The University of Colorado at Boulder's Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research will hold free open houses on Friday, Nov. 20 and Saturday, Nov. 21 to showcase a variety of research conducted from Greenland to Antarctica.
About 500 area students are expected to attend the Nov. 20 open house for K-12 students, said Scott Elias, an INSTAAR researcher coordinating the events. The Nov. 21 open house is free and open to the general public. The Saturday open house will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the East Campus in building RL-1 at the corner of 30th Street and Marine Street, across from Scott Carpenter Park.
The open houses will include exhibits on skulls and bones of now-extinct Ice-Age mammals from North America, ice cores from the Earth's poles that help scientists understand climate change and alpine wildflower exhibits.
Other exhibits include a stuffed polar bear as well as arctic survival suits that both children and adults can try on. In addition, the events feature talks and slide shows on Ice Age environments of the Rocky Mountains and Antarctica's Dry Valleys, the world's coldest, driest desert, Elias said.
Other presentations include talks on wildflowers, glaciers, and the science of avalanches. Experts also will show slides and talk on how and when the earliest Americans are believed to have crossed over the Bering Land Bridge, and the geology, climate and inhabitants of this ancient crossroads to the Old World.
Tours and talks will be given at various labs that date ancient plants, animals and artifacts using radio-isotopes and also to look at the science of high-latitude rivers and lakes. Attendees also can peer at arctic and alpine ecosystems through a microscope or see methods of mapping the arctic and alpine regions -- some of the last remaining frontiers on Earth.
INSTAAR, an institute of CU-Boulder's Graduate School, conducts research throughout the world, primarily in high-latitude and high-altitude regions. The vast array of science projects stretch from pole to pole and from South America and the tropical Pacific and Australia to the Himalayas in an attempt to tie regional environments to global patterns.
"INSTAAR is considered the premier arctic and alpine research institute in the world," said INSTAAR Director James Syvitski. "Students and faculty here collaborate with investigators from six continents, 23 countries, and 94 institutions within the United States."
Employing more than 250 people -- including 55 graduate students and 77 doctoral scientists -- INSTAAR focuses on interdisciplinary research to study water, ice, sediments, ecosystem science, biology, geology, engineering, oceanography, and past and future climate change. Institute researchers have produced more than 3,000 scientific publications, said Syvitski.
The institute has brought the state of Colorado more than $30 million in research funds during the past five years, primarily from federal agencies like the National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, he said.
INSTAAR also runs the Mountain Research Station adjacent to Niwot Ridge some 30 miles west of Boulder. The station features research facilities from 9,500 feet in elevation to a tundra lab at 11,565 feet wired with fiber optic and high voltage power lines, allowing year-round research in a region where winds approach 160 mph and the wind chill dips to below minus 100 F.
Recent topics of research include the impact of warming on Earth and its living inhabitants, the impact of hurricanes and floods in coastal regions, how the Vikings fared with rapid climate change and how burning by ancient aboriginal Australians may have desertified the interior of Australia.
Other studies include the impact of pollution on the alpine tundra, sea level rise by melting glaciers and ice sheets, the migration patterns of caribou, and rapid climate change and its relation to deep ocean currents.