Kim Landsbergen, Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science, Corine Tachtiris, Assistant Professor of Literature, and Dean Snyder, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, recently took SCI370 and LIT150 students to tour the Ohio State Byrd Polar Climate Research Center (BPCRC), in conjunction with the climate change issues being discussed in class this quarter.
The BPCRC is one of the nation’s recognized places of excellence in climate change science. The co-directors of the lab, Ellen and Lonnie Thompson, are internationally recognized for their climate science, and the many teams of researchers there are studying aspects of climate change around the world, including Tibet, Peruvian glaciers, Greenland, and Antarctica.
Here are photos from the tour:
The group learned about the Tibetan Plateau, referred to as The Third Pole, due to the large amount of (quickly melting) glaciers there. Glacier melt feeds river flow that provides water for more than a billion people in this area, but accelerated melt rates threaten future critical water supplies.
Historic photo of the first all-women’s Antarctic expedition from 1969. Some of the members were affiliated with the OSU BPCRC.
Inside the United States Polar Rock Repository, a resource that contains many rocks from Polar regions where scientists can come to study the geology (without having to go all the way there).
A member of the Class of 2018 holds an ammonite fossil found in Antarctica. It’s a type of invertebrate that went extinct in the KT Mass Extinction event.
Students enjoying the tour in the deep, deep freeze of the ice core Repository. These cores are from all over the world, from 6 continents.
An ice core from the Mt. Kilimanjaro glacier, which is expected to melt entirely by 2020.
