Andy Bunn

Andy is an associate professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. He is an ecologist interested in how boreal forests impact the global cycling of carbon.

Andy’s personal web page is here.

Journals

Sarah Ludda Ludwig wins a Goldwater

Many congratulations to 2011 student Sarah Ludda Ludwig. Ludda won one of this year’s prestigious Goldwater scholarships.
- By Andy Bunn
- April 26, 2012
A lot of 2012 applications

The 2012 deadline has passed and we received applications for this year’s field course from dozens of different universities. The folks that are going to review these have their work cut out for them – there are some very highly qualified students with compelling stories. Selecting the team for 2012 will be exceptionally difficult. Stay [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- January 16, 2012
Dallas and Kate in the Denmark Strait

I just got a nice note from 2010 Polaris student Kate Lewis who was writing from Reykjavik harbor. Kate graduated from WWU and has been working at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute as a Summer Student Fellow. Kate wrote that she had just finished one trip to Iceland with Chris Linder and was waiting for [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- August 22, 2011
Converged in Cherskiy

We celebrated the fourth of July with a toast to our Russian hosts and all have a solid night of sleep on the barge.
- By Andy Bunn
- July 04, 2011
Waiting on a plane

Eastward ho!
- By Andy Bunn
- July 03, 2011
The worst ever?

Nikita casually mentioned that the mosquitoes this year are “as severe as they can be.”
- By Andy Bunn
- June 28, 2011
Wherein I learn about Pleistocene Park on the radio

I got into the car, turned the key, and the first words that came out of the radio speaker were “Pleistocene Park.”
- By Andy Bunn
- June 27, 2011
2010 Photos

After pointless and senseless delay we have updated the photos page with a subset of the 2010 photos by Max and Chris.
- By Andy Bunn
- January 27, 2011
Holed up and held up by bad weather

Hey all, Andy here – stateside. Max Holmes made a sat phone call back to the states. The group is delayed north of Cherskiy by bad weather. They have to wait out the bad weather before making the return trip back from the estuary. It might be a day or two until the weather clears. [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 24, 2010
Look right for tweets…

…while the Polaris Project is traveling they will issue updates via twitter. See the list of tweets on the right side of the main blog page or follow us on twitter @PolarisTweet
- By Andy Bunn
- July 03, 2010
More friends! Friends of friends.

The Polaris project is off to Moscow – in the air for a mere 14 hours. Until the next update happens you can amuse yourself by getting us more friends – on facebook. Please become a fan of the Polaris Project on facebook if you aren’t already. If you are, then suggest your friends become [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 02, 2010
We like you. You like us.

Hey Facebookers. Take a second to nip over to Facebook and tell the world that you like the Polaris Project. We’ll be doing more with our Facebook page this year and trying to get the word out there and on this blog. So go and like us. Then suggest that your friends would like us [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- June 17, 2010
New applications

New applications are rolling in for the summer 2010 field course. I have nothing in particular to add other than that we continue to draw some of the brightest and most interesting students from a great range of academic institutions. It’s an honor to see the applications arrive.
- By Andy Bunn
- February 14, 2010
Streams and permafrost

Yet more new science stories. We are rolling them out as they are finished. Look at the stream story and the permafrost story. (Oh and the science page has had a small makeover too)
- By Andy Bunn
- November 02, 2009
Bugs and Rivers…New Science Stories

Check out the new Science Stories on the bug project and the survey project. Both are fanstistic ways of learning about the science done on the field course told in the student’s own words.
- By Andy Bunn
- November 01, 2009
Artists in the Arctic

Andy Revkin continues his interesting coverage of the Arctic. Look at this postcard – similar in some ways to the coverage he gave the Polaris Project during last summer’s field course. The descriptions of the art and the artists in this post are inspiring. Make sure to listen to the sound sample.
- By Andy Bunn
- October 29, 2009
2009 pictures and a proto science story

Chris and I selected 100 of the 21,000 images he took and got some up under the Photos page. We tried to focus on images that captured the feel of the trip and didn’t include many of the specific images that documented the science that went on during the 2009 field course. Those will be [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- August 25, 2009
Back from Moscow in 32 hours

After the Polaris Project folks landed in Chicago we wandered through the airport leaving members off at different gates to make it to their final destinations. The Seattle folks got a little extra time together with a two and a half hour delay on top of a planned four hour layover. (Max and Kayla made good [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- August 01, 2009
Fog on the Panteleikha, 2am on July 19

Watching the Panteleikha River fill with fog was one of the finest things I’ve seen.
- By Andy Bunn
- July 19, 2009
From 68 31′N and 161 02′E and heading N at 8 km/hr.

We have some time to do limited lab work (and even a semi-mobile internet connection) while we are en route to Cherskiy. Here is our current position. Chris Linder works on photos and Sudeep Chandra does some water quality analysis for lakes sampled at Duvannyi Yar.
- By Andy Bunn
- July 17, 2009
Updated pictures, comments, and getting ready to ship out

Three things: 1. We’ve added some pictures to the student blog posts again. Here, here, and here for example. 2. Max Holmes, the director of the project who is sadly stayed behind in the USA this year, is diligently moderating comments that folks send in about the blog posts. Please read and comment. 3. If [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 14, 2009
BGAN from the barge

Some of asked us how our communiques are getting out from our remote position. The answer is that we are using a satellite-based Internet antenna. We point it south and can beam messages off. It’s remarkable really. With that and a spotty connection at the station we are enjoying much better communication this year. We [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 13, 2009
Updated student info, blog pictures

We have made some changes to the site (amazing given our remote location – the BGAN satellite internet is working well). First see information on the 2009 students if you want to place a face with a name. Also, the team page is new to better accomodate our growing Polaris family. Finally, we’ve updated some of the [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 09, 2009
Updating the blog with pictures

We are updating the student and faculty blog posts with new pitcures after many email pleas (read ‘demands’) from some of our readers. Chris Linder is supplying some pictures on the fly even as he works on developing science stories and doing interviews all the members of the Polaris Project. We are using our omnipotence [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 08, 2009
Polaris in Eos

Eos (subscription required) is a weekly publication of the American Geophysical Union. There is a nice article in yesterday’s issue describing the Polaris Project trip from last year and what we are up to this year. Eos reaches more than 50,000 scientists every week and will raise the profile of the project considerably. Max Holmes [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 01, 2009
2009 sea ice bets

Some of the folks here at Polaris headquarters are betting on the minimum extent of arctic sea ice in 2009. We did this last year and then wrote about it again this year. We are not alone. Look here, here, and here. All Polaris folks are welcome to compete for the grand prize – being [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- June 25, 2009
Why do we fly all the way around the world?

The distance between my home in Bellingham, WA and the Northeast Science Station in Cherskiy is about 3,000 miles. That’s a long way but astute readers will notice that the field course participants end up traveling a long, long way to get to Cherskiy. For folks coming from Bellingham: (The map is a schematic – [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- June 16, 2009
Welcome Chris Linder

An extraordinary new team member will be joining the Polaris Project field course this summer. Chris Linder is an award winning photographer and scientist who has traveled all over the world documenting scientific fieldwork. Chris has worked in Siberia before, traveling with Max Holmes and Kate Bulygina to the Far East a few winters back. [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- June 08, 2009
Google “sea ice pool”

Go ahead. Last year we had a Polaris Project bet going to see who could guess the minimum sea ice extent in 2008. Here were our guesses: Here’s what 2008 really looked like: Holly won the pool and got the glory and acclaim that came with it (that was the only prize). The guesses last [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- May 29, 2009
Polaris and Peace

The Polaris Project PIs are in Northfield, MN at the 21st Annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum. The forum this year honors the scientists from the IPCC who won the Peace Prize in 2007. We’re being kept busy. The PIs are taking part in a panel discussion about climate change in the Arctic. John Schade and [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- March 06, 2009
Boyd and Kate line up a talk

Boyd and Kate will be giving a talk at Clark University about their experiences last summer as part of our student outreach efforts.
- By Andy Bunn
- February 06, 2009
Field course description, photos, and more

Potential students (and their parents) are looking over the website as the application deadline draws near. We added some new photos – especially to the estuary album – and brought in some more information about the 2008 field course. Also, we’ve added some information about the 2008 students to the team page. We’ll be adding [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- February 02, 2009
Excitement builds for 2009!

We had a good meeting in SF. Great to have all the PIs together and great to have some of the students present a sliver of their science. All the PIs have a list of things to work on as we get ready for the 2009 class. We’ll have updates galore in the new year [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- December 23, 2008
Polaris meeting at AGU

Most of the PIs and at least four of the students from the 2008 field class are meeting this week at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. There are some 16,000 scientists attending this year and some of the highlights from the meeting will be webcast. NASA scientist Jim Hansen will be giving an important [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- December 15, 2008
New photos and better look and feel

There is a new interface to the photo gallery. The site also has a more consistent look-and-feel. Thanks to Nikki D’Amico from WWU who worked on it as part of her web design portfolio. Max is going through all the pictures from the summer 2008 field class and we’ll be populating the new gallery with [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- December 15, 2008
Good press

Here is a nice article on the Summer 2008 field class in the Worcester paper. Good job Matt, Kate, Boyd, Bill, and Karen – nice article!
- By Andy Bunn
- December 08, 2008
Website overhaul coming soon

It is getting to the point where students at the various colleges and universities are looking at the website and contemplating applying to the field course and spending part of the summer in Siberia. As the reluctant web guy on the team, I can tell you that we are going to roll out some new [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- November 21, 2008
Site is back up…

The Polaris Project website was down for a bit shortly after our return to the US. The site was hacked and being used for some nefarious purpose. We are back online but lost some of our content – Max’s heartwarming summary post from the Moscow cafe was among the causalities. In that post, Max wrote [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- August 19, 2008
New pictures

There are a few new pictures on the site. We are trying to get them up as fast as the connection here allows. -Andy Bunn, WWU
- By Andy Bunn
- July 11, 2008
Comments

The ‘Comments’ on the blogs have been set up to work correctly now. Readers feel free to comment. I’ll have to approve them but will try to do so regularly. So make yourself heard! -Andy, WWU Professor and reluctant blogmaster.
- By Andy Bunn
- July 08, 2008
Moscow

We arrived in Moscow at dawn on July six. We made it through customs in a fairly short amount of time with all our scientific gear intact. Everybody was feeling pretty ragged as Kate Bulygina met the two minibuses she had hired and we loaded all the gear into one and all the people into [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 07, 2008
Leg one completed

Tyler, Holly and I finished the first of our three overnight flights after landing at JFK at 7:00AM from Seattle. We met up with the St. Olaf crew fresh off field work in California and are trying get some rest before meeting the rest of the crew at the gate to catch our flight to [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- July 05, 2008
Max and Anya on the radio…

Max and Russian student Anya Suslova did an interview on public radio about the Student Partners Project. They give a great interview and talk about the Polaris Project a bit at the end. Listen here. You’ll learn something about rivers in the Arctic and something about how the Polaris Project got started.
- By Andy Bunn
- June 26, 2008
The Sea Ice Pool

Betting on future climate has become a phenomenon on lately. See here and here, and here. (Those are all blogs I like by the way). In a related vein, there is also a pool for bets on what the minimum arctic sea ice extent will be in 2008. See here. Some foolish members of the [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- June 26, 2008
Meet the team…

The Polaris Project is moving forward. The team is in the process of selecting the inaugural class for the field class and we are going start blogging about our activities in earnest. The various team members are going to start making short posts that highlight their research and tell us something about who they are [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- February 13, 2008
The winter weather in Cherskii

While perusing wunderground.com, I checked out the temperature in Cherskii. It’s cold over there right now, which makes sense at 69°N. Here is a link to the Google Map for the area. It was -38°C today (-40°C is -40°F) . It just set me to wondering about the summer temperatures. We’ll be there in July [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- January 16, 2008
Sea ice

Arctic ice, both sea and land, has been in the news quite a lot lately and I expect we’ll hear more about it once the world’s leading ice scientists present at AGU in a few weeks. however, in the last few days I’ve come across two really interesting things. The first was a seminar from [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- November 30, 2007
The Polaris Project Web Site is Live

Well, somehow I didn’t hide underneath the desk fast enough when Max asked how we were going to get a Polaris Project web site up. I thought he was just asking me for things I thought should be on the site. Like a blog, and photo sharing, and a wiki, and a place for students [...]
- By Andy Bunn
- November 28, 2007