The Student-PARTNERS Project: Engaging Students, Teachers, and the Public in the Study of the Arctic and Global Climate Change

The International Polar Year provides an excellent opportunity to highlight the importance of the Arctic to the Earth's climate system and at the same time engage the public in the investigation of one of the most pressing issues facing humanity, global climate change. The Student-PARTNERS Project, recently funded by the National Science Foundation's Arctic Sciences Section, is involving students, their teachers, and their communities in hands-on arctic research as a means of exciting them about science and motivating them to consider solutions to the energy/climate challenge. The project focuses on the hydrology and biogeochemistry of major arctic rivers in Siberia, Canada, and Alaska, and how changes in arctic rivers caused by global warming have the potential to impact ocean salinity, ocean circulation, and consequently global climate. Students and teachers from around the Arctic as well as from a growing number of schools outside of the Arctic are working together on this project. Participants are encouraged to view the earth as a system, where changes in the Arctic can lead to changes is regions far removed from the Arctic, and vice versa. The science is also advanced, as local involvement in the research allows a far greater range of samples to be collected from rivers around the Arctic than would otherwise be possible. An unintended benefit of the project is that it facilitates our research reaching an expanded audience, as student involvement tends to capture the public's interest, creating an opening for discussing the underlying science.