For Swannie Chan, a fourth-year geography student who really wanted field experience, the choice was clear: “Do I want to go to Hawaii or Black Creek Village? It was a no brainer.”

In mid-August, Chan, Zoe Davis, a fourth-year environmental science student, and 16 other 91��ɫ undergraduates packed their swimming suits and hiking boots and flew to Honolulu then on to Maui. For the next eight days, they went all over the island on excursions led by geography Professors Kathy Young and Peter Vandergeest, and graduate assistant Jane Assini.

Left: Zoe Davis collecting data on the Maui coast. Photo by Dawn Ho.

Blue skies, brilliant stars and tropical heat tempered by gentle ocean breezes made for an idyllic visit – perfect for doing the research they’d come to do. For undergraduates used to textbook learning and case studies, this experience was like reality TV. “I thought it would be like “Lost”,” said Chan. Maui residents Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson eluded them, but they came home three credits richer, $3,000 poorer, keener than ever and a little changed.

For geographers, the appeal of Maui is its diverse topography. Less urbanized than Oahu but still a magnet for celebrities drawn to its sand and surf, the island features everything from desert to tropical rainforest, and volcanoes to vast beaches. On one coast, giant waves draw the world’s most fanatic surfers, on the other, coral reefs lure snorkellers to an underwater paradise. There is ample evidence of climate change – a rising sea and persistent drought – and tourism has affected the island’s culture and environment.

What a motherlode of research possibilities. The human geographers, like Chan, could study the effect of tourism on the culture. The physical geographers, like Davis (she's in the physical stream of environmental science), could analyze data they collected on beach erosion, air temperature, water quality and quantity, and wind energy.

Based in South Kihei on the southwest coast, the students piled into three vans for daily excursions and field trips to all corners of the island.

Right: Sunrise above the clouds on Mount Haleakala. Photo by Kathy Young.

“I put my research cap on when I left and actually liked doing the trip as a geographer,” said Chan, who’s travelled the world as a tourist.

The students studied beach erosion on the north and west shores, and learned about volcanoes and lava flows on a trip to Mount Haleakala, one of two volcanoes on Maui. Kathy Young woke them at 2am one morning for a bike excursion up the volcano. Along the way, they measured temperature, and wind and water quality, surfacing above the clouds in time to see the sun rise. They endured hours over rough roads to remote Hana and Lahaina to visit tropical rain forest and desert, and enjoyed a traditional luau celebration. They tasted medicinal plants in botanical gardens, saw sugar cane plantations, visited a taro farm and took an ecotour snorkelling around coral reef. “The water was so clear, I felt like I was watching TV,” said Chan. “It was one of the highlights of the trip.”

Rangers took them into Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve, 90 per cent of which is off limits to the public. This fact inspired Chan’s project – a survey of people in nearby Wailea about their knowledge of and opinion of restricted access to the reserve, a sacred Hawaiian heritage site bordering a pristine coral reef.

Davis, on the other hand, was investigating the mitigating influence of coral reefs on beach erosion and, by extension, the potential of rock walls to prevent this erosion. “It was such an amazing opportunity to be in the field on site designing my own project, analyzing my own data. There is nothing like doing your own work. You never get this experience in the classroom.”

Left: Swannie Chan interviews Ranger Joe.

For an environmental science student such as Davis, “this trip was a test to see if I could love research and hack it in the field.” After a three-and-a-half-hour trek 3,000 metres up the side of a cinder cone, getting up at 2am to see sunrise from the top of a volcano, and lugging heavy equipment then improvising when it broke, she thinks she could.

Each student had to do an individual project and a group project. “We got a taste of so many different kinds of research,” said Davis. “It can change your career. I realized if you work hard you can do some amazing things. It changed my trajectory, but not my direction.” Now she’s dreaming of doing research in the Arctic.

“The trip was once in a lifetime,” says Chan, who is majoring in geography and finishing an education degree at the same time. She intends to stick to her plans to teach primary or junior school. The Scarborough resident tried passionfruit and guava for the first time, was amazed at the brilliant night sky and loved spending every day outside. “Being able to experience nature like I did in Hawaii is something I want to take into the classroom.”

“Hawaii was a really cool trip,” says Young. “I learned so much and I think the kids were all really energized by it.”

Right: Sliding Sand Trail, Mount Haleakala. Photo by Kathy Young.

The advanced field course in physical geography is brand new. It was funded with $15,000 from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. If Young can get more funding, next year she hopes to take geography students to another, though less balmy, volcanic island – Iceland.

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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For six days in mid-August aboard the Lyubov Orlova (right), a renovated Russian passenger ship operated by Inuit-owned Cruise North, leading Arctic hydrologists, oceanographers and climatologists from every circumpolar nation will share their latest research with each other – and with northern communities – as participants in the . In four packed days, they will deliver 50 papers, addressing the theme of managing hydrological uncertainty in high-latitude environments, a reference to the challenge of understanding the impact of global warming on Arctic water systems.

“It is the first time terrestrial hydrologists and oceanographers have officially come together for the purpose of sharing what they know,” says Young, the first woman to organize this biannual conference of the in 34 years.

The idea for such an exchange arose at the NRB’s 16th conference in northern Russia two years ago. Hydrologists, who study inland water systems, were curious to know the effect of diminishing sea ice on water loss into the atmosphere and as runoff into rivers, lakes and oceans.

Left: Kathy Young

Rising temperatures and melting sea ice have brought more fog, rain, snow and extreme weather in the North. When the rain coincides with spring snowmelt, as it did in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, last year, flash floods occur, ripping through permafrost and hurling sediment into coastal waters. In polar oceans, disappearing sea ice and more open water have resulted in storm surges that blow further inland and are battering places like the Mackenzie River Delta.

A highlight of the trip will be a public meeting between scientists and residents of Pangnirtung who want to find out more about the flash flood that whacked the village last year. In minutes, it tore out two bridges, leaving half the village stranded and without power, and carved a channel through permafrost right down to the bedrock. The volume of water overwhelmed the sewage plant which overflowed and contaminated the pristine Pangnirtung Fiord, home to beluga and narwhal whales.

Right: Pangnirtung declared a state of emergency after a flash flood tore out bridges in June 2008 Photo from iglootalk.com.

Both climate change and increased human activity in Arctic regions have made estimating water budgets, water chemistry and hydrological modelling difficult, leading to uncertainty for scientists, policy-makers, water managers and northern residents, says Young.

“Northern water systems have been poorly quantified and sparsely observed,” she says. “If we want to estimate future changes in our northern basins with more certainty, we need to keep improving our data-collection processes and modelling strategies.”

She has scheduled the delivery of 50 papers over an intense four days on a range of topics, including predicting precipitation, ocean interactions and modelling climate change. Some are very topical, and others have clear real-world applications, as papers on:

• the need to monitor runoff from the rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet;
• the economic implications of later freezing and earlier break up of ice on northern lakes;
• and the importance of estimating runoff correctly before you design stream crossings for oil and gas lines.

There are two keynote speakers. Robie Macdonald (right), a renowned Arctic oceanographer with the federal Institute of Ocean Sciences, will talk about what happens when freshwater rivers and streams meet the polar salt sea. Larry Hinzman, an Arctic hydrologist and director of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Center, will discuss the need to understand atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic processes and their effects on the global climate.

Young raised $150,000 in kind and in cash from government, research agencies, corporate sponsors and private family foundations for this symposium, $40,000 of which came from Environment Canada’s Water & Climate Impacts Research Centre.

With those dollars, Young has made sure scientists from every circumpolar nation – Russia, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark (Greenland), the United States and Canada – can participate.

They sail next Wednesday from Iqaluit, Nunavut, up the east coast of Baffin Island to Pangnirtung and end their journey at Kuujjuak, Nunavik, Aug. 18. Along the way, they will meet Inuit elders and regional politicians, visit Auyuittuq National Park and an abandoned whaling station at Kekerten, Nunavuk, and watch for walruses, polar bears and Arctic birds.

Right: Walruses at Monumental Island. Photo courtesy of Cruise North.

Young has corralled veteran scientists who have spent their entire careers observing the Arctic to present at the conference, including:

• Terry Prowse, an Arctic hydrologist at the Water & Climate Impacts Research Centre in British Columbia, who will talk about the ecological and economic implications of rapid changes when freshwater ice freezes and breaks up on northern lakes:
• Ming-ko Woo, an Arctic hydrologist at McMaster University, who calls for more collaborative research on the mutual influences of polar seas and northern hydrology;
• Oddbjørn Bruland, a snow hydrologist at Norway’s Statkraft Energy, one of the largest hydropower producers in Europe, who will describe ENKI, a hydrological forecasting system of snowcover and snowmelt runoff, crucial to estimating future power-generating capacity;
• Douglas Kane, an Arctic hydrologist at Alaska’s Water & Environmental Research Center, who stresses the need to know more about runoff in ungauged northern basins before proceeding with the design of stream crossings necessary for oil and gas development;
• and Bent Hasholt, a glaciologist at Copenhagen’s Institute of Geography & Geology, who will emphasize the need to monitor meltwater, erosion and sediment transport flowing to the sea from different parts of the fast-melting Greenland Ice Sheet.

Young is also presenting a paper suggesting that, as yet, no clear trend in long-term climatic signals can be established at Polar Bear Pass, a Bathurst Island wildlife sanctuary in the High Arctic she has been studying.

Also attending the conference as observers are two 91��ɫ graduate students in geography, PhD candidate Anna Abnizova (left), who helped organize the conference, and master’s candidate Jane Assini (right).

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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