Welcome to arctic.bio.utk.edu. This web site serves as a launching pad to other web sites dedicated to arctic scientific research at the University of Tennessee. The faculty members at the University of Tennessee associated with these projects are: Lee Cooper and Jacqueline Grebmeier. Graduate students Xuehua "Sherry" Cui and Adam Humphrey, as well as Research Coordinator Rebecca Pirtle-Levy and Research Specialist Dr. Becky "red-headed stepchild" Brown, can be reached at +1.865.974.6160. Ingvar L. Larsen operates our two gamma-ray spectrometers on a consulting basis. Project Assistant Kim Harmon can be reached at kcox2@utk.edu or +1.865.974.8621.
Fomer graduate student Jackie Clement can be contacted at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey through this e-mail link. Our former research coordinator, Arianne Balsom, is now at the Tennessee Valley Authority at this e-mail link. Former student Dr. Catherine Lalande is now at the Université Laval
Scientific data generated from our projects and our previously funded work are freely available for use by others from the National Science Foundation-funded ARCSS Data Coordination Center at the University of Colorado. We are engaged in a continuing effort to make all of our publicly funded, quality-assured research data available in a reasonable period of time. Please feel free to contact us if there are needs we can meet.
We participate in the University of Tennessee's interdisciplinary Global Environmental Change Research Group
PROJECTS
North_Bering_Sea SBI (and
PARTNERS) Arctic Environmental Observatory RAISE
Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) and Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP)
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Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) and Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP). We will be involved in both the BEST (supported by the National Science Foundation) and BSIERP (supported by the North Pacific Research Board) starting in 2008. More information will be forth coming soon. General information on these two linked programs is available at: http://bsierp.nprb.org/index.htm and http://www.arcus.org/Bering/index.html
Follow our 2008 research activities in the Bering Sea
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"Climate-driven changes in impacts of benthic predators in the northern Bering Sea" is a our National Science Foundation supported project that is continuing work we have accomplished over the past two decades studying biological changes in the northern Bering Sea. In this project, we have focused our work on declining benthic biological productivity and changes in benthic population structure, and resulting impacts on higher trophic levels, including declining populations of a threatened sea duck, the spectacled eider. A key goal is to understand changes in biological communities that appear to be occurring as sea ice continues to retreat in this system.
Working with our collaborator, Jim Lovvorn, University of Wyoming, and a research team of approximately 30 scientists from the University of Tennessee, University of Wyoming, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the National Marine Mammal Laboratory and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, we have completed more than three months of shipboard work in the Bering Sea in May-June 2006, July 2006, May-June 2007 and July 2006 aboard the USCGC Healy and Canadian Coast Guard Service Sir Wilfrid Laurier.. A local community resident of Savoonga, Alaska, Mr. Perry Pungowiyi, was also able to join us in both 2006 and 2007 on Healy. A report of his 2006 cruise observations prepared for the local Saint Lawrence Island Yupik communities (Savoonga and Gambell) is available at this link. His report for the 2007 cruise is in the journal section of the Northern Bering Sea 2007 link as is a letter from Gambell participant Mike Apatiki that explains the importance of Bering Sea scientific studies to the residents of Saint Lawrence Island. Newspaper arrticle featuring Jim Lovvorn and his University of Wyoming team that outlines work being done with spectacled eiders.
Healy
at Diomede, May, 2006
We also used the 2006 and 2007 research cruises as an opportunity to provide information about our research and environmental change in the Arctic to general audiences. For example, two educators, Samantha Barlow (The Oakwood School, Greenville, North Carolina) and Patricia Janes of (Scholastic, Inc.) participated in the 2006 Healy cruise through the National Science Foundation supported TREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating; now PolarTREC) program. Their participation included involvement in the scientific research, as well as conference calls to schools, journals, answering questions posted online, podcasts, and photos that are available on the TREC website (click on the link for Ecological Change in the Bering Sea-2006 Expeditions). Ruth Cooper, a middle school student from St. John Neumann Catholic School in Farragut, Tennessee was also aboard and participated in the TREC exchanges off the ship. She also produced several video-podcasts interviews while on the ship that we make available here; Apple Computer's i-tunes software to view and listen to these interviews can be downloaded free at www.apple.com/itunes if needed for both Windows and Mac OS. File sizes are 7 to 19 MB. In 2007 we held three PolarTREC live webinars from the USCGC Healy and these presentations/audio files are available on the separate Northern Bering Sea 2007 site. Janet Warburton from the PolarTREC office participated in the 2007 cruise and her journals are available on the PolarTREC website (see Bering Sea predators under "Virtual Base Camp")
2006 Podcasts:
Ruth interviews Jim Lovvorn (University of Wyoming)
Ruth interviews Patty Janes (Scholastic Magazines, Inc.)
Ruth and Jim Dalitsch, ship operations officer
Ruth interviews Markus Janout (graduate student at University of Alaska Fairbanks)
2007 Podcasts (from Sir Wilfrid Laurier; see Polar Palooza website for Healy videos)
Peter Lee (University of Charleston) explains his research efforts aboard the Sir Wilfrid Laurier (video)
Polar bear seen from Sir Wilfrid Laurier in Barrow Canyon (video)
Walruses on ice in Barrow Canyon (video)
Lee Cooper talks with high school teacher Betty Carvellas about her work onboard the Laurier as part of the benthic sampling team (sound-only .mp3 file) Ms. Carvellas also maintained a journal with photos about her experiences on the Laurier cruise that is hosted by Polar Palooza.
Lee Cooper talks with Deutschlandfunk (German public radio) reporter Monika Seynsche about her public outreach efforts from the Sir Wilfrid Laurier (sound-only .mp3 file). Ms. Seynsche is preparing a special series for her radio station on the Arctic that will air in 2008.
Patty
Janes (left) and Sam Barlow onboard Healy. Port of Dutch Harbor
and community of Unalaska in background.
Patty Janes's
website at: Scholastic
Magazines -
www.scholastic.com/globalwarming
Other educational outreach efforts in 2006 and 2007 include:
Annie Feidt, Alaska Public Radio, reported from the ship on Alaska News Nightly, an evening news program heard across Alaska on public and community radio stations. A .mp3 sound file of her news report is available at this link for personal, non-commercial use.
Karen de Seve of the Liberty Science Center (Jersey City, New Jersey) has made available photographs, interviews, and online video through a blog at http://beringsea.blogspot.com. Karen was aboard the ship for several days as part of preparation efforts for an arctic research exhibit at the Liberty Science Center, which specializes in science education at the K-12 level. Hear her June 28, 2006 podcast interview with Scientific American host Steve Mirsky
Alan Stahler, host of the science communication show, Soundings, heard in northern California on community radio KVMR also recorded a live interview to the ship from the KVMR studios in Nevada City, California. The full program, including our 30 minute interview is available through this link as a .mp3 file. Note that the copyright for this recording is held by KVMR, and it is made available here for personal, non-commercial use only.
Earth & Sky - www.earthsky.org
9-minute podcast posted on April 24, 2007 with Jackie Grebmeier
describing the research project. Listen directly to
Warming
means food changes for Arctic animals - Earth & Sky webpage or you can
download podcast here
Major ecosystem shift in Arctic seas - is the 90-second radio
short piece from Earth & Sky
or you can download podcast
here
Program #5183 of the Earth & Sky Radio Series with hosts Deborah Byrd and Joel
Block
Video and sound professionals from Polar Palooza, an
International Polar Year (IPY) project of
Passport to Knowledge/Geoffrey Haines-Stiles Productions, Inc.
participated in our 2007 cruise. High-quality educational
videos are available
about our project as well as other polar research at the
Polar Palooza website.
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The Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions (SBI) Project web site is supported by the National Science Foundation. The object of the SBI project is to evaluate the impacts of potential global change in temperature, ice cover, and biological productivity upon the exchange of biogenic materials between the Arctic continental shelves and the deeper basins of the Arctic Ocean. The SBI field progam was undertaken 2002-2004 during multiple research cruises on the USCGC Healy, RV Nathaniel B. Palmer, USCGC Polar Star and RV Alpha Helix.
A related arctic global change project, Pan-Arctic River Transport of Nutrients, Organic Matter, and Suspended Sediments (PARTNERS) is funded through the Arctic Community-wide Hydrological Analysis and Monitoring Program (Arctic-CHAMP) and it is focusing on the fate of water and materials contributed to the Arctic Ocean from rivers. Lee Cooper is participating in this project to provide linkage between water column data collected in Arctic rivers and Arctic Ocean water mass data generated through the SBI project.
KNOM radio interviews. We talked about the scientific goals and objectives of the SBI program during a three-part radio interview provided to Nome Alaska radio station KNOM in May 2004 prior to the first process cruise in 2004. Also a second series of KNOM profiles are available that describe the icebreaker Healy. These recordings were made during a tour of the ship provided by the Coast Guard while it was offshore of Nome in July 2004. These .mp3 files were produced and are owned by the News Department of KNOM radio, PO Box 988, Nome, AK 99762. These files are not to re-distributed or reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. In order to listen to the files, your computer must have appropriate audio software such as Windows Media Player or i-Tunes. Copyright 2004, KNOM radio.
KNOM radio interview\Grebmeier_and_CooperI.mp3 Length of file: 8:27
KNOM radio interview\Grebmeier_and_Cooper2.mp3 Length of file: 9:40
KNOM radio interview\Grebmeier_and_Cooper3.mp3 Length of file: 7:06
KNOM radio interview\Healy_tour1.mp3 Length of file: 9:38
KNOM radio interview\Healy_tour2.mp3 Length of file: 6:14
KNOM radio interview\Healy_tour3.mp3 Length of file: 5:26
Information on apparently abandoned walrus calves observed in 2004. Considerable public interest on a worldwide basis has been generated by observations that were made from the SBI Process Cruise in July-August 2004 aboard the USCGC Healy. The locations of nine lone calves that were observed in open, deep (up to 3000 m depth), ice-free, and unusually warm surface waters north of Barrow were documented in a paper published in the journal Aquatic Mammals:
Cooper, L.W., C.J. Ashjian, S.L. Smith, L.A. Codispoti, J.M. Grebmeier, R.G. Campbell, E.B. Sherr, 2006. Rapid seasonal sea-ice retreat in the Arctic could be affecting Pacific Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) recruitment. Aquatic Mammals 32(1): 98-102, doi 10.1578/AM.32.1.2006.98
In this paper, we concluded that it was likely that the rapid retreat of sea ice during and immediately before our cruise resulted in the separation of these nursing calves from adult females who normally spend the summer feeding on animals such as clams and other invertebrates that are present in the bottom sediments on arctic continental shelves. Walruses, including calves, typically use sea ice as a resting platform, but in recent years, sea ice has retreated in this part of the Arctic until it is only present in the summer over deep water (4000 m) north of Alaska where walruses are unable to feed. We concluded in our study that this pattern of rapid ice retreat therefore may have negative effects on the recruitment of walruses into the population.
A radio interview providing some more background information and playable by software such as i-Tunes or Windows Media Player is available here for downloaded listening. Copyright is retained by Alaska News Nightly and Alaska Public Radio and the file cannot be re-used or re-broadcast without permission of the copyright holders.
SBI Phase I information for the University of Tennessee: In addition to management of project, a description of the University of Tennessee research funded under Phase I of SBI, in collaboration with Ken Dunton and others at the University of Texas at Austin, is available at: http://www.utmsi.utexas.edu/people/staff/dunton/SBI/index.htm
These linked abstracts were submitted for the 2nd Biennial SBI Pan Arctic Meeting, which was held 7 – 9 November 2000 at Callaway Gardens, Georgia, arranged by session. These abstracts are formatted as Adobe Portable Document Files(PDF). The Adobe Acrobat Reader software needed to access these files can be downloaded without charge from Adobe.
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The Bering Strait Arctic Environmental Observatory is our research project centered on improving environmental observation capabilities in the Bering Strait region. Funding of a pilot phase (1999-2006) has ended, but we are continuing to seek funding for development of a permanent water intake system on Little Diomede Island, in the center of Bering Strait, which will permit documenting year-round the flow of nutrient-rich water north through Bering Strait. We describe the scientific merits of such a continuous seawater pumping system in "The Potential for Using Little Diomede Island as a Platform for Observing Environmental Conditions in Bering Strait," Arctic 59(2): 129-141 (June 2006). Adobe portable document format (.pdf) reprints of the paper are available upon request. Our work on the island involving pilot/demonstration water pumping systems has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Planned improvements to the island's infrastructure, specifically development of an airport and breakwater for a harbor by other state and federal agencies may provide opportunities to leverage other government funding sources to also improve environmental observation capabilities in the Bering Strait region.
Other components of the project included ship-based sediment and biological sampling in the summer, and marine mammal tissue sampling that is a by-product of year-round subsistence hunting by local Inupiat hunters.
Results from the ship-based sampling that have been supported by both NSF and NOAA were published in the 10 March 2006 issue of Science:
A Major Ecosystem Shift in the Northern Bering Sea by J.M. Grebmeier, J.E. Overland, S.E. Moore, E.V. Farley, E.C. Carmack, L.W. Cooper, K.E. Frey, J.H. Helle, F.A. McLaughlin, and S.L. McNutt, Science 311: 1461-1464. DOI: 10.1126/Science.1121365. As a public service, Science is providing free electronic access to the paper through a special link available here.
Related news coverage from selected sources: All Things Considered, National Public Radio National Geographic News ABC News and last, but far from least, download the feature article from the Nome Nugget, Alaska's oldest newspaper.
The Bering Strait Observatory project is a multi-institutional venture with participants from the University of Tennessee, the University of Maryland, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. We have also benefited from the help of the residents of Diomede, the Bering Straits School District, and the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards, and funding from the Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research (NOAA). We have used the Canadian Coast Guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier annually each July starting in 1998 through 2007 to sample regions of high productivity in the Bering and Chukchi Seas through a cooperative agreement with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and under the umbrella of the Canadian government's International Joint (Japan-Canada) Western Arctic Climate Study (JWACS). In both 2005 and 2006, the Sir Wilfrid Laurier provided support for recovery of moorings in Bering Strait maintained by the University of Washington and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Rebecca Woodgate, lead principal investigator. View or download a video-podcast of the mooring deployment in July 2006 (requires free i-tunes software from Apple---www.apple.com/itunes). File size is 21 MB.
University of Maryland divers Erik Haberkern, Emily Cooper and Vince Kelly, with local
assistance from Diomede residents, re-install our water inlet system in July,
2001. Big Diomede Island in Russia (in background) is about 5 km away.
Live camera from Diomede
Live Cam from Diomede: http://209.165.175.132 located at Diomede School, looking west across the International Dateline towards Big Diomede Island. Patience is required while image loads and is transmitted over a satellite Internet connection. The camera can be remotely controlled from your desktop, again with patience. The short day-length in the winter limits hours of visible use.
Audio program from Diomede
Enter audio site (Use back button to return to this page)
Recorded and produced by Kathy Turco, Alaska's Spirit Speaks: Sound & Science
This is a self-contained web-based audio program recorded at Diomede, and it includes local residents talking about life on the island, subsistence hunting, as well as scientists associated with our research program talking about science goals. Files are in streaming audio format, are for private, non-commercial use, are copyrighted and cannot be re-used, reproduced, or distributed without permission of the copyright holders. Required software: Macromedia Flashplayer (free if not already on your computer and available from Adobe, http://www.adobe.com). The Info/Options link within the site will allow you to listen to the audio in streaming mode or to download the segment files (recommended for low bandwidth connections)
Teachers Participating in our 2003-2007 Field Programs aboard the CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier and at Little Diomede
Betty Carvellas is a recently (2007) retired high school biology teacher and science department chair at Essex High School in Essex Junction, Vermont
who taught for 40 years. She originally joined our research
program through the National Science Foundation's Teachers Experiencing Antarctica
and the Arctic (TEA) program (archived
information on the TEA program
and the more current
ARMADA research experience programs for teachers) in 2002 aboard the USCGC
Healy as part of the
Shelf-Basin Interactions
program. In 2004, 2005, and 2006 Betty helped with the shipboard portion of our Bering
Strait Environmental Observatory research program and in 2007
participated through our Northern Bering Sea research program
(described in next section below). In 2005-2006, Betty
kept a journal with photographs and information on her shipboard
research that is available
on-line at this link through the
Teachers and Researchers
Exploring and Collaborating (TREC) program. The goals of these
teacher research experience
programs are to get classroom teachers involved in science research, to carry
that knowledge back into their classrooms, and to share the information with other teachers.
Another teacher, Dave Brown, at the time, at the St. Peter Catholic School in Quincy,
Illinois (now a public school teacher in Quincy), joined us in 2003, both on the Sir Wilfrid Laurier, as
well as on Little Diomede Island.
Web-logs of his research experience are archived at the Armada
Project site.
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U.S. funding for the Science Management Office for the Russian-American Initiative for Shelf-Land Environments in the Arctic (RAISE
web site) ended on December 31, 2006, but we are maintaining this portion of
our website as an information resource. RAISE was a multidisciplinary, multi-investigator research initiative
that had been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Arctic System Science Program and the Russian
Foundation for Basic Research over a ten year period.. It
facilitated U.S. and Russian research on
the land-shelf system of the Russian Arctic over prehistoric, historic and
current time intervals.
The ultimate objective was to integrate scientific knowledge on the biogeochemical
processes affecting global change at the land-shelf boundary in the Eurasian
Arctic.
Lee Cooper served as chair of
the International Steering Committee from 2000-2006 and also coordinated the project through a
science management office at the University of Tennessee.
The final science management office efforts included sponsoring a U.S. - Russian research facilitation workshop in June 2005 that helped bring together U.S. and Russian scientists, U.S. and Russian agency managers, and Russian Academy of Sciences personnel to discuss some of the challenges and possible solutions for administrative and logistical barriers to joint bi-national collaborative research in the Arctic. A workshop report is available via this link and other information about the workshop and its findings are posted on the RAISE web site.
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University of Tennessee site Global Environmental Change Research Group
by Lee Cooper and Kim Harmon