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Onward!
Well, after months of planning and anticipation, the Polaris Project expedition to Siberia begins today. Congratulations to everyone for all of the work that has gotten us confidently to this point. I greatly regret that I won’t be traveling with the group this year, though my regret is tempered by the fact that I’ll instead by spending my time with my daughter Sophie Jane (who is 8 days old today!)…
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Welcome New Students!
We have just completed the selection of students for the 2009 Polaris Project field course. It was a grueling process because we received applications from many more exceptional students than we could accept, but we’re thrilled with the outcome. The new students are: Travis Drake and Moira Hough: Carleton College Blaize Denfeld and Claire Griffin: Clark University Brian Kantor and Erin Seybold: St.…
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Homeward bound…
We’re all currently sitting in an cafe in Moscow, reflecting on the past 3+ weeks of the Polaris Project and getting excited about the fact that we’re heading home tomorrow. Several of us were talking yesterday evening about how difficult it will be to summarize the experience to our families and friends when we get home.…
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Home – NY – Moscow – Yakutsk… Cherskiy Tomorrow!
We are now several days into our trip and we’ll finally reach Cherskiy, our final destination, tomorrow (if all goes as planned). Things have gone mostly smoothly so far, with one notable exception. One of the undergraduate students had a health issue (sinus infection) that was quite severe when we were in Moscow, and after several agonizing hours of discussion we decided that we couldn’t take the chance of her condition worsening as we headed to our remote field site in the Siberian Arctic. …
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Ready to Go!
After several months of work, on March 16, 2007, we submitted our Polaris Project proposal to the National Science Foundation’s International Polar Year grant competition. Six months later we learned that our proposal was successful – the project would actually happen. …
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Max’s Update from Yakutsk, Siberia
As part of another NSF funded project, I’m in Russia for ~3 weeks with a group of four people. Two have never been to Russia before, so in some ways it is a good test run to help identify some of the logistical challenges we’ll face moving the Polaris Project group from the US to Moscow to Yakutsk to Cherskiy. …
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14,000 and growing…
Every December a huge number of scientists gather in San Francisco for the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This year there were over 14,000 attendees, and the number grows every year. Though the meeting covers almost all aspects of earth and planetary science, climate change and polar regions were clearly dominant themes.…
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Welcome to the Polaris Project website and blog
‘Global warming’ is all over the news these days, mainly because of changes that are happening far away or because of events we fear may happen some time in the future. But in the Arctic, big changes are happening now.…
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Northward Bound!
The Polaris Project will give undergraduate students the opportunity to witness the changing Arctic first-hand as they participate in a field course and research experience in northeastern Siberia (8 time zones east of Moscow!). After completing an on-campus course associated with the Polaris Project, a select group of undergraduate students will travel with project scientists to the Siberian Arctic.…
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