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from the issue of December 7, 2006
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Junior guides 'Project Iceberg'
BY SARA PIPHER, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
Antarctica is providing the experience of a lifetime for UNL junior Megan Berg.
The 19-year-old is the media specialist for ANDRILL, the UNL-led, multi-million dollar, geological drilling project in the McMurdo Sound region of Antarctica.
This fall, she gathered a Sony HDV camera, a Nikon D80 digital SLR, a G5 Power Mac, two terabytes of hard drive space, 100 mini DV tapes, five lens filters, nine lithium ion batteries, two tripods, an HDV camera deck, and a tripod dolly, and set out to record history in the making.
She is quick to point out that when she accepted her job, she was told it would involve travel - but no one specifically mentioned Antarctica. But she has enthusiastically spent the last few months recording the daily routines and research of an international team of more than 200 scientists, students, and educators. Their chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of glacial and interglacial changes in the Antarctica region. The research has implications for our understanding of global warming and climate change.
Five members of the on-ice science team for ANDRILL's McMurdo Ice Shelf Project are from UNL, including staff scientist Richard Levy, education and outreach coordinator John Jackson, research support coordinator Laura Lacy, Diane Winter, a graduate student in geosciences, and Berg.
Two other UNL geoscientists, David Harwood and Frank Rack, will be in Antarctica in the fall, doing fieldwork to prepare for next year's Southern McMurdo Sound Project. Harwood is research director and Rack is executive director of ANDRILL's Science Management Office, which is housed at UNL.
In addition to documenting the team's field work, Berg is also responsible for running Project Iceberg, a web program designed for middle school science students that features video clips, blogs, podcasts, field journals and photos. Clad in a puffy red coat, Berg narrates video clips of activities ranging from a Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot, ANDRILL style, to an explanation - simplified for her young viewers - of how the curatorial team handles core samples from the drill site.
Berg, a history major, returns to UNL for the spring semester. As for post-graduation plans, she's not sure - yet.
"I would love to go into education, maybe try something completely different like Teach for America or the Peace Corps," she said. "But who knows? In life you end up meeting people who lead you down an entirely different path, so I'm kind of expecting that to happen."
For more information on ANDRILL, visit http://www.andrill.org/iceberg.
The "Project Iceberg" Web site includes a number of special features, including 360 degree views of project locations, a history of Antarctica exploration, video blogs, photos, and simulations of ice formation/melting and the drilling process.
GO TO: ISSUE OF DECEMBER 7
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Junior guides 'Project Iceberg'
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