GROUP RESEARCH REPORTS: CHANGES IN THE GLACIAL WORLD
Each group will start by reading a paper or papers about an issue involving glaciers and changing environments, and write a collaborative report of about 3000-4000 words equivalent (6-8 pages) about the issues involved. This is the way most scientific papers are written.

Each group is also encouraged to explore or follow up ideas in directions of your choosing.
- For example, your basic goal could be to identify the key elements in the paper that are used to argue to a conclusion, summarize that argument, and then discuss implications for the environment and society.
- Or, you might take the approach of writing a job description for an environmental consultant, and then writing a report by that person for a politician's office, about a current topic involving glaciers and sea level, or water resources, etc.
- Or, your group might write a report about how to make this course communicate more effectively to larger numbers of students about environmental concerns involving glaciers and ice.

After the first 3 weeks, you will have formed tentative groups and identified some topics to explore.

Each Group will make appointments to meet as a group with the instructor in week 3 or 4, and again in week 9 to discuss progress, ideas and issues. It will be the responsibility of each Group to arrange these and additional meetings as desired, for mutually convenient times. Participating in these meetings is an important part of the project.

During subsequent weeks, you will have opportunities in class or Lab for your groups to discuss ideas and to report your progress.
You will also need to arrange your own convenient times to get together in the library, or over coffee or whatever to coordinate your work.

During Week 6, each Group will present a 1-2 page outline of their paper.

During the last lab session of the quarter, each group will present its findings to the rest of the class. Class members, as the scientific audience, will ask questions and discuss the findings with the authors. I expect that you will question the other groups, to ensure that they explain their research to you adequately. This is your responsibility as a scientific audience.

Papers are due on March 12.

Ideally each group member will contribute substantially to your group paper. In addition to the group paper, I will also ask each of you to turn in a short (1 page or less) paper describing your activities and contribution to the group paper. I must receive this description of your activities in order to give you a grade on the group project.

Here are some potential topics:

1. Impact of ongoing warming on the ice in the Antarctic Peninsula
There are a number of relatively short papers on this topic. One approach for this group might be for each person to concentrate on a single paper, then write a synthesis of the several papers. Is there a common theme? Do the authors agree? Here are papers to start from:

Mercer, J.H. 1978. West Antarctic Ice Sheet and CO2 greenhouse effect: a threat of disaster. Nature 271, 321-324.

Vaughan, D.G. and Doake, C.S.M, 1996. Recent atmospheric warming and retreat of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula. Nature vol.379, no.6563. pp. 328-31. 25 Jan. 1996.

Doake, C.S.M. Corr, H.F.J. Rott, H. Skvarca, P. Young, N.W. 1998. Breakup and conditions for stability of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Nature 391(6669) ,778-80. 19 Feb. 1998.

Skarvca, P. W. Rack, H. Rott, and T.L. Donangelo. 1999. Climatic trends and the retreat of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula: an overview. Polar Research 18, 151-157.

Domack, E., A. Leventer, R. Gilbert, S. Brachfeld, S. Ishman, A. Camerlenghi, K. Gavahan, D. Carlson, and A. Barkoukis. 2001. Cruise reveals history of Holocene Larsen Ice Shelf. Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 82(2), 9 January, 2001. 13, 16-17.

2. Global warming and the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
Work from a primary review article in Nature . It has many references to explore for details, clarifications or additional ideas. You can also look at the paper by Mercer under topic 1.

Oppenheimer, M. 1998 Global warming and the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Nature vol.393 pp325-332. 28 May 1998.

3. Are changes in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet today still a result of the last deglaciation?
Start from a primary review article in Science . It has references to explore for details, clarifications or additional ideas to explore, such as carbon-14 dating, glacier flow questions, ice-penetrating radar etc.

Conway, H., B.L. Hall, G.H. Denton, A.M. Gades, and E.D. Waddington 1999. Past and future grounding-line retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Science 286(5438), 280-283.

4. The great climate flip-flop: can global warming trigger another ice age soon?
The upside here is that this is a very readable and understandable account of how global warming might flip us into an ice age again. The downside is that, because this is a non-science magazine, there are no references for followup, so this group may decide it wants to do some literature searching on its own.

Calvin, W. H. 1998. The great climate flip-flop. Atlantic Monthly . January 1998. Available (in 2 parts) at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/issues/98jan/climate.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/issues/98jan/climate2.htm

Another source that does have some references in it is:

Broecker, W. 1997. Will our ride into the greenhouse future be a smooth one? GSA Today , Vol 7(5), pages 1-7.

5. Snowball Earth
Recently discovered geological evidence suggests that about 700 MILLION years ago the Earth spent about 10 million years entirely covered by glacial ice and floating ice shelves, including the tropics. This is back just before life on Earth became really complex. What was going on then?

Hoffman, P.F., A.J. Kaufman, G.P. Halverson and D.P. Schrag. 1998. A Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth. Science 281, 1342-1346. August 28, 1998.

There was also an article in Scientific American by Hoffman and Schrag in January 2000. See
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0100issue/0100hoffman.html

6. Ice Caps on Mars
Is there a climate record in the Martian polar caps? How would we find out? What sort of "climate" might Mars have?
There are several recent publications on Mars in the news journals Nature and Science, based on the new high-resolution mapping missions of the ``red planet''.