2011 News

Carleton climate course puts students
on Antarctic ice

Published: February 1, 2011
Tom Spears

Seven Carleton University students will spend half of February in Antarctica, learning from the land, water and wildlife in a way they could never experience in a warm Ottawa lab.

An organization called Students on Ice, which plans student trips to the Arctic and Antarctic, will run the trip. And Carleton is counting this year’s expedition as a credit course. That’s because professor Claudia Schroder-Adams plans to work her group hard.

“I thought, for my students, particularly my grad students who work with me in the High Arctic, what an opportunity to see also the southern pole,” she said.

It won’t quite be the pole, but close enough: They’ll be based on a ship, visiting the Antarctic coast and nearby islands by Zodiac inflatables.

It’s a mixed group, ranging in interests from earth sciences to neuroscience.

“We are looking at the adaptation of animals to the cold climate. A trip to Antarctica, a field course, is, of course, totally attractive to any outgoing student,” Schroder-Adams said.

The other Carleton instructor will be Natalia Rybczynski, who is also a researcher at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

The Antarctic Peninsula that points north toward the tip of Argentina is the warmest part of the continent, and this makes it an ideal spot to study climate change. That will be a major theme of the trip.

“We wanted very much to look at the aspect that Antarctica was not always cold,” Schroder-Adams said. “There were, for instance, dinosaur populations and vegetation in Antarctica.”

There’s an island where land from 65 million years ago — when dinosaurs became extinct — is exposed and available for study. Besides doing field work, the students will give a public presentation when they return.

Students on Ice expects about 70 students and 20 faculty on this year’s trip. The cost per student is about $10,000; students have to do a lot of fundraising and have been given major donations from the Gainey Foundation and from two Carleton alumni, Jim Sullivan and J-C Potvin.

Original source taken from: Ottawa Citizen