Course Details

Learn about climate and ice-sheet change by traveling to the margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We will investigate a glacier basin and distinct glacial landforms at the margin of the ice sheet that are shaped by to ice sheet advances and retreats over time. We will explore these places using a recently developed set of virtual reality environments, as well as explore real-world data in a Geographical Information System (GIS) developed for Greenland. Through numerous hands-on activities students will gain geospatial skills and build connections to polar places and spaces. Introductory material will cover basics of climate science, basics of continent-scale dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and how the Greenland Ice Sheet has changed over time; lectures would build from ‘climate literacy’ and ‘polar literacy’ principles. As a class we will also work towards creating geospatial layers using available statistics about life in Greenland and available locations of sites that have cultural and historical significance.