Alicia Shelley is a zookeeper in the North America exhibit at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. For the past two years, she has served as an in-field ambassador for Polar Bears International in Churchill, Manitoba. Each year, she spent two weeks on the tundra buggies that serve as polar bear watching platforms for the tourists, […]

Two resources from the National Science Foundation provide accessible, easy-to-understand information about the kinds of research happening in the polar regions. Arctic & Antarctic: An Overview of Polar Research describes the differences between the two polar regions and current research that seeks to answer “big questions” such as:

How did the universe begin?
Is the global climate […]

Yet another use for satellite imagery: locating penguin colonies based on their guano.
British Antarctic Survey researchers noticed that the telltale reddish-brown stains left by large groups of penguins were visible in coastal images of Antarctica produced by the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA).  After one stain was matched with the location of a known penguin […]

Students on Ice Expeditions is proud to announce the launch of our third and final International Polar Year Arctic Expedition, a student expedition focused on scientific and environmental education. The goal of the upcoming IPY Arctic Expedition 2009 is to engage youth in global scientific and social polar research. The ship-based journey will involve 75 […]

The conveyor belt has long served as a metaphor for the movement of ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean. The belt depicts a continuous loop of southbound subsurface cold water and a northbound flow of warm water on the surface. That loop, part of what is called the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, has a powerful […]