Professors Michael Retelle, at left, and William Ambrose on the island of Ingøya, Norway. (© Randall Hyman)

An oceanographer and a geologist at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ have received a National Science Foundation grant to create a 1,000-year record of changing sea and climate conditions in the Norwegian Arctic.

Professor of Biology William Ambrose and Professor of Geology Michael Retelle received $337,228 from the NSF for their three-year research project, which will analyze the natural record archived in clamshells over the course of a millennium to plot changes in sea temperature where the Barents and Norwegian seas meet.

The researchers hope that this history of water conditions, which will span two historic periods of significant, naturally occurring temperature shifts in addition to contemporary climate change, can provide insight into major ocean currents and other phenomena related to climate.

“We’re interested in what triggers rapid climate change, and changes in the ocean conditions and currents may be a key,” says Ambrose.

Arctica islandica, older and younger. (Dan Frost ’05)

Ambrose and Retelle are focusing on the ocean quahog or Iceland quahog, aka Arctica islandica, a mollusk found across the North Atlantic. This species, Ambrose explains, “is the longest-lived multicellular animal” — one specimen caught off Iceland was more than 500 years old — “and so we get a very long history of growth and environmental conditions embedded in the shell.”

Clams and other bivalves produce annual lines in their shells, similar to the rings in tree trunks, that can be used to measure growth and that closely reflect conditions, notably temperature, that prevailed during the course of a year. (Perhaps counterintuitively, warmer water results in slower growth and narrower growth lines in the quahogs Ambrose and Retelle are studying.)

In combination with other techniques such as carbon-dating, growth-line patterns from living and dead clams can be matched up and strung together into long chronologies. An Arctica chronology in Iceland dating back 1,357 years was created by a team including University of Iowa paleoclimatologist Alan Wanamaker, who is partnering with Ambrose and Retelle on the Norway project. Wanamaker has done similar work with clams from the Gulf of Maine.

Retelle and Ambrose are doing their field research on Ingøya and Rolvsøya, islands in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county. Not only are Arctica islandica abundant and easily harvested there, but also favorable to the research is the islands’ location relative to the Norwegian and Barents seas and to major currents including the Gulf Stream.

The shell of an ocean quahog in cross-section, showing growth lines. (William Locke/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The islands’ geology, too, favors this research. Ingøya and Rolvsøya were once covered with glaciers, Retelle explains, and at its greatest extent during the last glaciation, the weight of the ice depressed the earth’s crust below sea level. As the glaciers melted and retreated, the land surface rebounded, leaving a succession of former beaches that are progressively older with increasing elevation.

“We have this staircase of beaches that go down to the present sea level,” Retelle says. “We think that they might go back 6,000 years or more. We’re able to trace beaches from higher elevations, like 20 meters above sea level, down to modern sea level.

“And the beaches contain a really nice assortment of these clamshells.”

Ambrose and Retelle’s 1,000-year chronology will cover the Medieval Climate Optimum, a warm period that lasted from about 950 to 1250, and the Little Ice Age, which ran from 1550 to 1850.

These old beaches rebounded above sea level as melting glaciers retreated and released them from heavy ice. (Michael Retelle/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A fair amount is known about the climate during these periods from other sources and other regions, Retelle explains. But these clamshell records are valuable because they represent known climate events year by year. “If we can see those events in the annual record in the clams, then we can actually pin down the timing — and maybe causes — of climate change in the last millennium.”

And Arctica islandica‘s broad geographical range provides the potential for a portfolio of such chronologies that would clarify regional variation in the impacts of climatic phenomena. Wanamaker, says Retelle, “has worked with the same species everywhere from the Gulf of Maine up to Finnmark.”

The Ambrose-Retelle research team for this project consists of 10 scientists from the U.S., Norway and the Netherlands. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students will take part in the research starting next year, the second year of the three-year effort.

The project will incorporate public educational programming in Iowa and in Maine — thanks in part to the efforts of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduate Dan Frost, a math teacher at Thornton Academy.

Dan Frost ’05, left, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ geologist Mike Retelle off the coast of Norway. (Julie Retelle/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ class of 2005 who studied with Retelle, Farmington native Frost served as teacher-in-residence with the research team during its first session of field work last summer. “He was involved in every aspect” of the research, Retelle says. Frost will use material from the field in both his classes and in public lectures.

Ambrose is the principal investigator and Retelle is the co-principal investigator for the project, titled “Collaborative research: Exploring the role of oceanic and atmospheric forcing on Arctic marine climate from newly developed annual shell based records in coastal Norway.”

Anna Skarstad '11

Anna Skarstad ’11 wants to be a farmer, but she’s not willing to hoe that row until she understands why. And she knows that farming is hard. “It’s deeper, too,” she says. “It’s a life.”

Which is the reason Skarstad lived amidst Norwegian farmers last summer, hoping to learn a little about their lives and more about her own. Supporting her travel was an Otis Fellowship, a competitive ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ grant program designed to help students explore their relationship with nature.

Skarstad, of Pleasantville, N.Y., wasn’t raised to farm. Her father is a noted violinmaker, and her mother is a composer. In fact, her father’s Norwegian grandparents abandoned a family farm to come to the U.S.

But the urge to work the land apparently didn’t leave the Skarstad genome. When she was 10, Skarstad saw a documentary about Norwegian farming. She saw men, tethered by ropes, descending a Norwegian hillside to harvest hay. “I couldn’t believe that was a reality,” she says. “I wanted to go to Norway to see how the farmers survive.”

Through , Skarstad found Norwegian hosts Anders Braanaas and Hilde Buer. Each had been widowed several years ago, and, to skip a lot of details, “the two sheep farmers fell in love,” explains Skarstad. As the pair still maintain their separate farms, Skarstad helped them both during her visit, often driving a banged-up Czech car between the two farms.

At first, the experience felt helter-skelter: painting a barn here, putting up a fence there. “All the tasks seemed unrelated, like pods of work,” she says. Slowly, Skarstad saw unity in all the farm duties. “It all had so much of a point,” she says now. “We were working to keep pace with the earth.”

Skarstad worked for Norwegian sheep farmers Anders Braanaas and Hilde Buer, seen here walking hand in hand on an island adjacent to Grøneng Island, where Buer has her farm.

Last summer, Anna Skarstad ’11 lived amidst Norwegian farmers, hoping to learn a little about their lives and more about her own.

Skarstad, you see, wants to be a farmer, but she’s not willing to hoe that row until she understands why. A quote from Thoreau’s Walden is one of her favorites: “As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

Skarstad, of Pleasantville, N.Y., wasn’t raised to farm. Her father is a noted violinmaker, and her mother is a composer who also handles press coverage for the Tokyo Quartet. In fact, there’s a break with farming in the family tree: To immigrate to the U.S., her father’s Norwegian grandparents left a family farm.

But farming apparently didn’t leave the Skarstad genome. When she was 10, Skarstad saw a documentary about Norwegian farming. She saw men, tethered by ropes, descending a Norwegian hillside to harvest hay. “I couldn’t believe that was a reality,” she says.

Last spring, she won an Otis Fellowship, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ grant program designed to help students explore their relationship with nature.
“I wanted to go to Norway to see how the farmers survive,” she says. “I knew that farming was much harder than I thought. It’s deeper, too — it’s a life.”

She found hosts in Norway through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms: Anders Braanaas, whose inland farm was in Førde, and Hilde Buer, whose coastal farm was on Grøneng Island. Each had been widowed several years ago, and, to skip a lot of details, “the two sheep farmers fell in love,” explains Skarstad.

She recalls a moment: the couple working together in a sheep pen filled with noise, manure, and confusion. “But Anders and Hilde were happy and laughing together. That’s where their relationship was: with the earth, nature, and especially their animals.”

Skarstad helped both farmers, often driving a banged-up Czech car between the two farms. At first, it all felt helter-skelter: painting a barn here, putting up a fence there. “All the tasks seemed unrelated, like pods of work,” she says. Slowly, she saw unity in all the farm duties. “It all had so much of a point,” she says now. “We were working to keep pace with the earth.”

By H. Jay Burns

Eilhardt is thrilled at the opportunity though less thrilled that his time at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ running short. “I’m annoyed, actually, that I have to graduate,” Eilhardt said. “I love learning about new things that I haven’t been exposed to yet, and I really think that’s what happened for me at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”

Like many ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni, his graduation won’t mark the end of his connections with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½; his sister, Britt, has been accepted to the next year’s incoming class of 2005, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ sesquicentennial class.

A native of East Brunswick, N.J., Eilhardt often visited Maine as a child with his family. He chose ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ over other regional schools, he says, because he liked the people and felt it was a place he could be himself. Eilhardt spent his junior year at Oxford in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ junior-year abroad program.

Eilhardt thought he’d study German and political science before he came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, but it took a while before he settled on his major. He’s been impressed with the level of passion his professors have had for their work, particularly with Margaret Imber, assistant professor of classical and medieval studies, and his senior honors thesis adviser, Michael Jones, professor of history. Eilhardt’s just completed thesis was a never-before translated Latin text written by an eighth-century monk called the Venerable Bede, a theologian, philosopher, historian and scientist who lived in northern England.

Eilhardt’s Fulbright path will follow ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Assistant Professor of Biology Will Ambrose Jr. to the University of Oslo. Ambrose, working on a Fulbright Faculty Scholarship, has spent the last year in Norway studying Arctic sea-floor ecology.

Ambrose is now completing research on the relationships between processes occurring on the seafloor and in the overlying water and how they might contribute to global warming.

Last year, Ambrose accompanied two students on a month-long senior-thesis research project aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Polar Sea to the ice-covered Chukchi Sea, northeast of Alaska. Ambrose, the students and two other researchers studied the diversity of single-cell ice algae, the distribution of ice algae in ice-core samples and whether sea floor-based organisms consume ice algae.