UMass Amherst Hosts International Arctic Workshop March 11-13

March 8, 2013
Contact: 
Janet Lathrop
Contact Phone: 
413/545-0444
 
*** MEDIA ADVISORY ***
 
DATE:           Monday, March 11 through Wednesday, March 13
TIME:            10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
WHAT:          43rd Annual International Arctic Workshop
WHERE:       UMass Amherst Campus Center
 
Climate scientists and specialists in Arctic research will converge on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus next week for the 43rd annual International Arctic Workshop. Speakers will present their latest work and posters on high-latitude environments of the past, present and future.
 
Media will have the opportunity to interview such outstanding experts as internationally recognized climate researcher Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate Systems Research Center at UMass Amherst, and Julie Brigham-Grette, UMass Amherst geosciences researcher and expert in the paleoclimate of the Arctic. She co-chaired the National Research Council’s 2012 synthesis of reports from thousands of scientists in 60 countries for the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08, the first in over 50 years to offer a benchmark for environmental conditions and new discoveries in the polar regions.
 
Visiting experts include:
  • John England of the University of Alberta, who has conducted more than 45 field seasons throughout Arctic Canada and Greenland
  • Giff Miller of the University of Colorado Boulder, who studies the timing and mechanism of ice-sheet growth and decay in Arctic Canada and the European Arctic, and the interactions between ice sheets, oceans and the atmosphere during the last deglaciation
  • John Andrews of the University of Colorado, an expert in the Quaternary history of Arctic areas with special interest in glacial and glacial marine systems
  • John Smol, Queens University, Ontario, Canada’s leading aquatic biologist, whose research interests include environmental change in Arctic lakes and using lake sediments to track past fluctuations in sockeye salmon and aquatic seabird populations.
 
In addition, Mark Goldner, an 8th grade Polar Trek teacher from Brookline, will be on hand as a representative to the Polar Educators International Council which brings awareness of the Polar Regions into K-12 schools.