Karen is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her research combines field measurements and satellite images to study links between the land, atmosphere, and oceans in the Arctic. Her most recent work focuses on permafrost thaw and impacts of sea ice on biological productivity.
You can read more about Karen here.
While the US has seen an unusually cold winter so far (with several large snowstorms battering New England as well as sweeping across the nation), you may wonder whether the Arctic is also experiencing anomalously cold temperatures. Here in Worcester, Massachusetts, we happen to be digging out of 48.4 inches of snow received in January [...]
Unfortunately not all of the PIs were able to travel to Cherskiy for the Polaris Project 2010, myself included. I greatly missed being at the Northeast Science Station and being in the field with such a fantastic group of scientists and students. As you may have read from others already, the Polaris Project experience has [...]
The Northeast Science Station is bustling with science as the student projects are well under way. We are using this to introduce a new section of the website focusing on the science done on the Polaris Project. The students are now into daily routines of sampling trips to locations near and far. Our multiple science [...]
I’m currently in Bergen, Norway at the 10th annual Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW). One of the draws of attending the ASSW is the science symposium, in which I presented a couple talks and co-chaired the “Coastal Environments as a link between Land and Sea in the Arctic” session. However, the long-term primary purpose of [...]
We are wrapping up the Polaris Project at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum. It’s been a great experience for our team. We’ve had good meetings to plan logistics for the 2009 summer course in Cherskiy. We’ve had multiple chances to present our research to some of the 1000 participants at the forum – we all [...]
A four-part NOVA special “On Thin Ice in the Bering Sea” has just been released, featuring scientists discussing their climate change research in the northern Bering Sea (including some brief highlights of my own work). The series also focuses on the impacts of recent climate change and sea ice decline on indigenous communities in the [...]
In addition to having research interests in impacts of permafrost thaw on land-ocean linkages of carbon and nutrients in Siberia, my research also investigates carbon dynamics in coastal and shelf environments in the Arctic. My most recent project seeks to determine impacts of sea ice variability and polynya formation on biological productivity and spring phytoplankton [...]