Matthew Hudes, a Park School of Baltimore sophomore, says he can’t wait to get back to Manitoba and document climate change in the Arctic.
“I’ve got the feeling that I’m actually doing something,” says Matthew, who this August is returning to the Canadian province with 10 Park students and faculty members. “This isn’t some lab that how many hundreds of students have done that everyone knows the answer to. This is a question that we’re trying to answer that no one knows the answer to.”
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada recently awarded a $156,000 grant to support Park’s International Student-led Arctic Monitoring and Research program. That will pave the way for Park to again send a group of students to northern Manitoba — more than 1,500 miles from Baltimore — twice later this year to conduct original scientific research.
In a statement, Park described its ISAMR program as a “coalition of students, teachers and professional researchers working on a projected 30-year study of the subarctic climate. … [It] is an opportunity for students to travel to the edge of the Arctic Circle [and conduct research].”
Julie Rogers, Park’s science department chair, runs the ISAMR program at the Brooklandville independent school. Rogers recently traveled to Canada for a week to investigate some future work for the program.
The students have gone north in this program for a decade and will head there once more in August — for about two weeks — and again in October, with all of the research focusing on climate change.
In addition, they will subsequently present their data to the scientific community at a conference in Canada.
“That’s super, super, fun,” Rogers says.
The students say they are enjoying the whole experience, from traveling to the Great White North to conducting research and later presenting their findings at a scientific gathering. Not many high school students have those kinds of opportunities, they note.
Rogers co-founded the program, and those involved are constantly seeking funding as this grant covers about half of the expenses. Additional financial support has been provided by the University of Manitoba, the University of Saskatchewan, Sustainable Development of the Province of Manitoba and Johns Hopkins University.
The Park students will go on this trip with students from Kelvin High School of Winnipeg and the Junior Canadian Rangers, also from Manitoba. There will be around 20 people overall going on the summer trip.
(In addition, Park has a group of 30 to 40 students that meet every Monday night to study climate change issues on their own time.)
During the August trip, the research will focus on permafrost and vegetation research in an attempt to make a predictive model for Active Layer Thickness, which is the layer of ground above the permafrost that annually freezes and thaws. Their October trip will deal more with polar bear mark-and-recapture work.
When they travel in August, trip members will stay at two research stations. Rogers says they will sometimes walk up to 20 miles each day conducting research.
“There’s a lot of hiking,” Rogers says. “It’s a lot of beautiful land and a lot of sampling. … [The research center] is where we cook. We have some good meals there.”
However, reaching their destination in Manitoba involves some time and effort. They first fly to Toronto and then over to Winnipeg. After that, there is a 10-hour ride in minivans, followed by a train trip that lasts 20 to 24 hours to Churchill in northern Manitoba.
“I didn’t know if kids wanted to do research [like this], but they were gaga over it when [the program started],” Rogers says. “Ever since, it’s been pretty wildly successful.”
Rogers says Park has received some resistance from certain segments of the scientific community unaccustomed to receiving data from teenage high school students.
“[But] it’s not like the kids are untrained,” she says. “They can do the work more accurately and more quickly than college kids and graduate students.”
Jeff Seidel is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.
Featured image: Among the residents of the Manitoba area is this polar bear . Photo courtesy of ISAMR