Earth to Class

Trevor Williams – ANDRILL: geologic drilling to produce stratigraphic records of the Antarctic
16 Sep 2006

The Earth2Class Workshops this fall will feature two special themes: “International Polar Year” and “Helping Students Interpret Data”. During the 2007 – 2008 IPY, thousands of scientists from all over the world will conduct large- and small-scale studies of the Arctic and Antarctic. Our opening Workshop will provide insights about one of the largest international programs underway to gather evidence that will help us understand Antarctica's geological history.

Our guest scientist is Trevor Williams, who will soon depart to participate in ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing). This is a multinational collaboration comprised of more than 200 scientists, students, and educators from five nations (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) to recover stratigraphic records from the Antarctic margin using Cape Roberts Project (CRP) technology. The chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes that will guide our understanding of how fast, how large, and how frequent were glacial and interglacial changes in the Antarctica region. Future scenarios of global warming require guidance and constraint from past history that will reveal potential timing frequency and site of future changes.

For more information: http://andrill.org/about/index.html

Our "Educational Applications" session in the afternoon will focus partly on using E2C online resources, and partly on sharing among E2C participants.