EcoKids is Earth Day Canada’s program for kids who care about the planet. Our website has tons of fun and educational games and activities on a range of environmental topics. Our 2007 theme is ‘Exploring Canada’s North’. We have created a new informational section for this theme along with the following online features: Northern Seasons – A glimpse of the landscape through the four seasons in Canada’s north. Mush Rush – A game that puts you in the driver’s seat of a dogsled team. Canada’s North Quizzes – Three challenging quizzes about the environment, wildlife and people in the north. Eco-Field Guide Northern Organisms – Information about 24 different species of fl...

"Never give up your dreams". Jean-Louis Etienne — the French doctor and explorer — knows more than anyone what these words mean; for four years he has been involved with the Total Pole Airship project, which aims to fly a blimp over the Arctic ocean and the North Pole, measuring the thickness of the sea ice with an instrument designed by the Alfred-Wegener Institute. Last Friday, October 12, Jean-Louis Etienne could finally smile. The expedition blimp was inaugurated during a ceremony in Marseille — it was christened Total Pole Airship, after the sponsor Total. The blimp arrived in France from Russia (whe...

Submitted by Cristina Millan on October 14, 2007. For a few hours early on our second night [of drilling at ANDRILL] we went to the ice edge, just 8 km from the drill site. It was really special! Not only because of the views and the beautiful dusk colors, but also because of the penguins that hang out there. We approached the edge carefully, watching for signs of thinned ice, and saw a few Emperor penguins lounging around in the distance. As soon as we got off the skidoos a group of 10-12 penguins ran towards us to check us out. We stood still and got our cameras ready. I thought they would move away once they got close, but instead they came even closer…I could almost touch them. ...

By Cristina Millan, sublitted October 13, 2007: Many projects in Antarctica are 24/7 operations, and ANDRILL is no exception. We take advantage of the 24 hours of continuous daylight at this time of the year. (Well, there is a short 'night' period between midnight and 3 or 4 in the morning, when the sun goes down a bit but never really goes under and so it looks like dusk. This is getting shorter every day and soon the sun will be all the way up and move in a tight circle above.) It makes for an exhausting working season but it also is much more efficient. Night view of Mt. Erebus as seen from the drill s...

Cristina Millan writes: What’s different this year? A new drill hole and a new location (at the ANDRILL Southern McMurdo Sound (MSM) drill site), new drill and science teams (some returns, though), new expectations, new worries, new results… and a new job for me. This year we are about 30 km from McMurdo station, so those of us working at the drill site live at a camp specially set up for this operation AND within 5 minutes walking distance of the drill rig (which is nice change form last year’s hour-long commute to the site!!) The camp is great! Quite a set-up, overall, when I think of how most people do research here, and what a logistical nightmare living and working in Antarctica is. I will have some photos and stories about my ‘home...

Antarctic Ecological Genomics PhD Opportunities 1) Ecological genomics of the invertebrate response to ocean acidification 2) Ecological genomics of the vertebrate/invertebrate response to shifts in food supply We invite applications from highly-motivated molecular biology and/or biochemistry postgraduate candidates to contribute to a project investigating stress effects on the Antarctic marine ecosystem utilizing genomics-based approaches. Two PhD projects are on offer, each contributing to an objective of this FRST-funded International Polar Year Project. The Antarctic marine ecosystem is under threat as a result of global climate change combined with other anthropogenic influences (e.g. fishing, tourism). We need to understand ecosystem...

By Cristina Millan Well, it’s been just under 10 months since my last posting but the thing is: I am back in Antarctica. Last year I spent three months here working on the ANDRILL Project (check here for last year’s amazing season). ANDRILL (ANtarctic DRILLing) is a multinational project involving four countries (US, New Zealand, Italy, and Germany) with the goal of recovering sediments from the sea floor. One of the aims of this project is to gain a better understanding of global climatic change, in which Antarctica plays a very important role. The structural geology group (to which I belong, together with three other colleagues) is also interested in the broader geologic history of the area where we are drilling: how and w...

SIPEX Update: 28 September – 10 October We have bid a fond farewell to the sea ice as we have reached the edge of the ice zone and are now in the open ocean heading for Hobart and home, so it is time for a short review of the last couple of weeks. When I last wrote, we were pretty much stationary in an area of heavily deformed ice, waiting for the ice pack to break up a bit and make travelling easier. Some of the biologists on board had noticed that the ice we were breaking through in that area was very brown on the underside. The brown colouring comes from the algae that live in and on the underside of the ice and are an important part of the sea ice ecosystem. There had been little algae in the sea ice we had sampled so far on this voyage and the biologist...

Ice Sheet Press Release More About Ice Sheets Please use the listed press contacts, lead scientist, or profiled expert in the following pages to learn more about IPY Projects Studying Ice Sheets ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ANTARCTICA: LIFE ON THE ICE explores life at the bottom of the world What is it like to live in the most desolate place on the planet? The newest collection from outdoorswoman and writer Susan Fox Rogers brings together twenty scientists, writers and workers who tell their dramatic, funny, often moving tales of daily life amidst the ice and isolation of Antarctica. Realizing her childhood dream of walking in the footsteps of Antarctic explorers, editor Rogers spent six weeks on the Ice learning the ways of the penguin researchers, ice diggers, atmospheric scientists, cooks, pilots, and others who are drawn, almost mystically, to the most foreboding climate one can imagine. “I traveled to the Antarctic bec...