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Research Sites
Our research sites range from Antarctica to the Arctic, and include several sites in the Chihuahuan Desert as well as Eastern Russia, the Canadian Arctic and Greenland.
Antarctica:
Since SEL was established in 2005, our primary research activities in Antarctica have been associated with our NSF-funded IPY-ROAM education project that took 29 students and teachers to Antarctica over winter break 2007-08. We travelled to Antarctica on a tourist ship and the class included project groups with foci on terrestrial ecosystems, marine ecosystems, glaciology, ecotourism and education. We visited a range of sites and our IPY-ROAM website describes the project in more detail and links to a photo and video gallery as well as downloadable lesson plans.
Arctic:
We have several projects that include field-based activities in the Arctic. Since 2005 as part of our Beringia Project, relatively short-term field trips have included sampling throughout Chukotka in Eastern Russia and Wrangel Island, which was supported logistically by the Swedish Beringia 2005 Expedition. In 2006 and 2007, on this same project, we visited several sites on the Seward Peninsula and along a latitudinal gradient between Barrow and Ivotuk near the Brooks Range. In 2009 and 2010 we plan to resample sites on Baffin Island in the Candian Arctic and on Disko Island ine West Greenland as part of our Back to the future Project.
Our primary field sites in the arctic are located in northern Alaska near Barrow and Atqasuk. Both sites have rich research histories and our BAID-IMS project has documented over 6000 research sites in the area that date back to the 1940's. In Barrow and Atqasuk, our logistics are provided by the Barrow Arctic Science consortium (BASC). In Barrow, our research is largely focused on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO), a parcel of land set aside by the local community of Barrow for scientific monitoring and experimentation.
Chihuahuan Desert:
In the Chihuahuan Desert, we conduct research at three main localities: the Franklin Mountains near El Paso where we are resampling decade-old monitoring sites, UTEP's Indio Mountains Research Station (IMRS) where we are examining patterns of land cover change over the past half century, and we will soon establish an eddy covariance tower at the Jornada Basin Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in southeast New Mexico as a key component of our involvement in UTEP's Cybershare Center and cyberinfrastructure research.
