Gavin Bolt
BS, Ecology, Evolution, and Biodiversity
Study Abroad Program in Scandinavia
Learning about the Arctic, exploring the amazing landscapes, and studying the extraordinary animals that live there is greatly exciting to me. I am grateful that, with help from the PICS Arctic Internship Fellowship, I was able to just that. The Arctic is a special and important part of the Earth and it is my hope that my experience traveling there this summer is the first of many opportunities to come.
This summer I traveled abroad to Denmark and Sweden in order to further my education, meet new people that share my interests, and learn from researchers from around the world. During my first session which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark I was part of a class that studied arctic marine mammals and the problems they face in their harsh environments. Between lectures that provided us with great information on every part of the lives of arctic marine mammals we would take study trips. These were not only the highlight of the class as far as how fun they were, but also each one gave us unique insights into how research is conducted on these animals. One of the stand out trips was a visit to a zoo where we talked with one of the head keepers about how they handle every part of the animal’s experience in the zoo. When should they (or should they not) introduce more animals to an exhibit, how do you maintain a good quality of living, and what do you do when an individual is getting too old? It was very interesting to hear how the answers to these questions differed from what we may expect in the United States. While at the zoo we also conducted a behavioral study on a pair of harbor seals, later presenting what we found in front of the class. An additional study tour we conducted took place at a museum storehouse which held a huge array of marine mammal skeletons. While we were browsing the collection we were able to learn about the importance of these kind of collections for studying animals who lived not only in different geographical areas but at different times as well. The same day we also learned how the Danish government handles beached animals, which included participating in a necropsy of a harbor porpoise that was found dead on a Danish beach. Necropsies allow us to potentially deduce the cause of death, whether it was previously tangled in any fishing nets, and what the individual’s overall health was when it was alive. All of these study tours, and the paired lectures, provided amazing information that advanced my understanding of how we can study and aid arctic marine mammals.
Learning about these arctic animals in Denmark was incredible, but the best part of the program was definitely when we got took a week trip to Iceland in order to study them in person. Our class traveled to Húsavík, in the Northeast of Iceland, to research the species of whale and porpoise that travel to the area every summer to feed in the nutrient-rich waters of the bay. A Hope Spot and protected area, Skálfandi bay houses an extraordinary amount of arctic marine life that depend on the area for food and habitat. While we were there we saw astonishing behavior from the wildlife, especially from the humpback whale population in the bay which regaled us with tail slaps, breaching jumps, lunge feeding, bubble net hunting, and more. For each whale we spotted in the bay we recorded observations of the whale’s behavior, the environment, and the timing of each sighting for use in a final project for when we arrived back in Denmark. When we weren’t on the whale-spotting vessels we were learning more about how research is being conducted in the bay and other places in the Arctic. Lectures were done by the head researchers located in the village as well as those who occasionally come to the bay to collect data. Being able to simply stand in an arctic environment itself adds so much to the understanding of how the ecosystem functions and I am very grateful I got to participate in such an experience.
With funding aid from this fellowship I was able to study abroad in Scandinavia and learn about the marine mammals that inhabit the Arctic as well as the issues that they face as their environment rapidly changes around them. My time learning about the Arctic this summer and traveling to northern Iceland has provided me great insight into this area which is so crucial to properly manage and protect for the future, a future which I hope to be a part of as I continue my education and seek to further our understanding of the Arctic.
Brianna Jarvis
BS, Ecology, Evolution, and Biodiversity
Study Abroad Program in Svalbard
I have tried to write this report many times, but the experience I had in the Arctic feels as though it may ascend and fly above written word and human language. As a self-proclaimed writer, I have never found myself at a loss for words. Visiting the Arctic was a dream I never knew I had because I thought that dreaming so big was foolish. But, once I was in Svalbard, it became increasingly clear to me that everything I was to do there would change my life.
I am a scientist and a writer. I notice the uniqueness and evolutionary usefulness of the characteristics in a bird flying in the far-off distance just as much as I notice the stunned look on my friends’ faces as they gaze upon something they never imagined themself seeing. Every part of my nature, of my identity, was cradled and cared for by the expansiveness of the Arctic’s ecosystem and all it had to teach me.
I had never had much faith in my own ability to make it as a scientist. Growing up poor and of an uneducated family, that was not something that was ever instilled in me. I did not see people like me making it in science, I didn’t even see people like me finding jobs they love—that was never what it was about for my family. This trip to the Arctic, doing field studies on mountains, glaciers, coastal plains, and seas, instantaneously hit me with the realization that I had made it as a scientist, in a way. I already have found a place in the field that I love.
So, not only did this course on Arctic Ecology teach me real, useful hard skills like all the dimensions of water sampling; collecting information on species distribution, abundance, and diversity; identifying and characterizing novel species of plants, animals, birds, and lichens; and so much more, it also instilled within me a sense of confidence of my place in the field of ecology and a real feeling of responsibility to take every great opportunity that I’ve gotten to further my technical skills and harness them into conducting meaningful and impactful research.
I also learned how much I had never known about the Arctic. It’s not as simple as saying “the arctic ecosystem has no trees” to characterize the ecology of such a place. On our 16km hike to a Walrus colony, we walked upon a prostrate shrub tundra—filled with a diverse abundance of small, leafy and succulent plants—determined by the absence of large bird colonies to impact nutrient availability. We learned of the importance of the Svalbard reindeer’s specialized digestive system to allow them to digest the chemical properties of lichen, something not many animals can do, so that they can rely on grazing on exposed patches of rock in the cold winter months where there is a shortage of other vegetation to feed on. Many animals share adaptations like short limbs for heat conservation and color-changing coats to provide camouflage in the different seasons. On our second day, we hiked the Longyearbyen glacier to find an abundance of fossils of full-size leaves from full-sized trees—in the middle of the high Arctic, where there are no trees. These fossils had to have been around 80 million years old, from a time when Svalbard had occupied a place on Earth much closer to the equator, where full-sized trees grew in a tropical ecosystem. We also saw firsthand the effects of climate change on such an extreme ecosystem, collecting water samples near and far to an actively-melting glacier and finding that the presence of this glacier freshwater in the sea was changing the properties of the marine ecosystem and impacting the abundance of native and invasive zooplankton species.
My passion for ecology was cultivated in Svalbard. Some of my favorite species facts that I learned are: the Arctic Tern has the longest migration route of any bird species, spending time in the Arctic during the northern summer and migrating to the Antarctic for the southern summer; the Northern Fulmar has an intricate beak structure that allows them to clear out saltwater when hunting and spit a glue-like substance on their prey, and they are distantly related to the Albatross; the Little Auk don’t have the greatest head shape for hunting in water, so they propel themselves upward out of the water and catch their prey on the way up; the Arctic Bell-Heather’s flowers hang from their stems upside-down to create a microhabitat and conserve heat; the Woolly Lousewart has hairy leaves for water and carbon retention; and the Rock Ptarmigan have thick feathers on their feet to conserve heat when walking in the snow.
On top of everything, I got to learn all of these incredible things and experience every moment in Svalbard with some of my closest friends that I made at the University of Michigan in these last three years. I was asked at the end of our Arctic Ecology class to tell a story about our time in Svalbard, and I thought I would share that here.
I thought I had known mountains, I thought I had known oceans, I thought I had known cold air and persistent sunlight, I thought I had known the Earth and the extent of its existence. When our plane first crossed over the mountains of Svalbard, I thought I had been foolish to think I’d known anything at all. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, it felt different just to breathe the air. Watching my closest friends, whom I’ve watched closely since I’ve known them, look around with slack jaws and a unique sparkle in their eyes. It would have been enough just to watch them experience it all, yet I was so lucky as to be there with them.
All around me was embodied persistence, I learned that flowers can grow in the cold— beautiful, bright, purple flowers. Snow turned itself into water to make it through the summer, moss grew vibrant in the streams as the dry air sucked all moisture from my skin. Every animal there is programmed to blend with the environment in all its forms, just to survive. I had forgotten the world outside of myself, I had forgotten the lengths that some creatures have to go to, just to survive.
I briefly grew wings, my excitement flying beside the puffin that my friends yelled “puffin! Puffin! Puffin!” at from the back of the boat. For a moment I knew how it felt to fly. A picture could not capture how magical it was to see with your own eyes something that had always felt like a fairytale your parents would tell you to keep you in school. Watching a reindeer graze in the plains, like hearing hooves on the roof on Christmas Eve.
“They were all in search of something. Many found what they were looking for.” Written on the wall in the Svalbard museum. I don’t know what I had been looking for, but I know what I found. What did this trip teach me? There is a beacon of hope, ever-shining, even at 78 degrees North. Do not waste your life away mourning something you have yet to lose, especially when it's right in front of you. Keep your wonder and keep wandering. Things will die, and they will die in beauty. It is change that will keep you alive, and it is enough just to be alive. There is always another adventure to be had, this is not the end. I am grateful to be with love, anywhere.
This opportunity meant everything to me. It reignited my passion for nature, science, and research; it cultivated a sense of strength and confidence in my scientific abilities and skills; it introduced me to so many incredible and unique species that I would’ve never had the pleasure to really know otherwise; it gave me a sense of hope for the future of the Earth and my ability to give something back to it; it brought me closer to my friends and introduced me to ultra-talented scientists and students that added so much to my life in just a couple of weeks; it reminded me of my gratitude for the Earth, its offerings, its beauty, its perseverance, and its knowledge; and it gave me back my wonder and curiosity, that which is paramount to my hopes for my future within this natural world.
I want to extend my utmost gratitude and thanks to the donors of the Arctic Internship Fellowship. Your generosity to students like me and your interest and care for the arctic ecosystems of our world is so impactful, kind, and inspiring. I will never forget what your consideration and goodwill has given me. I only hope to one day be able to pass it on in return.
Cory Plotz
BS, Environmental Science
Study Abrad Program in Denmark and Greenland
I would like to extend my sincerest thanks and gratitude to you for selecting me for the PICS Arctic Fellowship for my study abroad experience this past spring. This opportunity truly would not have been possible without the generosity of donors like you that understand the importance this research has for the health of our ecosystems and climate. Below I would like to report to you how studying abroad in Denmark and Greenland helped significantly expand my educational and career opportunities, and how your funding was directly responsible for my experience.
I never really entertained the idea that I would ever be able to study in the Arctic. As an environmental sciences student, studying abroad was always a potential goal of mine during my early years in college that I’d expressed interest in, but I always dismissed the possibility I’d ever go because of the financial barrier to studying abroad. Coming from a family that places a large value on saving the money you work for, my experience as a first-generation college student left me feeling lucky that I was able to afford college at all, where I worked three jobs concurrently while taking classes to afford rent during junior and senior year. And having never talked to many people about their study abroad experiences, I was expecting that my opportunity to leave the continent wouldn’t come until I’d established a full-time career and perhaps finished graduate school. However, right before winter break of 2024, I submitted a last-minute application to the DIS Study Abroad program after learning several of my friends from Epsilon Eta, my environmental fraternity, were applying for the program. To my surprise, over winter break I received an acceptance into the program; though my first choice of course, Arctic Ecology, had been filled (mostly by the aforementioned Eta members), I was informed the Climate Change of Arctic Ecosystems course, based in Copenhagen with a ten-day trip to Greenland, still had seats. I clicked yes and accepted my admittance to the program.
This trip was a first in several ways; the Arctic has always been an area of particular interest to me given the unique adaptations that organisms must have to deal with the extreme climates, and the disproportionate impact that global warming has on the habitat. This experience allowed me to learn the processes that scientists use to collect ecological data from these ecosystems, and made me confident that I can conduct fieldwork in the Arctic in any future careers based in the Arctic. Simultaneously, this was my first time traveling outside of the United States (excluding Canada), and living in Copenhagen felt truly eye-opening and even enlarged my perspective on what I’d previously thought possible in the world. I have never lived in a city larger than Ann Arbor and never vacationed in a big city for over a week, and spending around four weeks in Copenhagen immersed me in a completely different form of living that, while overwhelming at first, gradually accustomed me to city life. Overall, this trip gave me just a taste of how large the world is, and only cements to me the value in pursuing career opportunities in places that give me a taste of how large the world is.
While most courses in DIS were three weeks long, my course had the unique property of being double that length with the same students throughout, and this structure allowed for a comprehensive experience studying Greenlandic ecosystems. We spent our first two weeks learning the ecology of Arctic ecosystems within a classroom setting, and preparing experiments that simulated data collection such as collecting water samples in a local lake and analyzing them.
Our ten-day study tour of Greenland began with our class walking directly onto a massive glacier, applying spikes upon our shoes to latch to the ice. We learned how to measure albedo by setting up light sensors at different distances from each other and measuring their outputs, and sampled pockets of water within the glaciers that supported conditions for algae to grow. Once we left the glacier, we conducted vegetation transects to analyze plant life across several different sites and learned how to set up arthropod pitfall traps to collect insect data. One of the most exciting research expeditions happened on Disko Island, where we stayed at a research facility and boarded a research boat to collect data on the water, including CTD profiles, phytoplankton nets, and water samples from different depths. This was a particularly striking intersection between science and manual work, as the process of collecting data required steering a fishing boat, raising and lowering the large phytoplankton net, and washing off the sides with a power hose to adequately collect all phytoplankton. The experience on the boat reminded me of earlier in class where we talked about how scientists on Arctic tours will reserve the warmest houses for the cook and the mechanic, because those are the people who keep them alive in frigid temperatures.
The study tour also deeply enriched my cultural knowledge of the Greenlandic peoples and customs. We traveled to different museums and UNESCO heritage sites to learn the history of how Greenlandic peoples lived and continue to live within the region, such as how elderly Greenlandic villagers who were no longer considered of value to society would have only one responsibility: chewing animal skin all day. We also stayed within the remote city of Oqaasut on our return from Disko Island, a town with only 30-40 permanent residents but that has a large fishing and music culture and some of the best food of our entire study tour. Finally, we learned the role that Greenland plays on the scientific world stage, hearing talks at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Nuuk on the plethora of research facilities studying Greenland’s climate, and the role that drilling for ice cores can play in measuring climate.
Upon our return from Greenland, we spent our remaining time analyzing our data within the lab, and even got to tour the University of Copenhagen and use their labs for tasks such as weighing soil that we’d collected and dissecting fish. After collecting and collaboratively inputting our data into a shared drive, each class member wrote comprehensive reports on the available class data and used those reports to recommend further studies that the data can be used for. While the most challenging part of the class, analyzing our data was also the most rewarding because it helped apply the ecological concepts we’d learned in class to understand the data we had collected. Alongside our data analysis, we watched a documentary on how Greenlandic soil could be used as a type of fertilizer, and took a tour of Copenhagen’s Greenland House while learning of the political relationship that Denmark and Greenland both have.
I again would like to send my deepest thanks to the donors behind the Arctic Internship Fellowship. Without your support, I wouldn’t have even dreamed of affording the financial security to study abroad in Europe, but the support of your fellowship, alongside the financial aid that I received from the University of Michigan, allowed me to experience something I would have never previously dreamed of having the opportunity to do. Having just graduated, I plan on taking my gap year to gain career experience in related environmental fields before pursuing a Master’s or PhD studying the aquatic ecology of Arctic ecosystems. Thank you for offering students like me resources for studying Arctic ecosystems.
Chloe Taurel
BA, Data Science
Study Abroad Program in Svalbard
This summer, I had the opportunity to take an Arctic Ecology class, thanks to the Arctic Internship Fellowship. As a Data Science major with a minor in Environment, I’ve had limited experiences in the field, as most of my work has involved cleaning and analyzing data, rather than collecting it. I’ve always done my best to understand the context of the information that I’m given, but the work is rarely collaborative let alone hands-on.
This summer, however, that changed. For the first two weeks of my Arctic Ecology course, we spent time in the classroom with our professor Dr. Astrid M. A. Schmidt, whose research revolves around citizen science on biodiversity and climate change. I’d never taken an ecology class before, and she informed us not only about the general field, but the niche yet resilient arctic flora and fauna. I immersed myself in the world of tundra-taiga biology – fascinated by the different classifications for landscapes and their respective ecosystems.
Learning the intricacies of plants was especially new to me, especially the adaptations of the ones living in such a harsh environment. Most of the plants grow close to the ground in order to conserve heat, with almost none of them growing above a foot tall. They also have extremely slow metabolisms to survive the long winters, and use extracellular freezing and antifreeze proteins to avoid cell damage. What I’d never considered before, however, was how harsh the summers were too. In the months of May through August, there is 24-hour sun meaning that the plants are constantly being blasted with heat energy. They have small leaves and are often hairy in order to conserve and collect water, protecting themselves from too much evaporation.
The animals and birds in the arctic circle are also well adapted for the conditions; throughout the course, I chose to focus on mammals. The Svalbard reindeer, its own genetically isolated species, is extremely short and has a specialized gut microflora that allows it to consume such high amounts of lichen. The walruses have a thick layer of blubber to protect their internal organs from the cold, which can account for up to one third of a walrus's total body mass in the winter. Although they have poor eyesight, their whiskers can be used to forage for clams and mollusks on the sea floor, while their tusks are used to drag them across the ice.
When we visited the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, we were able to see what we’d learned about firsthand. First we visited the Svalbard Museum in Longyearbyen, where we were able to get “up close and personal” with the (taxidermied) animals we’d see on the trip, observing the traits we’d read about. It also helped us learn more about the geopolitics and history of the arctic, such as the Svalbard Treaty, which gave equal rights to all countries to engage in commercial and scientific activities on the territory.
In the field we took water samples in small ponds and grid transects of the ground, classifying the different tundras based on the ratios of moss, dwarf-shrubs, and graminoids. I’d never completed this kind of plant-identification in the field before, and I became more aware of the multitudes of features that plants can possess, be it the number of petals or the internal structure of a grass. We also had the privilege to hike on a glacier and to a colony of walruses! What surprised me the most was the birds we were able to observe on our boat rides across the fjords, such as the Atlantic puffin, the common eider, and my favorite, the northern fulmar. On land we also got to see a colony of auks, arctic terns, and the rare rock ptarmigan.
I always thought of the arctic as a very fragile environment. Of course we hear about how climate change is disproportionately affecting the poles which is absolutely true – a phenomenon known as arctic amplification. Nonetheless, these living organisms have adapted to conditions that flora and fauna across the world could never live in: a fluctuating dichotomy of light, low levels of precipitation, and freezing temperatures.
This opportunity tremendously expanded my knowledge of environmental science, research, and, of course, the arctic itself. I developed and solidified my passion for conservation, and the importance of learning before analyzing. Oftentimes, the tundras we were observing were not distinct – when working with the environment there are nuances, in-betweens, and anomalies that not only adapt to the systems but are the foundation of them. In this academic quest to combine my passions for analytics and environmental science, I realized the importance of local knowledge, observation, and context.
I am incredibly grateful to the Arctic Internship Fellowship donors for supporting this experience, as I would not have been able to attend my program this summer without the funding I received. This summer further fueled my love for the environment and taught me both academic and philosophical lessons that I will take with me for the rest of my life.
Claire Thomson
BS, Earth & Environmental Science and Chemistry
Research Project with Pratt Lab
This past summer, the Arctic Internship Fellowship supported my research on Arctic atmospheric chemistry in Prof. Kerri Pratt’s research group at the University of Michigan. I began conducting research in the Pratt Lab in November 2023, focusing on atmospheric halogen chemistry in the Alaskan Arctic, specifically chlorine chemistry and emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in an Arctic oilfield. In the spring of 2020, as part of the Arctic Chlorine Oxidation (CLOROX) field campaign, the Pratt Lab deployed two chemical ionization mass spectrometers to an Arctic oilfield on the North Slope of Alaska to measure VOCs, as well as oxygenated and chlorinated gases. My honors thesis seeks to identify chlorine-containing VOCs in this dataset and investigate their formation pathways, as well as potential precursors to these chlorinated VOCs.
The Arctic is undergoing rapid changes due to climate change and increasing development, which are altering atmospheric chemical processes that have feedbacks on warming in the region. Combustion from resource extraction is emitting VOCs, many of which can be toxic, impacting the health of nearby native villages. The Arctic is unique because of reactions on the snowpack that produce reactive halogen gases. Chlorine radicals, formed from some of these halogen gases, are an important Arctic oxidant, as opposed to hydroxyl radicals which dominate atmospheric oxidation reactions globally. Chlorine radical reactions with VOCs and ozone also serve to enhance the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere, affecting the lifetimes of some pollutants. This means that the reactions and fate of the emitted VOCs are expected to be different in the Arctic compared to elsewhere on Earth. Chlorine radicals react efficiently with VOCs to form oxygenated compounds, as well as chlorinated VOCs that are likely carcinogens. These oxygenated products can also condense onto atmospheric aerosols, with impacts on cloud formation and properties (i.e. climate), as well as air quality.
Through this fellowship, I conducted research part-time in the Pratt Lab for two months of the summer on work that will be incorporated into my honors thesis. Although I have worked on multiple different projects related to Arctic atmospheric chemistry during my time in the Pratt Lab, this summer gave me the opportunity to narrow my focus and develop a specific research question for my thesis. I also had the opportunity to become more independent in my research and build on skills I gained during previous semesters working in the lab. I was largely responsible for deciding how to approach data analysis for my project, determining what questions to pursue, and managing my time in the lab. This independence helped reaffirm my plans to continue conducting research by pursuing a PhD in environmental chemistry or environmental science after I graduate from the University of Michigan this spring. Self-directed research also gave me an opportunity to think more critically about different types of data analysis and consider how hypotheses could be tested through laboratory experiments, skills which will be useful in future research settings. Additionally, this summer I had the opportunity to present a poster at the University of Michigan/Agilent Measurement Science Symposium, where I shared my research, as one of the few participating undergraduates, with the analytical chemistry community on campus. As I begin writing my honors thesis using the data I analyzed this past summer, I will improve my skills in scientific communication and gain a deeper understanding of my research within the context of the field.
Although my results are still preliminary, I have tentatively identified some chemical compounds that have been previously reported in oilfields, the Arctic, or other environments, as well as some compounds that have, to my knowledge, not been reported in the literature. These results have sparked more curiosity in me about the Arctic atmosphere and have led me to new research questions. Additionally, having time to study existing literature on Arctic atmospheric chemistry has helped me better understand what knowledge gaps currently exist, as well as what avenues are being explored in other research groups.
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the donors who funded my Arctic Internship Fellowship and to the Program in International and Comparative Studies for supporting my research experience and giving me the opportunity to pursue this Arctic research in the Pratt Lab this summer. The funding I received has allowed me to learn more about Arctic science, strengthen my research skills through data analysis and scientific communication, and has provided me with valuable time to gain a more thorough understanding of my field. As I move forward in a research career studying environmental issues, these skills will be invaluable. I would also like to thank Prof. Kerri Pratt and postdoc Dr. Andrew Jensen for their mentorship this summer and throughout my time in the group.
