Polar Bear Project

By Emily Stone

This 220 lb, one-year-old cub is still with its mother. Photo: John Whiteman

You’ve probably seen a photo or video of a lumbering polar bear, seemingly forlorn, stuck on a small piece of ice in what looks like an endless stretch of sea. The animals have become the symbol for what’s at risk if the arctic sea ice continues to retreat each summer. But for all their emotional punch, very little is known about how the bears are coping with the dramatic changes in their habitat.

A group of researchers from the University of Wyoming is looking for some answers among the polar bears on the North Slope of Alaska. These bears are forced to decide between staying on land during the summer or following the ice edge north, past their normal feeding grounds to an area of deep ocean that may not hold much food. The researchers want to know what the polar bears are eating and how much they’re exerting themselves if they stay on land versus head north.

The project’s main question is: “Are they able to eat a lot during the summer, and if they’re not eating a lot, how well are they able to fast,” explains John Whiteman, a Ph.D. student on the project run by co-principal investigators Hank Harlow and Merav Ben-David.

Dr. Henry Harlow, Dr. Merav Ben-David, and John Whiteman (left to right) with an adult male polar bear who has been sedated for measurements. They’re sitting in front of a temporary windbreak (to make measurements easier) on sea ice off the northern coast of Alaska in October 2008. Photo: John Whiteman

The team is in the second year of the two-year project, which is based out of Barrow and Prudhoe Bay. They’re using a combination of blood, muscle, fat and breath samples, which reveal what and how often the animals are eating, along with GPS tracking collars and internal body temperature and activity monitors that the bears wear during the summers. Together the information will show how the bears on land are faring versus those that head north.

Fly the Friendly Skies

Legendary 109th pilot Jim Grupp (Ret) at Alert Bay, Canada, March 2006. Photo: Ed Stockard

We got to thinking about our colleagues in the New York Air National Guard 109^th Airlift Wing the other day.  We heard about the delight with which two Greenlandic high school students, participating in an education program en route to Summit Station, experienced take-off and landing in the plane’s cockpit, having been invited up by the pilot for a rare view of their ice-topped homeland.

The 109th is a special unit. Their primary mission is to provide airlift to the US National Science Foundation’s research programs at both poles:  they move civilians (scientists and those who manage or support the research program) and their gear to and from and all over the ice in Greenland and Antarctica.

Through the 109th, civilians experience a fly culture unlike a typical commercial airline. For one thing, the “seats” are made of red netting hooked to the inside walls of the plane. No first class here–everyone sits in cargo class.

All the seats are middle seats. Have a seat. Photo: Henning Thing

The ANG doesn’t serve snacks, and forget the drink cart. But sometimes, en route to Greenland from their base in Scotia, New York, they will take you out for ice cream: the airport staff at Canadian Forces Base at Goose Bay, Newfoundland (the refueling stop), give free ice cream bars to all comers. And while there’s no in-flight movie, the view out the windows can be spectacular, especially if a reconnaissance means the crew goes in low.

Approaching east Greenland. Photo: Ed Stockard

You can drape yourself over the cargo pallets (as is the fellow, left center, below) or stand in the aisles. As long as the air is smooth and the loadmaster doesn’t mind.

If they lose your luggage, you’re likely to know it before you land since cargo flies in the belly of the plane with the people. But the 109th doesn’t lose your luggage. Photo: Henning Thing

Like flight attendants on commercial airlines, loadmasters are in charge of what happens behind the cockpit. But they won’t bring you an eye mask or fluff your pillow; they’re busy with other matters:

A loadmaster's dream. This D-6 snuggles in the hold, ready to fly to a deep field camp. Photo: Ed Stockard

Sometimes the 109th drops something–but only on purpose:

Here, a crew practices air drop procedures at Raven Camp, their Greenland training facility. Photo: Ed Stockard

And then there are the skis, required for snow and ice field landings. When fully retracted, the skis sit up close to the body of the plane. When deployed, they fit down over the wheels, almost like enormous spats.  And those spats make the “ski-birds” workhorses at the poles, where there are few paved runways available.

Coming in for a landing. . .

. . . and touchdown! Photos: Henning Thing

The Guard doesn’t put up much of a curtain between the air operations and the passengers; there’s no Wizard of Oz here, so you never forget that what you’re doing is flying in a big metal bird. But somehow, that’s comforting.  Friendly skis.  Friendly skies.

Congratulations to Lt Col Mark Doll and the entire 109th Airlift Wing on the successful testing of an LC-130 fitted with eight-bladed propellers earlier this week at Summit Station! More on those developments in a future post.

Gearing Up (and Slip-Sliding Away)

L-R: Robert Anderson, Irina Overeem, and Cameron Wobus (all U Colorado) prepare to go into the field in Alaska.

Parts of Alaska’s coastline are crumbling into the sea, and the research team pictured above wants to understand why. The earth scientists from U Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences are studying Drew Point, along Alaska’s northern coastline, to better explain what physical processes most impact coastal stability–warmer temperatures or increased wave action due to reduced shore-fast sea-ice, or other factors?

After gearing up at the CPS offices in Fairbanks, the team flew up to Lonely, and from there shuttled into Drew Point on the Beaufort Sea coast by helicopter. They are now camping at Drew Point for several days, using instruments in the water to monitor temperature and wave dynamics; on land, time-lapse photography and soil temperature data add to their information trove.  When they return to Colorado in early August, the scientists will analyze their data and that from other sources (satellite imagery, off-shore buoy data, etc.) to better understand the erosion process.

Some villages in Alaska have been heavily impacted by coastal erosion; the village of Kivalina is a good example.  The work carried out by Anderson, Wobus and Overeem may help planners predict where future coastal erosion is likely to occur, what particular climatic conditions promote erosion, and what processes either accelerate or decelerate rates of shoreline change.

Andy Revkin wrote about this project last fall—and posted a short video showing coastal erosion–in his New York Times blog, Dot Earth.

Science Education Tour ’09

Flags for the United States, Greenland, and Denmark fly at Summit Station for the 2009 Science Education Tour. Photo: Angela Coyle

Like any good educational experience for young people, the 2009 Greenland, Denmark, United States Joint Science Education Tour provided ample play time—in this case, Frisbee games and rounds of golf on the frozen summit of the Greenland ice sheet. The whirlwind tour for a group of Greenlandic, Danish, and American students and teachers highlighted basic research and the effects of climate change on the island’s land, ice, plants and animals (including human ones).

After spending a day orienting in Kangerlussuaq, the group of about 15 flew to Summit Station for a three-day tour of the research outpost at the apex of the ice sheet. Accommodations in the Arctic Ovens of tent city fulfilled a goal for several participants who wanted to sleep atop the two-mile thick ice sheet, though relatively warm temperatures precluded the full experience.

"Room" with a view: Bo Gregersen of the US Embassy in Copenhagen monitors the ice cap from his tent. Photos: Henning Thing (Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation) unless otherwise noted.

In addition to attending presentations given by NSF’s Renee Crain and various Summit scientists and staff and enjoying Summit’s legendary hospitality (including the seemingly bottomless jar of homemade cookies), the group toured Summit’s facilities and science experiments:

While part of the group collected surface snow samples, donning Tyvek suits to reduce contamination of the snow samples which are analyzed for dust and other pollution transported from far away . . .

 

. . . CPS science technical staffer Steve Munsell explained snow pit science to another part of the group, which then collected samples for snow-density measurements.

Here, students examine the University of Colorado all-sky camera (Koni Steffen, CIRES, PI). Among other uses, information gleaned from the instrument is useful to scientists working to understand the effect of cloud cover on the solar budget.

To learn about ice-core science, the group examined bits of discarded ice core to see the bubbles that contain tiny packets of air from days gone by; they also floated bits of core in orange juice to experience the pop and fizz of the compressed air being released from the melting ice.

Tiny bubbles sparkle in this ice shard.

Greenland had its own lessons to impart. The three-day visit became a four-day visit due to poor local weather. After assembling early in the morning, the team watched for several hours as the flight was delayed under unsettled skies, and then experienced the ultimate trial by fire (or ice fog) when the Air National Guard’s skied LC-130 plane circled over Summit in hopes of a landing opportunity before boomeranging to Kangerlussuaq without picking up the passengers. Instead of flying, the group relaxed with board games, golf, Frisbee and “house-mouse” duties.

In fact, waiting may not be the hardest part.

Jennifer Thompson, a teacher from Juneau, Alaska, was the American group leader. She recorded her experiences in a journal for the ARCUS project, Polar TREC, funded by the NSF. Visit the Polar TREC site to read Jennifer’s blog here.

Danish ecologist and IPY expert Henning Thing escorted the group. After a 40-year career, what Professor Thing doesn’t know about the Arctic probably isn’t worth knowing. Henning’s extensive knowledge of Greenland’s history, culture, and natural phenomena enriched the experience for all. His high-school-aged son participated as well.

 

Henning Thing. Photo: Robbie Score

Danish students (L-R) Trine Madsen, Davis Thing, and Sam Hansen snooze in their net seats aboard the Air National Guard's plane on the return to Kangerlussuaq.

The 2009 Greenland, Denmark, United States Joint Science Education Tour was an activity of the Joint Committee. The Joint Committee was established in 2004 to broaden and deepen cooperation among the United States, the Kingdom of Denmark, and Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark. Since its launch the Joint Committee has established an impressive track record of accomplishments that spans a broad range of issues of mutual concern, including culture, education, science, environmental research, technical assistance, and commercial affairs. The Joint Committee meets annually (most recently in May, 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark) to assess its ongoing work and evaluate new project proposals. The Science Education Tour of 2009 was sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, and the New York Air National Guard.

Polaris: Rising stars of the Arctic

Polaris Project students from the inaugural 2008 class. All photos from The Polaris Project Web site unless otherwise noted.

The Polaris Project Web site is a lively spot this time of year, as a group of American and Russian undergraduate students, escorted by faculty from their universities, conduct field work in the Kolyma River Basin in Russia’s remote and lovely far northeast–and then share their adventures via a project blog. The Polaris Project aims to draw budding scientists (the rising stars) to arctic research. Its centerpiece is the Russian High Arctic field course now engaging 10 undergraduates in an odyssey focused on studying the area while living (and sometimes traveling) aboard a barge afloat in the Kolyma River.

The live-aboard barge.

The students have devised eight different research projects this year, each studying some aspect of carbon cycling in the ecosystem of the Kolyma River Basin. The mosaic of subjects includes the area’s lakes, rivers, permafrost, microbes, and more. The team works in new labs at the Northeast Science Station, a small and important Siberian research facility directed by the legendary Russian scientist, Sergey Zimov.

Three students collect lake water samples to study macroinvertibrate diversity.

In addition to research conducted around the station, the group has taken side trips down the river, including a multi-day trip to Duvannyi Yar, where mammoth bones and other Pleistocene-area remnants adorn the landscape, which is underlain by thawing permafrost. Thanks to the mammoth and other large animals that roamed the ancient lanscape, the permafrost harbors massive stores of organic matter. Nearby, a group of scientists led by Zimov have created Pleistocene Park, an experiment attempting to recreate and study the grassland ecosystem that disappeared 10,000 years ago, Zimov suspects, due less to climate warming than to human overhunting.

On the return to Cherskiy and the Northeast Science Station, principal investigator Sudeep Chandra (standing) analyzes water samples while photographer Chris Linder sorts myriad photographs (enjoy them on the Polaris site!).

The National Science Foundation-funded Polaris Project is the brain child of Max Holmes of Woods Hole, whose work on river water transport and chemistry in the High Arctic a few years ago forged a very fruitful collaboration with Russian students and colleagues (called PARTNERS and then Student Partners), and showed Holmes has a knack for engaging young people in research.

While his Polaris rising stars work in Russia, Holmes remains at Woods Hole, monitoring his team’s progress remotely. The reason: protostar Sophie Jane Holmes, one month old today. Congratulations, Max!

UP

Postcard from Barrow: Nalukataq

Photos: Tracy Sheely unless otherwise noted

Barrow turned out (and up) a few weeks ago to celebrate the spring whale harvest wherein two crews brought in four whales total. The traditional Iñupiaq festival, called Nalukataq, is a thanksgiving for the harvest, so central to a traditional Inuit subsistence community’s way of life. During the day-long fete the community honors the whalers who bring in the bounty, feast on caribou and goose soup and whale delicacies of all kinds, and have – you know – a whale of a good time. In addition, each family receives its share of frozen whale meat (called quaq) and whale blubber and skin (muktuk) from the spring harvest.

This photo, from Fairbanks Open Radio, documents Barrow’s June Nalukataq. The two whaling crews who brought in the whales fly their flags, center left, and the community gives thanks for the harvest. Later, everyone enjoys the blanket toss and dancing in the gym. Photo: David Koester

A highlight of the Nalukataq is the blanket toss. Community members gather around a seal-skin trampoline, and toss all willing high into the air. Traditionally, the whaling captains go first, and they throw candy and other treats to watching children.  Good times indeed.

The community blanket toss.

Up!

Under the Rainbow

Through Ed Stockard’s viewfinder

“Taken this morning with clearing skies to the east and darkening skies to the west,” Ed Stockard writes about his picture on 22 June.  The C-130 shown here, along with several others flown by the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing, is the workhorse of the National Science Foundation’s polar research programs.

In the Media

Hungry bears find that moose calves, like this two-week-old, make a nice meal. Photo: Leroy Anderson, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

A recent study suggests that young moose should (as should we all) pay close attention to their mothers, writes Ned Rozell in Alaska Science Forum #1967.

Listen!  Tag along aurally with a group of archeologists working at Paris Fjord on the northwestern coast of Greenland for the Inglefield Land Archeology Project. The team is spending the better part of two months excavating ancient Thule home sites. Messages sent via satellite telephone to PI Genevieve LeMoine will be uploaded to the project’s blog site through August 8.

From the Anchorage Daily News: Huge Blob of Arctic Goo Floats Past Slope Communities. There’s video, too!

Explore Greenland’s coast this summer by way of this blog written by an Australian polar explorer aboard the Arctic Sunrise, a Greenpeace ship. Ice sheet expert Jason Box is now aboard the ship establishing time-lapse cameras for his NASA-funded experiment.

Northernmost Tribute to Michael Jackson

The hard-working people at Toolik are also dedicated fans of the King of Pop. Braving the man-eating mosquitos, the folks at latitude 68’38N, Longitude 149’36’W paid their respects to the king of pop in this video.

In the NEEM Tunnels

The process of taking several kilometers of core out of the middle of a great ice sheet is a gigantic undertaking. There’s the frosty landscape, barren of infrastructure and the seemingly interminable logistics chain, both of which drive the stakes high and require a lot of commitment.  And then there’s the fragile treasure—the ice itself, worth its weight in gold by the time it sees daylight given the cost of its capture.

"The main NEEM building, the dome, is just beautiful inside," Robbie Score commented. There's a lot of ambient light, comfortable furniture, well-organized space." Robbie managed to take a quick tour of the dome after touring the ice coring facilities under ground.

CPS staffers Robbie Score and Ed Stockard visited the NEEM drilling camp recently with a group of media, and were treated to a tour of the ice coring and processing facilities located below ground. “It almost felt like a science fiction experience,” Robbie recalled. “We were six meters underground, surrounded by all this activity. The international flavor of it added to the energy—there were people from Korea, Denmark, Germany, the US and other places, all working on various elements of the project.” Robbie says that the coring team has to pipe surface air down into the underground rooms to offset the heat from so many bodies, instruments, machines, and computers at work.

This is the drilling station. The tower apparatus in the center of the room is the drill rig. The spool, front center, holds the cable on which the drill itself travels up and down the casing. The NEEM drill, newly engineered, is working gorgeously, and the researchers are also delighted with a biodegradable, plant-derived fluid used to keep the hole from freezing or collapsing.

Per the NEEM Web site, the drill can hold about four meters of core, and each run takes somewhere between 40 minutes and several hours, depending on how deep the drill has to descend to reach ice. The NEEM team will need to make about 800 runs to reach the muddy bottom 2.5 km below the surface, so spring/summer drilling operations will continue at least into late 2010.

Ed Stockard got this shot of ice core coming out of the drill barrel.

When it is brought up, the core is taken to a second underground room connected to the drilling area itself by a subterranean tunnel:

There is so much activity that the drilling room is separated from the processing room by this long tunnel.

About half of the core is stabilized, packed, archived, and stored for shipment to ice core storage facilities. The rest is analyzed over in the NEEM tunnel, subjected to a series of increasingly destructive measurements: The core is first polished to create the smooth surface needed for some of the optical measurements; the process continues with conductivity tests, which can point to material in the core that provides evidence of big events like volcanoes; after several more tests,  the core is melted for isotopic analysis.

Some of the core runs a gamut of tests in the science room, giving up its secrets to scientists without ever leaving Greenland.

On-site processing saves some of the huge logistics costs involved in shipping the core, and it also provides insurance against the risk of catastrophic failure during core transport. Given the planning and effort this frozen treasure demands of the NEEM team, a little insurance is a very good thing.

Pictures by Robbie Score unless otherwise identified.