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Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/09/25/xpedition-day-four-shira-1-camp-to-moir-hut/
Today the team will hike from Shira 1 Camp to Moir Hut (Shira 2 Camp on the map below). This part of the journey will take the team further into the heath zone. As discussed yesterday , the heath zone is a zone of sparse vegetation due to lower rainfall amounts.
The route the team is taking: the western approach route
The team stops for a discussion about soils
Today’s question focuses ...
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Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/09/24/xpedition-day-three-forest-camp-to-shira-1-camp/
Today the team heads from 2,438 m to 3,505 m above sea level. This portion of the journey will take the team from rain forest to heath zone. A rain forest is characterized by high rainfall, with annual totals ranging from 1750-2000 mm (68-78 in). A heath zone is above the forest line, where porous soils and lower rainfall result in sparser vegetation.
Leaving the rain forest heading to the heath zone ...
Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/09/23/xpedition-day-two-basecamp-to-forest-camp/
Packed and ready for the journey
Today, Sunday, 23 September, the team packs up the vehicles and heads off on their journey. Their itinerary for the day includes a few hours’ drive from basecamp followed by a 3 hour hike to Forest Camp, located at 2,438 m above sea level.
Taking a quick break on the hike
The bloggers were asked the following question as they set off on their ...
Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/09/22/xpedition-day-one-basecamp/
Mt. Kilimanjaro from a distance
Today marked Day 1 of The Xpedition. Before the team begins their journey through the biomes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, our bloggers were asked the following question: What are your expectations--personally and scientifically--for The Xpedition?
Maddy
My expectations are very open-ended! I don't want to get my heart set on anything because I know the mountain is ever-changing and shows us a ...
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Blog originally posted on the GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/09/19/students-teachers-and-scientists-explore-mt-kilimanjaro-through-globe-protocols-and-blogs/
Beginning on 23 September, five GLOBE students, teachers and scientists and one GLOBE alum will join commence on a journey through the biomes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. Known as, “the Xpedidion,” the 2012 trek marks the fifth year of this exciting journey. This year will be bigger than ever as a documentary film crew will join us. In addition, we will be sharing images via ...
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Field Campaigns:
SEASONS AND BIOMES
GLOBE Science Topics:
EARTH AS A SYSTEM
CLIMATE
CLIMATE CHANGE
Blog originally posted on the GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/09/06/salute-to-teachers/
This week, we are taking a slightly different approach to our blog. At the highest level, our blog usually centers on science and education themes. This week, however, we are taking a step back to focus on the people who are on the front lines of teaching science and education … our teachers.
If you have ever been inspired by a great teacher––an educator who had such a profound impact on you life by taking an interest in you, sparking your ...
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Blog originally posted on the GLOBE Scientists' Blog at http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/08/28/full-circle-superior-part-ii-studying-streams/
We have a guest blogger this week. Mike Linke is posting his second blog in a series about his walk with his wife, Kate Crowley, around Lake Superior.
This is the second in a series about the science of Full Circle Superior; a walk around the world’s largest freshwater lake. You can read the first blog post here. My wife, Kate Crowley, and I determined that we would be the first couple to walk around this lake, trying ...
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GLOBE Science Topics:
EARTH AS A SYSTEM
BACKYARD SCIENCE
CLIMATE
Investigation Areas:
HYDROSPHERE
Learning Activities:
LAND COVER/BIOLOGY
HYDROLOGY
Cologne, Germany
We stayed in Cologne, Germany for several days. While in Cologne, we stayed with Dr. Karl Schneider, his wonderful wife Karen and children. They are always such great hosts. Their son Karl said that he played football. I assumed he meant soccer because the people in the United States are the ones that call the game soccer. The rest of the world says football. But, I was wrong. He plays American football (in Germany). That is interesting. The younger Karl was an exchange student in the United States and played on the school’s football team. Or, I should ...
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The newpaper article is below. Take a look. It was very nice of Sebastian to translate it into English.
Getting from Switzerland to Cologne, Germany
After our meeting with the teachers and student at the Alexander von Humboldt Gymnasium in Konstanz, Germany, we made our way up to Cologne, Germany so I could attend and present at the International Geographical Congress (IGC) meeting. I’ve posted pictures of the trip and the cities we visited. I included a little about each city so you can get a sense of the countryside.
Tirol Region of Austria
We started by ...
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August 19, 2012
We went to a glacier in central Switzerland. It is a tourist attraction. It was the most unsustainable tourist place I have been to in my life. Usually, at tourist places, they try to have you do things that preserve the site. In the United States at the parks, you are not allowed to take anything away. Dunes are protected at the parks that have dunes along Lake Michigan, etc. But, here, there are thousands of tourists walking on the glacier, there is a cave that they carved out of the glacier, there is even a sledding area. The sledding area may not be too bad ...
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August 16, 2012
Yesterday after we arrived in Frankfurt, we walked around the city. It is an amazing city. It is big enough that there is a lot of business but it is small enough that the streets are not clogged with cars. Maybe one of the reasons is that so many people ride bicycles. There were bikes everywhere. Sometimes the people walking have to be careful not to get run over by the bikes.
We went down to the old part of Frankfurt which is near the River Main. The old town area is very cool to visit. I found it interesting that much of the old town had to be rebuilt ...
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Tree-of-heaven ( Ailanthus altissima ) is spreading widely throughout West Virginia and threatening the native forest ecosystems in Appalachia. This invasive plant was introduced to the United States from China in the 1780s. The same exotic tree species was also introduced to Japan in 1860s but is not aggressive in this country. In Japan, particularly in the Kyushu Island, tree-of-heaven is rarely found in natural forest ecosystems but a few trees may be found growing in university campuses (i.e. Kyushu University), school premises and house backyards. Tree-of-heaven was initially ...
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Establishment and proliferation of invasive species in an environment where they were introduced is becoming a worldwide problem. During my trip to Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan in 2008 for a research fellowship, I was able to observe the same plant species that is also considered invasive in the United States. It is called the tree-of-heaven ( Ailanthus altissima ). This trip initiated a project involving a more in-depth investigation of the competitiveness of Ailanthus as an invasive plant. With the involvement of undergraduate students in the Department of Land Resources at ...
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GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
Investigation Areas:
EARTH AS A SYSTEM
Finally, I am now connected with the Globe program. Very exciting. Looking forward to getting more involved in this program.
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I'm at the 16th Annual GLOBE Partner meeting. It is a great time to meet with old friends and make new ones.
Kevin
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Sometimes, part of being a scientist is dealing with the unexpected. During research projects, scientists might get very surprising results. Or, something might happen to completely change the scope of the project. This is exactly what happened to a group of scientists in Chile . Scientists were studying how man-made armoring, such as seawalls, impact the ecology of beaches in Chile and California. They had surveyed 9 beaches in Chile when something very unexpected happened on 27 February 2010– an 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit .
Seawall before and after the earthquake ...
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This post is the second in a series called “Trees in Trouble”. To see the first post in this series click here .
Climate impacts so many things on this planet, most notably the types of flora and fauna that live in a specific region. And for those creatures that have annual cycles tied to the local climate, such as the hibernation of bears, migration of birds, and life cycles of insects, a change in climate can shift their way of life and even have subsequent consequences on the environment they live in.
Take the pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) for ...
Many of the world’s glaciers, such as the Exit Glacier in Alaska, United States and Pasterze Glacier in Austria, have lost mass due to melting over the past few years. One such glacier, Exploradores in southern Chile, is also disappearing. This glacier is a sight to behold – a 20 kilometer frozen mass that is filled with cliffs of luminescent blue and indigo ice.
A view from inside the Exploradores Glacier, from Nature
A view from inside the Exploradores Glacier, from Nature
The Exploradores Glacier is one of many glaciers in the Patagonian Ice Fields ...
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GLOBE Science Topics:
CLIMATE
CLIMATE CHANGE
Just over four years after my first visit to Australia (From drought to flood down under: Part I), the tides have turned and the country has gone from experiencing the driest decade on record to having the wettest two-year period on record in 2010-2011. These recent rains have been both a blessing and a curse. The good news is that they helped the region of southeastern Australia start to recover from the long drought (see Figure 1). The bad news is that the rains came on heavy and strong. In January 2011, devastating floods occurred across southeastern ...
A fun and easy way to be involved in the Student Climate Research Campaign (SCRC) is by participating in the Climate and Land Cover (CLC) Intensive Observing Period (IOP). This quarterly IOP focuses on documenting and uploading land cover data into the GLOBE database. Scientists are then able to use these data to validate land cover in climate models. Knowing the right type of land cover is important to climate models, because it plays a role in both the energy and hydrologic cycles. For example, land cover plays an important role in how much solar energy is ...
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