#19 Friday, March 14th, 2008: Girls & Science

Twenty one middle school girls came to Byrd today. These dedicated young kids went to school at 5:00 in the morning so they could come to Byrd. They learned about glacier dynamics from Sarah Fortner, who is not part of GD but LTER. The Oceanography Group set up a "Wave Tank". In a long tank there is a device attached to the front that look like a paddle. The paddle is made of the special material to better simulate waves. The girls were then asked to build housing structures from Lego's to test the durability against the waves. This activity was to show the affect of coastal erosion on infrastructures. Structures that did not allow the force of the waves to pass through them were swept into the "ocean".
Next week is my Spring break!!!

#18 Thursday, March 13th, 2008: Pictures

I am still inputing my notes onto the computer. Almost done! Nothing new happened today so I am just going to show pictures that I took. Oh, I did move chairs and desks. It was so loud...when I pushing the office chairs down the hall I felt like I was on a race track. I crashed into a wall. The screeching of the chair was so bad that a couple people closed their doors. Haha. But they did not mind.
OK, computer is being ridiculous. The computer always gets its way! I will add the pictures later.

#15 Thursday, March 6th, 2008: Kyun-In Huh

I interviewed a woman from the Glacier Dynamics group today. This is what I found out about her and the group:
• Kyun is a 1st year student in her PhD for geology
• Kyun’s goal is to investigate the mass balance change in west Greenland
• Kyun has been with this group since the last glacier dynamics group
• One pixel is 30 m
• Kyun is trying to develop a procedure to map the Little Ice age trimlines and terminal moraine around Jakobshavn
• ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer)
• Launched by NASA
• Is a instrument attached to satellite Terra
• Has 50 m resolution
• ASTER is free at a institutional level
• Trimzone: an area between a glacier and soil.
• Trimzones are usually light colored and have no vegetation.
• Vegetation is calculated by volume
• The existing vegetation at the glacial part of Jakobshavn are lichen and tundra
• Kyun has never been Jakobshavn
• The height of the valley is 30 meter
• In the 1800s the two peninsulas of Jakobshavn were jointed
• NASA funded Kyun’s models under the condition that all data and models would be available to them.
• Kyun’s research developed her 145 page masters thesis
• The height and area of glaciers are being depleted
• Kyun created moraine maps, which shows the movement of glaciers over time
• Moraine maps were created by aerial photos from ASTER
• To create maps multiple pictures need to be pieced together
• ASTER cover is 60 km by 60 km
• The Peruvian mountains sections they are studying are six times larger then the Jakobshavn area that Kyun is studying.
• Kyun is traveling to Peru in the summer
• Kyun and the group are going to map the Quelccaya ice cap with a GPS system from a plane. They are also going to use a ground penetrating radar that tells how thick the ice is

#17 Wednesday, March 12th, 2008: Long Term Ecological Research

• LONGEST BLOG EVER
  
• Sarah Fortner
• 
  
• PhD student in environmental geochemistry.
• 
  
• Always loved science and likes being around scientists.
• 
  
• When she first came to Ohio State she knew she wanted to go to Antarctica. Asked people at Byrd and coordinated with Director Berry Lyons. Sarah loved glaciers and Lyons worked with glacial stream chemistry.
• 
  
• Lived on ice between Antarctica and Alaska for a year.
• 
  
• A) Snow
• 
  
• Looks at metal concentrations
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• Metal concentrations are prevalent.
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• Metal can be remobilized by winds
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• Non particulating suit : protects from metals
• 
  
• B) Using the “clean suit” she follows these steps:
• 
  
• Dig snow pit
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• Clean with acid cleaning device
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• Then take clean samples
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• Stream metals are cleaned in three different acids. Hcl at 10% v/v acid. Trace metal grade one which reports contamination, nitric acid at 10% v/v and optima acid ultimate trace metal grade and v/v 1%.
• 
  
• C) Uses filter towers and eventually syringes. Syringes are more affordable, smaller and there are less chances of contamination. Bottles are occasionally used to carry the water. Inductively coupled mass spectrometer measures low concentration parts per trillion.
• 
  
• D) Went to the Dry Valleys two times for one month each. Went to the Great Basin for a week and took two trips a few days each to Mount Hood.
• 
  
• 5) Antarctica is like being on Mars. No vascular plants and exposed rocks in the Dry Valley.
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• The Dry Valleys are more protected
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• East Antarctic ice sheet covered the Dry Valleys
• 
  
• Learned about how scientists are interconnected and learned the importance of it.
• 
  
• 6) They want to learn how environments are changing over time and space: geochemistry, animals and precipitation.
• 
  
• That way you can look back on old data and have new understandings
• 
  
• LTER try to make it understandable for the general public
• 
  
• 7) A lot of lab work but works on computer
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• In the lab and find a month to 2 months
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• Does outreach
• 
  
• Taught 4-5 graders last year (not through LTER)
• 
  
• 9) Solid math and science
• 
  
• General science, ecosystem, paleoclimatology, hydrology, geochemistry and geomorphology.
• 
  
• As a undergrad Sarah needed to take a lot of physics.
• 
  
• Works with biologists on the field
• 
  
• LTER started in 1993
• 
  
• Sarah started in 2000
• 
  
• Seven people are in LTER
• 
  
• LTER is the geochemistry of streams
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• LTER works with all MCM groups
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• Berry stepped down from being the director and principal investigator
• 
  
• There are 26 LTER sites. Two are in the Antarctica and the rest is mostly in the United States.
• 
  
• LTER is the coldest and driest of all MCM sites. Average temperature is
• 
  
• -17 degrees Celsius
• 
  
• 
  
• Kathy Welch
• 
  
• 1) Masters in earth science
• 
  
• 2) Enjoyed learning about the natural world. Areas that Kathy is interested in is engineering, oceanography, glaciology and hydrology.
• 
  
• 3) Berry was Kathy’s undergraduate advisor at the University of New Hampshire and he told her about LTER.
• 
  
• Worked with ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.
• 
  
• Worked in Antarctica four months a year at the Caray Lab
• 
  
• Caray is the main laboratory at MCM to conduct research
• 
  
• A) Water samples from streams and lakes.
• 
  
• B) Easy to collect.
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• Dry Valley lakes are very salty
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• 5) Worked with Berry and LTER since 1993
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• Long term monitoring study to collect long term data sets.
• 
  
• Has spent a accumulative of 60 months in Antarctica
• 
  
• Did her thesis on two snow pits in the Asgard region.
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• The major finding of her research was that the environment was incredibly sensitive to subtle climate changes
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• Lakes are terminal in the dry valleys
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• Warm days in the Summer mean glacial melt meaning rise in levels at lakes.
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• There is a stationary camp by a terminal lake and could be effected by glacial melt.
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• Lake bonnie in the Dry Valleys has had a significant rise.
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• Organisms that are residing in the lakes are microbial, for example bacteria and phytoplankton.
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• 8) Works mostly on computers. Spends 1 month of the year doing field work and 3-4 months working in the lab.
• 
  
• 9) Math and science in high school. Calculus, physics and chemistry.
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• Polar areas are really sensitive because of the physical state of water.
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• Glaciers in the Dry Valleys are not in equilibrium state.
• 
  
• LTER studies the Dry Valley because it has a simple environment but is extreme when compared to other ecosystems.
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• The Dry Valleys are a Polar desert
• 
  
• 
  
• Chris Gardner
• 1) Undergraduate in geology and a masters in geological sciences.
• 2) Interested in environmental sciences and how people effect the environment and vice versa. Chris also likes to travel.
• 3) Berry Lyons was on his masters committee and offered him a job.
• 4)
• A) Does analytical chemistry
• Lakes
• Ice covered lakes
• Glacial run off
• Carbon run off in soils
• B) Chris does not personally collect the samples. That is what Sarah does.
• E) At MCM, Taylor valley
• Which is the primary site
• Acts as a technician
• Oversee the management of computers
• Thirty people go to Antarctica each season
• Stores all the data from expeditions and makes it accessible online
• Works on computers when in Columbus
• Spent 2 months in Antarctica
• For programming he uses ORACLE which is the biggest relational database.
• The BPRC website uses the program UNIX
• Apache and Java is also used.
• Berry does geochemistry in Panama
• There are mandates to have all LTER’s research to be made available to the public.
• Long term project funded by the National Science Foundation
• Chris does information management

#16 Tuesday, March 11th, 2008: Senior Seminar

Today was Senior Seminar. About 10% of the graduating class was there. I have finished most of the interviews. Now I have to type up the information on the groups. Carol wants the information to be understandable to the general crowd. I am much like a teenage translator, part of both worlds (scientific and young adult). My work is going top help re-vamp the BPRC website. It is hard to describe how immense the shelves were at the Archives. 36 foot shelves that each take up 9,00 sq feet! The picture is of me tied to {by rope} the lift.

#14 Wednesday, March 5, 2008: Makio & Club

Today was my last day at the University Archives. Bertha, the Reference Archive curator presented me with a going away gift. The day before Bertha gave me a tour around the Reference Archive (the most used archive within the Archives) and showed me the old Makio yearbooks from OSU. Makio means reflection or mirror in Japanese. A particular Makio edition stood out, for me at least. The cover is a green-blue and the depiction is physically raised. A man and a woman are lounging on either side of a buckeye tree, dressed in Roman togas. Two mountains are posed in the background.
As a going away memorabilia Bertha gave me the 1925 edition that I liked.

#13 Tuesday, March 4, 2008: Paige and Photo Archives

Admiral Richard E. Byrd was a polar explorer famous for his claimed flight over the North Pole in 1926. Flying over the North Pole is difficult because:
-Six months of the year are spent in darkness
-Hurricane force winds
-Solar waves that bounce off the white ice create a glare (6 months are spent in darkness)
Controversies unfolded as Byrd's co-pilot of the First Antarctic Expedition, calculated that it was physically impossible to fly over the North Pole that quickly. Despite the claims the Byrd Polar Research Center will continue to admire the hardships he endured as a polar explorer. BPRC was named after Ohio State University purchased the "Byrd Papers". The Byrd Paper collection includes boots, letters, spoons, maps, motion picture films, records and miscellaneous items. The Byrd Collection icon is his personal journal which tells accounts from his journeys to polar areas. Byrd Polar Archives houses the 495 boxes of this immense collection. Laura Kissel, my three day submentor, retrieved the original Byrd Diary for me to read again. Byrd was very unorganized and would open the book and write in any page. Chronologically the diary is a mess. I also discovered that on the official box the diary is preserved it says "Dairy of Richard E. Byrd" in two different places. Laura laughed and said she never noticed it before.
For two of the polar expeditions, Byrd took the artist David Abbey Paige. Paige, while in the poles, created beautiful 100 pastel art pieces. Pastels were used because other mediums were not adaptable to Antarctica's weather. Paige was able to capture the pristine skies and accurately. Laura took me too see the pastels by Paige that are now featured at the Faculty Club at OSU.
Michelle Drobik is in charge of the vast Photo Archives. Today she gave me the introduction of her archive. Recently a lawyer phoned her requesting a photo of a previous OSU football player on trial for murder in Georgia. Girls occasionally come into the photo archives to see if their date/boyfriend really was on the football team as they said they were. Sport fanatics (which she said she could spot a mile away), genealogy enthusiasts, scrapbook lovers and HBO have all been a host to this collection of 2 million photos and video.
*The man pictured is Byrd*

#12 Monday, March 3, 2008: Archives

The Polar Archives is related to the Goldthwait library at BPRC. It differentiates because Goldthwait has more books. PA has more letters, records and photographs. Today I got to view letters from Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Rooselvelt, John D. Rockefeller, J. Edgar Hoover, Harry Truman, Woodrow Wilson and Amelia Earhart to Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd. The originals.
Not to mention I got to read Admiral Byrd's expedition diary.
I would show pictures but I cannot post them online as by law.

#11 Friday, February 29, 2008: Ice Core Replica

An undergraduate at Byrd, named Michelle, is making a ice core replica because the "Cold Room" is no longer open to tours. To preserve the ice cores in the "Cold Room" the opening and closing of doors needs to be minimized. The Global Warming class (taught by Ed Ingman) was one of the last classes to enter the ice core library. The replica of the ice core was made by putting liquid plastic in a Pringle's container. Annual layers are defined between clear and white plastic. White plastic means more snow fall where the clear is the opposite. To make it more authentic looking there was a layer of ash, signifying a possible major eruption. There is also a bug included.
The replica did not turn out as planned. It had a white film over it. Me and Michelle for a majority of the day worked on sanding and wet sanding the replica. We made the annual layers more visible but now we need a gloss to cover it.

#10 Thursday, February 28, 2008: Glacier Dyanmics

Today I interviewed the Glacier Dynamics group at Byrd Polar Research Center. Bryan Mark is in charge of the group and is a assistant professor in geography at OSU. Dr.Mark was one of the people that I interviewed. Which, by the way, I preached the awesomeness of the Grahams School curriculum and experiential credentials. Dr.Mark and Kristen (a geography major and part of the group who I interviewed) were ooing and ahhing by the end of the interview. Kristen said that the Graham school offers an amazing opportunity and wished that she had it in high school.
Glacier dynamics is the study of glacial motion and thickness using physics. During the interview the group said "Glacier Dynamics" is too narrow for their broad study. Soon they are going to change the name. GD's focus is the Quelccaya Ice Cap, Andes Mountains , Peru. Quelccaya is the largest glacier or ice cap in the tropical regions. Unfortunately the ice is retreating severely due too higher temperature. Which is another reason why GD studies it, because it will dissipate in 15-ish years. They use multi-use weather (precipitation ground water, solar waves, etc.) machines and satellites to gather information. Bryan Mark has grown very close to the local people near Quelccaya and even has unofficial adoptive parents. His "dad" passed away unexpectedly last year.

#9 Wednesday, February 27, 2008: Forams

Foraminifera (forams) : Part of the amoeboid family, which are unicellular microorganisms.These amoeboids are planktonic. Foram's are aquatic and have a shell, or a "test". Typically they are formed by separate chambers. The particular foraminifera (I will get their scientific name later)I was working with were 4 to 5 chambers with a "mouth".
An undergraduate, Kevin, was my submentor in the Sea Floor Sediment group. Kevin is a geology major and has traveled around the world (not always for research). For his final, as a graduate, he studies this specific polar foraminifera. The Sea Floor Sediment group drills cores into the sediments at the bottom of oceans. The cores are taken back to the lab and dissected for foraminifera. Foraminifera can tell past climates in specific geographical locations (there are 275,000 species) and oceanic productivity. Oil companies rely on forams to discover where oil is.
The polar foraminifera are separated into two categories: benthic, bottom dwellers, and planktonic, surface dwellers. Benthic are rarer because their habitat, the bottom is smaller than of the planktonics. Benthic are flatter and shinier. Planktonic are more bulbous. My job at the Sea Floor Sediment group was to find these forams in the cores and determine if they were benthic or planktonic. Microscopes are needed for this process because of their micro size.
The name of the polar foraminifera me and Kevin were studying: Neogloboquadrina pachyderma