NSF Fellow, Getting to the Core of Climate Change
Posted by John Hunter | Under NSF Fellows Thursday Nov 8, 2007
Getting to the Core of Climate Change by Elizabeth Thomas, a current NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University at Buffalo:
We had reached the end of a successful field season collecting lake sediment cores. Our daily routine for more than two weeks had been to wake up around 8 a.m. to a breakfast of coffee and oatmeal, followed by a snowmobile ride across a fjord and into beautiful glacially carved valleys to our study lakes.
To obtain sediment cores from lake beds, we first had to drill a hole through 6-foot-thick ice cover. Then we dropped a core tube through the hole and hammered it into the sediment below. After pulling the cores up to the surface, we carefully packed them and carried them back to the cabin. Comfort awaited us at the end of the day, after we dried our clothes, when we could play cards, eat dinner, tell stories and plan for the next day in the field.
The ultimate goal driving all of this work is to send lake sediment cores back to our lab at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, N.Y. We run several analyses on each core, all of which help us to understand past environmental change.
Related: Back to School: Five Myths about Girls and Science - Profile of Past NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Sergey Brin
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