TAPE Arctic Visiting Speaker Tours
If you have any questions regarding these tours, please contact avs@arcus.org.
Showing speaker tours.
2011 Tours
Summary:
Ken Tape is a PhD student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks studying climate warming and landscape changes in the Arctic. Ken traveled to New Jersey to visit Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Chatham High School.
On 28 April Ken visited the AP Environmental Science, Honors Earth System Science and Concepts Earth Science students at Chatham High School. On 29 April he visited Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and met with faculty and students in the geography department. He also presented a seminar open to the university and public titled: "The Changing Arctic Alaskan Landscape." The seminar was followed by a reception. The seminar took place from 3:00 – 4:00 pm in the B120 Lucy Stone Hall, the public was encouraged to attend.
All of Ken's lectures focused around landscape changes in the Arctic including: the expansion of shrubs and the effect on herbivores (namely ptarmigan), fluctuations in the erosion regime, heterogeneity of vegetation change, and the implications of these changes to the broader arctic system. His work uses repeat photography to document expanding shrubs, migrating tree-line, shrinking glaciers, and deteriorating permafrost in the Arctic. He recently finished a book called, "The Changing Arctic Landscape" that highlights repeat photography in the Arctic. Repeated photographs can be interpreted by anyone, thus removing the complicated layer of interpretation that is associated with most measurements of terrestrial change. Students in New Jersey have very limited knowledge about the Arctic environment and the combination of photography and science was particularly appealing to the students.
2007 Tours
Summary:
In July 2007 researcher Ken Tape traveled to Denver, Colorado to present a talk titled "Climate Warming and the Changing Arctic Landscape: Repeat Photography of Vegetation, Glaciers, and Permafrost." His presentation used old photographs of the Arctic that have been repeated recently, and the comparison of old and new photos reveal the landscape changes underway in the arctic. He delivered his talk at the Denver Open Media (DOM) studio run by Deproductions. DOM is a public access television station with a live audience of over 50 people in the studio and with a broadcast audience as large as 300,000 viewers in the Denver metro area. His presentation aimed at exposing a diverse audience to climate change issues.
Ken presented a talk titled "Dog-mushing under the Northern Lights" about his winter experiences in the Arctic to a group of students participating in the "Weld County Partners" summer program in Greeley, CO. The program is part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program funded by the United Way. Both talks were promoted and publicized by DOM and the Denver Public Library.
Ken has written for technical and popular journals, and is currently writing a book about climate change for the general public called "Climate Warming and the Changing Landscape of Northern Alaska: Repeat Photography of Shrubs, Trees, Glaciers, and Permafrost" (University of Alaska Press). The book will cover the same topics as his talk in Denver, while also interweaving the experiences and observations of individuals involved in the initial photography (taken in the 1940's). Current photography and ground measurements for future generations will also be discussed.