students GIS skills. www.edge.alaska.edu

Juneau Icefield GlaciersJuneau’s Backyard Glacier -The MendenhallUAS students annually measure glacier mass balance and ice velocity, terminus positions with DGPS stations, steam drills, ablation wires, snow pits, and time series photos. University Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute glaciologists measure glacier ablation using airborne lasar and lidar altimetry and share their data with the world. NATGEO Extreme Ice Survey and the UAS SEAMONSTER project operate fixed cameras to monitor proglacial lake front terminus calving events. Lake buoys with strings of temperature sensors collect time series and depth gradient, water temperature changes throughout the summer.Near-terminus and on-ice weather stations record atmospheric data, and depth sounding surveys measure changing lake bathymetry with glacier recession. Radiocarbon dating have been made on wood collected from emerging Little Ice Age forests along the glacier margins. Semester scale labs, student projects, and independent research results in presentations at local symposium, regional and national scientific society meetings.Building on the early work of the Juneau Icefield Research Program Lemon Creek Glacier Monitoring 2005-2011 was carried out with distributed sensor networks through the NASA

funded UAS Southeast Monitoring Network Project.

Kindergarten-5th Grade

High School Science

JIRP High School Students measure firn pack density change with depth in Lemon Creek Glacier Snow pits.

DDR Lower Glacier Bay Summer 2011Alaska students

Chuathbaluk High Schooler Agnes Avakumoffexplores Adams inlet, filled with ice in 1898 when John Muir visited Glacier Bay

EDGE teachers on the Mendenhall Glacier

EDGE Teachers collect glacier meltwater stream flow data.

2500 students and faculty have collected data on Juneau Icefield temperate (warm) glaciers through the JIRP Program 1946-2011. This program has trained many of the leading US and international glacier and climate scientists in techniques required for temperate glacial environment field science research through the collection of mass balance, ice surface ablation or thickening, surface ice velocity, high elevation temperature, and total glacier thickness and thinning data. www.crevassezone.comAbout 10 UAS students have participated in the JIRP program.UAS has graduated >40 ENVS and Geography B.S. Program students since 2002 who have all done undergraduateresearch or semester-long internships with government resource agencies or industry.

AcknowledgmentsMaynard and Joan Miller, Richard Marston, Marshall Lind, John Pugh, Roman Motyka, Keith Echelmeyer, Chris Larsen, Martin Truffer, Carl Byers, Anupma Prakash, Marla Brownlee, Rosemary Walling, Kathy Smikrud, Ed Knuth, Terry Schwarz, Todd Walter, Ed Neal, Lance Miller, Mary Hakala, Dan Monteith, Wayne Howell, Greg Streveler, Jim Baichtal, John Norton, Terry Brock, Clay Good, Riley Woodford, Ron Marvin, Laurie Ferguson Craig, Mike Hekkers, Rod Flynn, Margaret Rea, Jay Fleisher, Tom Ainsworth, Carl Dierking, Jack Helle, Dean and Edna Williams, Judge Tom Stewart and all the wonderful UAS & UAF students and JIRPers through the years.

UAS Student Jamie Bradshaw measures Eagle Glacier terminus position April 2012.(M. Hekkers Photo)

UAS Students Ivy Smith, Nick Korzen and Nat Kugler collect depth soundings of Mendenhall Lake. Connor photo 2009

2011 Juneau Icefield students wade throughglacier outburst floods as they exit LlewellynGlacier to Lake Atlin,BC JIRP photo 2011

Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP) students collect annual glacier mass balance data from snow pitsat the Mendenhall--Taku Glacier Ice Divide. Students use ski and crampon travel between nunatak camps on the Taku and Llewellyn Glaciers that straddle the Alaska British Columbia borders.(Connor 2009 and JIRP 2011 Photos)

Camp 10 CookshackTaku Glacier JIRP photo 2011

JIRP Camp 18 above the Gilkey Glacier JIRP photo 2011

CrevasseStratigraphyTaku GlacierJIRP 2011 photo

Mendenhall Lake changing terminus positions and lake depths 1998-2009UAS Undergraduate research.

SEAMONSTER Weather Station

JIRPer Steve Berenson presentshis summer research Atlin, BC 2011 Knill photo.

Drinking water production from snowmelt, throughgutter “pipeline” to reservoir at Camp 17 Lemon Creek Glacier

DiscoverySoutheast“Discovery Days”activities duringSchool districtInservice Day at Eaglecrest the community-owned Ski area in Juneau.DSE photo

From an elementary student’s first snow-shoeingadventure to a high school student analyzing annualsnow layers in a student-dug 3m snowpiton a glacier (DSE and Connor photos)

STEM education begins in preschool with discovery activities enabling small children to enjoy the natural environment. It continuesthrough elementary, middle and high school with outside activities that contexturalize math and science and in both guided and student initiated studies of natural process. Successful undergraduatesfield researchers can think analytically while retaining their early childhood sense of discovery about how the natural world works.