 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
Return to Table of Contents
The MBL Ecosystems Center Offers New Summer Course
Arctic Ecology and Modeling: A Study Trip to Alaska
The MBL is offering a new course this summer. Arctic Ecology and Modeling: A Study Trip to Alaska will educate advanced undergraduate students and graduate students about the Arctic environment and demonstrate the interplay between data collection and quantitative modeling. It will consist of a 10-day tour of the 400-mile northern half of the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay.
 The course will take advantage of a research project on BioComplexity (Land-water Interaction at the Catchment Scale: Linking Biogeochemistry and Hydrology) funded by the National Science Foundation at the Toolik Field Station (TFS) of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The project is based at the TFS because of the wealth of scientific data gathered about the streams, lakes, and tundra in the area. Much of the research has been carried out in conjunction with the Arctic Long Term Ecological Research project (LTER), now in its 15th year.
The Arctic environment section of the course will consist of lectures and field demonstrations at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Students will then drive north along the Dalton Highway across the Yukon River to Coldfoot. After one or two days there, participants will drive across the Brooks Range to the TFS where they will spend four or five days. One day will be spent crossing the Arctic Coastal Plain to Prudhoe Bay, at the Arctic Ocean.
Lectures and demonstrations will be given by John Hobbie (course director) and Gaius Shaver of the MBL, Donald Walker and David McGuire from the University of Alaska, George Kling from the University of Michigan, and Joshua Schimel from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Topics will include the vegetation and ecology of the boreal forest, vegetation of the tundra, interactions of northern ecosystems with permafrost, the ecology of northern streams and lakes, nutrient cycling, hydrology, and biogeochemistry. At the end of this section of the course, students will have enough information about Arctic ecology to understand the goals, methods, and models of the BioComplexity project.
The second section of the course, a demonstration of the planning, implementation, data collection, and modeling of the project, will take place at the TFS under the direction of Marc Stieglitz of the Lamont Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Dr. Stieglitz will demonstrate the completed hydrology model of the site as well as the soil chemistry and terrestrial ecosystem model currently under construction. Students will gain an appreciation of how field data can be converted to process description and rates and how processes and environmental information can be linked into a simulation model.
An important part of the course will be hikes in the Brooks Range and foothills to visit different landscapes and investigate the diversity of Arctic habitats.
For more information, see the web site or contact Debbie Scanlon, course coordinator: dscanlon@mbl.edu.
The course is limited to 10 students. |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
