It’s not all sunshine and awesome natural laboratories, but there certainly are a lot of each!
The first course of the semester, Climate Change and Glacial Geology, is wrapping up right now. Students just turned in their research papers, which had to be on a climatological or glacial process for which they had seen evidence at some time during the past 3+ weeks. They are writing on topics as varied as carbon sequestration (as seen in 300 million year old coal deposits) and glacial abrasion (seen in lots of places where glaciers have left their mark on the land). Now they have to study for the tomorrow’s final exam.
We’ve had some great venues in the past week: Fundy National Park in New Brunswick for some of the world’s biggest tides, Katahdin Iron Works in northern Maine for acid rock drainage with Dr. Emily Lesher (and some nice canoeing), and most recently the top of Mount Washington for both climate and glacial features. After tomorrow’s exam, we’ll go to Popham Beach (Maine), where Dr. Teegarden will lead them in Marine Ecology.
– Johan Erikson
