Environment In the News

Undergraduate Saves Lives With Her Nonprofit, SOAP

Monday, October 2, 2017 - 12:15pm

September 27, 2017 | Dartmouth News

by Charlotte Albright

Hand washing saves lives. That’s why Sydney Kamen ’19 founded a nonprofit organization that recycles used soap from hotels and distributes it to under-resourced communities around the world.

Her advocacy work has won accolades, including the 2017 Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World) Award from the Helen Diller Family Foundation, the Prudential Spirit of Community Award, the Daily Point of Light Award, and the Robert Sheppard Leadership Award. Her work has also come to the attention of People magazine, in an ... Read more.

Wilson Center Features Ross Virginia in Polar Interactive

Monday, August 28, 2017 - 12:41pm

August 28, 2017

The Wilson Center in Washington, DC, has created a beautiful and important online interactive called "Into the Arctic" that considers issues facing the Arctic today. Ross Virginia is featured in the section "The Arctic Environment in the Age of Man," along with Senior Arctic Fellow Lenore Grenoble, who narrates "Interactive: Languages of the Arctic."

Wilson Center Names Ross Virginia Polar Initiative Fellow

July 6, 2017 | Dartmouth News | Bill Platt

Ross Virginia, the director of Dartmouth’s Institute of Arctic Studies at the Dickey Center... Read more.

Three Decades of Climate Research in Antarctica

Monday, August 28, 2017 - 10:48am

August 26, 2017 | Valley News

by Matt Hongoltz-Hetling

After the crew members tied the helicopter down to prevent it from blowing away in what was shaping up to be one of Antarctica’s famously powerful storms, they crawled over the frozen ground to join Dartmouth Professor Ross Virginia and a handful of students in the crowded emergency shelter.

They’d seen the storm on the horizon, a solid wall of clouds rushing toward them, and soon they felt it too — winds that slammed into the small aircraft and caused it to bounce erratically. Though they were just minutes from... Read more.

Mosquitoes Getting Bigger and Badder

Monday, August 21, 2017 - 3:52pm

August 14, 2017

In a National Geographic article Lauren Culler discusses the challenge of dealing with a greater number of mosquitoes emerging in Greenland.

"There aren’t a lot of animals for them to eat in the Arctic, so when they finally find one, they are ferocious. They are relentless. They do not stop. They just keep going after you."

A threat to caribou as well as people, mosquitoes are emerging earlier, getting bigger and hang around longer, driven by warmer temperatures. Cullers new research has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - 6:37pm

We are extremely pleased to announce that Leah Sarson, postdoctoral research associate in the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth and Visiting Arctic Fellow in the Institute of Arctic Studies, was recently chosen to receive a prestigious Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) fellowship from the Government of Canada, an award given to the “most promising Canadian new scholars in the social sciences and humanities.”

Sarson will use her award to continue her postdoctoral work at Dartmouth with Melody Brown Burkins, Adjunct Professor... Read more.

Virginia Comments on Greenland Toxins in Popular Science Article

Thursday, July 13, 2017 - 10:02am

July 12, 2017 | Popular Science

As the huge ice sheet melts, it releases toxins—and microbes that eat them, reports Poular Science magazine. They turned for comment to Professor Ross Virginia, Director of the Institute of Arctic Studies: “It’s potentially good news that degraders are found in the melting ice ecosystem."

Read the entire article in Popular Science, July 11, 2017.

The author of the Popular Science article, Kendra Pierre-Louis, also wrote about IAS Outreach Coordinator Lauren Culler's mosquito research for Motherboard, in 2015.

Fulbright Arctic Initiative Accepting Applications

Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - 1:52pm

July 12, 2017 | Fulbright Scholar Program release

Fulbright Arctic Initiative information (pdf)

18-month research program will expand collaborative networks and address shared priorities

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has announced the launch of the second Fulbright Arctic Initiative.

The Fulbright Arctic Initiative is designed to create a network to stimulate international research collaboration on Arctic issues while increasing mutual understanding between people of the United States and the people of other... Read more.

"Week of the Arctic" Focused on the Way Forward

Monday, May 22, 2017 - 10:09am

The “Week of the Arctic” in Fairbanks, Alaska, May 8-14, 2017, highlighted the United States as an Arctic nation and culminated in the historic handover of the Arctic Council Chairmanship from the U.S. to Finland. Opening the week, Dartmouth and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) hosted a daylong workshop, sponsored by the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), to emphasize the importance of the Arctic in research and education exchanges. The launch of the second Fulbright Arctic Initiative program, once again co-led by Dartmouth and UAF, was also announced... Read more.

Climate Game Jam

Monday, April 17, 2017 - 10:33am

April 17, 2017

Join a week-long game jam with Dartmouth's Tiltfactor Lab. Never made a game before? Tiltfactor can help. They will provide participants with the tools and resources mneeded. Don't have friends to form a team? They'll have people at Tiltfactor who can be your friends! W

When and where will Tilfactor be jamming? Kickoff April 18th @5pm at the Tiltfactor Lab.,2nd floor BVAC. Participants disperse after the kickoff to make games. The jam won't stop until they reconvene on April 25th. Be there. Do good. Bring your A-game.

For more information: Game Jam and... Read more.

Ross Virginia Reflects on His 27-Year Antarctic Research Project

Thursday, April 13, 2017 - 11:12am

April 20, 2017 | Dartmouth News | Bill Platt

Just back from his final trip to Antarctica as an investigator for the Long Term Ecological Research Program, Professor Ross Virginia breaks off a conversation and strides across his office to pull out a hundred-year-old volume of Robert Falcon Scott’s The Voyage of the Discovery.

“This is his first expedition. It’s just a treasure,” says Virginia, the Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science.

“I’m just amazed and fascinated by all of this,” he says as he thumbs through the collected journals of the British... Read more.