Exploratorium Trains Polar Scientists
To Tell Their Stories to the World
Live Webcasts & Dispatches Online
Multi-Media Training Takes Place August 31-September 3, 2009
http://icestories.exploratorium.edu

The Exploratorium is transforming polar scientists into new media journalists. Seven polar scientists are spending a week at the Exploratorium in San Francisco for a rigorous workshop on how to document and communicate their cutting-edge polar research for the public. When they return to the field this winter season (summer at the South Pole), the Antarctic scientists will act as correspondents for the Exploratorium’s Ice Stories. Although these researchers have no scripts, no professional film crews, and have never produced podcasts, they have learned to hold up a lens for the world to see their field studies, Antarctic life, and even fellow company. The Exploratorium’s media team, along with acclaimed Boulder, CO nature photographer John Weller, will train the scientists in the fundamentals of new media production. Among the elements addressed are filming, video editing, narrative storytelling, blogging, and ethics in interviewing. The museum will equip them with high definition cameras, audio equipment and editing software — all geared up and ready for the most extreme weather conditions. Dispatches from the newly minted correspondents will tap into the groundbreaking science and awesome beauty that so many will never know in person.

The scientists themselves include an atmospheric researcher from the NOAA South Pole Observatory (who will spend a year in Antarctica), a high-flying geologist from University of Texas studying the East Antarctica Ice Sheet, a marine biologist from the Moss Landing Marine Lab exploring life under the sea ice, and an ice-core geologist mining the climate history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

To see other completely original and rare Ice Stories go to icestories.exploratorium.edu. In the past we’ve had an Arctic glaciologist investigating how polar snow turns to ice, a paleontologist sampling algae lipids from the bottoms of Greenland lakes, and two archaeologists continuing their efforts to save an ancient Inupiat burial ground in Barrow, Alaska, before it erodes and is lost to the Atlantic Ocean, among many others. These researchers are drawn to the most remote areas of the planet by their passion for science and exploration. From the far reaches of an Alaskan tundra fire to the icebreaker ships that conduct research around the poles, they will share their stories.

In addition to video dispatches, correspondents will write back regularly through online Field Reports. Curious about what you’re watching or about the research being conducted? Feel free to comment on their dispatches, and they will respond to viewer inquiries. Log on to icestories.exploratorium.edu and take part.

Antarctic 09-10 Workshop Participants

Nick Morgan, NOAA Corps Officer
Will be working at the NOAA South Pole Observatory, one of four atmospheric baseline observatories for NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL).
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/spo/

He will be heading to the South Pole in mid October and will spend an entire year there, including 6-months of darkness and isolation in the austral winter.

Heidi Roop, Desert Research Institute
WAIS Divide Project
The purpose of the WAIS Divide project is to collect a deep ice core from the flow divide in central West Antarctica in order to develop a unique series of interrelated climate, ice dynamics, and biologic records focused on understanding interactions among global earth systems. The WAIS Divide ice core will provide Antarctic records of environmental change with the highest possible time resolution for the last ~100,000 years

In the field from November 2009 to February 2010.

http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/wdop/index.html
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/mar/11/desert-antarctica-searching-climate-clues/

Stacy Kim, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
SCINI Under-Ice ROV Project
Stacy Kim is a marine biologist who studies the organisms that live on the ocean floor (the “benthos”). Her team has built an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) designed to explore the benthic ecosystems under the ice. Their ROV system, called SCINI, was built from off-the-shelf parts including model helicopters, a Nintendo controller, and mini high-definition cameras for about $75,000 (very inexpensive compared with most ROVs). Not only is SCINI cheap, but it can fit through hand-drilled holes in the sea ice giving Stacy’s team the ability to explore parts of the under-ice environment inaccessible to human SCUBA divers or larger tethered ROVs.

Stacy’s Bio:
http://benthic.mlml.calstate.edu/skim.php
SCINI in Antarctica:
http://scini1.mlml.calstate.edu/

Cassandra Brooks
http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/author/cassandra-brooks/
Blogging from another research cruise around the Antarctic peninsula, starting in December.

Lucas Beem, Glaciologist, Ph.D. Candidate
Subglacial hydrology. Studying the Whillans Ice Stream, a fast-moving river of ice pouring from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the Ross Ice Shelf.
http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/antarctic-projects/under-the-glaciers/
http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/science/contenthandler.cfm?id=1726

Jack Holt, University of Texas
Airborne geophysics. Mapping Antarctica’s ice sheets and features buried beneath the ice.
http://www.ig.utexas.edu/people/staff/jack/
http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/mapping-east-antarcticas-uncharted-territory/

Doug Kowalewski, Univ. of Massachusetts
Doug is a post-doc researcher at the UMass Climate Systems Research Center, focusing on Antarctic climate evolution.

His 2009 Antarctic field season will focus on drilling an alleged ancient alpine debris covered glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Additional tasks include the following: monitor the general meteorological conditions in the area, capture microclimatic environments across the glacier, and assess the physical properties of the overlying glacial till.

He will establish an isolated base camp (3-4 Scott Tents) in the Dry Valleys and work and report from there from October to December 2009.