Field Course

The backbone of the Polaris Project is a field class studying arctic system science at and around the Northeast Science Station in Cherskiy Russia (north of the Arctic Circle on the Kolyma River). It is one of the most remote and beautiful places on the planet. See the blog for more information.

During the Polaris Project field course, students and faculty will work together to study the Arctic as a system.  Instead of focusing on a single question in a single ecosystem type, we will consider a range of questions across multiple components of the Arctic System including forests, tundra, lakes, rivers, estuaries, and the coastal Arctic Ocean.  The unifying scientific theme will be the transport and transformations of carbon and nutrients as they move with water from terrestrial uplands to the Arctic Ocean.  We will emphasize the linkages among the different ecosystems, and how processes occurring in one component influence the others.

The inaugural Polaris Project field course will be in summer 2008.  Courses will also take place in 2009 and 2010, with the possibility of continuation if funding is available.  During each field course, students and faculty will initially survey the different ecosystem types and get hands-on experience with key tools and approaches used to study them.  We will discuss exciting unresolved scientific questions related to each ecosystem type, emphasizing the links between the different components.  Students will then design and implement their own research projects and present results to the group at the completion of the course. We anticipate that many students will want to continue or expand their projects once returning to the US:  Polaris Project faculty will facilitate these activities during the subsequent academic year, and outstanding students will have the opportunity to present their projects at major scientific conferences.

The inaugural field course in 2008 will be a bit different than subsequent field courses:  the length of time in Russia will be less (~3 weeks instead of ~6 weeks) and there will be fewer students (6 instead of 14).  Though some of the Polaris Projects faculty have extensive experience in the Arctic, including at Cherskiy where the field course will be held, others do not.  In essence, students and faculty will be exploring the Arctic together, learning together, and helping to design the course for subsequent years.  An opportunity exists for students to return for a second summer to serve as assistants and to conduct a more intensive research project in 2009.

Undergraduate researchers and team members will work across five different ecosystem types at a field station in remote northeastern Russia.