Expedition Scientists

This combined participatory and academic science venture calls on all people from all walks of life, in all areas of the world, to collect environmental data from some of the most fragile, and most remote areas of the planet. Projects launched through Expedition Scientists have two objectives - to inform science, and to serve the people and environments most impacted by environmental challenges.

Expedition Scientists are wilderness travelers, students from K-12 through college, ecologists, and explorers who travel and recreate in remote and rugged high alpine and coastal regions. They are mountaineers and adventurers who participate in mountain and coastal expeditions; they are guides and teachers.

Expedition Scientists are hunters, photographers, hikers, bikers, and birders. They are students completing a degree in environment and natural resource, and through-hikers on long wilderness treks looking to add meaning to their travels. They are through hikers on the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide, or the Pacific Coast Trail and bikers on the Great Divie Mountain Bike Route.

Remote Wilderness environments, coastal areas, and glaciated regions support some of the world's most vulnerable human populations and critical ecosystem services. Despite our dependence on these environs, the severity and implications of climate change often remains speculative due to limited ground-truthed data.

Establishing fixed weather stations is prohibited by regulations in some areas, and restricted by financial and infrastructural limitations in others. The remoteness of the terrain, the prohibitive cost of field research, and social and racial inequity are additional root causes of this climate data gap. The implications of this climate information void are significant, if not catastrophic. Expedition Scientists invites local communities and Indigenous populations across the globe to help address this challenge.

Climate Capture will build upon an extensive network of local, regional, and international partnerships, eight years of glacio-hydrological research in the Rocky Mountain West, and two prior research projects in East Africa. The project will pair novel new technologies with non-profits, academia, entrepreneurs, and communities to capture an unprecedented data set from remote environments around the globe.

Over the next decade, Climate Capture will train thousands of community scientists to collect ground-based climate data from critical glacio-hydrologic regions, alpine watersheds and coastal environments. The climate sensors, built to withstand the rigors of field data science collection, will collect accurate, replicable, location enabled temperature data, relative humidity values, and air quality data.

This project will fill a significant gap in field-based climate data, transform scientific engagement, expand individual and community climate capacity, and promote climate change education.

The temperature, humidity and air quality data comprising the Climate Capture data set will be analyzed and synthesized by researchers and students, but will also be available for use by stakeholders and community members. The data can be used as a comparative tool to assess the accuracy of existing climate models, employed to characterize alpine and coastal microclimates, and will provide detailed information about climate change across elevation and vegetation zones.

CLIMATE CAPTURE will partner with the Full Circle Expedition - the first all Black Expedition to summit Everest - to field test their climate and air quality sensors. For this expedition NASA Space Grant Consortium partner and electrical engineer Tim Sichler at Penn State University is developing field units specifically to collect climate data from the least hospitable environments on the planet.

The 2022 Full Circle Everest Team will pair with Expedition Scientists to collect data during their two months on the mountain in Spring of 2022. The team will then train local community members to continue to collect climate data in the Everest regions over the next several years. This data will provide valuable insight into the temperatures on the mountain, the implications of glacial ice loss, and water availability in the region.

Expedition Scientists will pair with the first all Black Everest Expedition to collect climate and air quality data from one of the harshest environments in the world.

The full impacts of climate change on high elevation glacio-hydrologic environments remain poorly documented and much work remains to identify risks to coastal regions. Full Circle and Expedition Scientists will engage not only the mountaineering community, but the sherpas, porters and high peak support staff directly into community climate scientific research.

Combining expeditions with field science constitutes a unique field of academic study that leads to a college degree. The Alpine Science Institute based out of Lander, WY offers an experiential education experience and a degree in Expedition Science that combines expedition and leadership skills, environmental science, geographic information systems and archaeology. Graduates have the academic and wilderness travel skills required to design, participate in, and lead field research expeditions.

For the past decade, the CWC Alpine Science Institute (ASI) students been investigating environmental challenges and exploring human history through in places as closes as the Wind River Range, and as far away as the flanks of Kilimanjaro. These researchers have explored contemporary environmental challenges ranging from receding glacial ice masses and the glacial microbiome to searching for microplastics in high elevation snowpacks.

CWC researchers have helped to unearth spectacular evidence of past occupation of the high alpine that goes back as far as 12 000 years ago.

Broadening Inclusion Knowledge and Experience in Science (BIKES) a 1000 mile backcountry mission to collect air quality data on the Great Divide

Providing ready access to Climate Capture data and helping Expedition Scientists share their research and exploration tales are critical objectives of this initiative. The Alpine Science Institute will provide opportunities to learn basic online mapping and help Expedition Scientists create digital StoryMaps using online mapping and storytelling software from ESRI.

Expedition Scientists can participate in place-based education through the Earth Systems Explorers Program hosted by the Alpine Science Institute.

Let every journey be an expedition. And let every adventurer contribute to the field of Science. `Expedition Scientists.