Welcome!

Welcome and thanks for stopping by. Whatever it is that brought you here today, I hope you stick around the next few weeks and check in as I head to an island that is only about 600 miles from the physical North Pole of our planet. Where I will be is called Svalbard, and it is a group of islands under the rule of Norway since the 1920s. The sun has been up here since April 20th and will not set again until August 26th. The climate is arctic, with an annual tempearture average below freezing (approx 22 degrees). Lucky for me, it will be a balmy 40 degrees on average while I am there through late July and early August. For more information about where I am, I highly suggest you check out April's issue of National Geographic. A link to the full article is right here.

I should probably introduce myself. My name is David Vaillencourt, and I graduated from Whitman-Hanson in 2005, and headed to Bryant University to study business shortly thereafter. I soon realized that business was not my forte, and transferred to the Geology Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where I study Earth Systems, and will be graduating next May (2010). Here, we try to understand the large scale systems on our planet, and how they interact. This includes the: biosphere - life on land and the sea; atmosphere - weather and climate; hydrosphere - water in the oceans, air, and continents; and cryosphere - snow and ice-covered regions, as well as the impact of human activities on these systems. I will be using my knowledge, as well as the extensive knowledge of the professors accompanying us to carry out my research in Svalbard.

So why am I going, and what am I doing? In short, I will be studying climate variability of the arctic. If only it was that simple I could stop right there. More specifically, I will be looking at sediments from a lake to help determine what the climate has been like over the last several hundred areas in this remote region. Many lakes in the Arctic are known to be varved (which means that they have annual layers that one can easily recognize under a microscope, and sometimes even with the naked eye). This helps scientists easily date the sediments (the mud at the bottom of the lake) as you head deeper and deeper through the mud. You are probably asking yourself, well what good does that do to determine climate change?

Well there are many things you can do with this data, some more complex than others. One way is to measure the thickness of these varves. Think about being in the mountains of northern New England in the springtime. After a heavy winter snowfall, the warm spring sun melts this snow and the streams rage down the mountains into larger streams and rivers, and eventually into the many lakes and ponds of northern New England. On warmer days more snow melts and the greater energy created by this flow of water transports higher amount of sediments (as well as larger pieces of rocks) than when it is cold and not as much water flows. A lazy river may not move you very far if you sit in one, but a flooded river will certainly sweep you from your feet, think of rocks and other materials in the same way. Since it is so cold where I will be, these snowcaps and glaciers never fully melt so a simple argument is that when a warm summer occurred, you will see a larger influx of rock and clay material, and vice versa.

So maybe that makes sense but you are probably still wondering, who cares about a remote island near the north pole, I live here in the United States. Well, climate changes on a global scale and it has been shown that a small increase in temperature in temperate climates (where you and I live) is magnified in arctic regions. Furthermore, in the last 50 years sea ice has declined over 20%, and that leads to increases in the sea levels as well as a host of other changes that will undoubtedly affect us in the decades to come. But I am not here to talk about global warming, or the politics or debates of it. I'm here to tell you of my experience in an arctic island where Polar Bears and reindeer vastly outnumber people. I will be working with six other undergraduates as well as two highly regarded professor's in our field. Our days will be long, hiking an hour each way over rugged terrain to reach the lakes and glaciers that we will be studying, but I am told that I'm in for an extremely rewarding experience. As often as I can, I will update this blog, hopefully with some pictures of the landscape and equipment we will be using. For now I will leave you with a list of a few websites to check out if you are further interested in our research:

The UMass Geoscience Department

Overview of the trip

The current weather in Svalbard

Their tourism website, yes you can visit Svalbard too!

Please feel free to leave comments or ask questions. I will do my best to respond to them.