By Tony Fitzpatrick
November 2, 2001
With autumn leaves falling fast, junior Laurel Griggs is thinking of Hawaii as she works on a computer model on the fourth floor of McDonnell Hall.
Working under the supervision of Raymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the earth and planetary sciences department in Arts & Sciences, Griggs, nine other Pathfinder students, a graduate student and a staff member of Arvidson's lab recently explored the Mauna Kea Ice Age Natural Area Reserve on Hawaii's Big Island.
 Pathfinder program environmental researchers --(from left) Bryan Brody, Meg McCarthy, Brian Yanites, Frank Seelos (crouching) and Megan Murphy --do remote mineral mapping using a digital camera with a reflectance spectrometer this summer at Hawaii's Mauna Kea Ice Age Natural Area Reserve. |
Pathfinder is a program in the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Arts & Sciences --also available to engineering students --designed to help shape the academic careers of approximately 15 of the University's incoming freshmen with a deep interest in the environment. These students choose majors in the division or in the School of Engineering and Applied Science; they also work in the Pathfinder program, conducting rigorous environmental fieldwork and examining research topics from environmental sustainability perspectives.
Griggs, from Titusville, Fla., is a double major in systems science and mathematics in engineering and environmental studies in Arts & Sciences, as well as a master's degree candidate in earth and planetary sciences. She hiked the slippery glacial till slopes of Mauna Kea searching for seeps, spots in the Waikahalulu Gulch where water percolates through the interface between the glacial till and rugged rocks.
Mauna Kea is a 13,000-foot mountain with a Mars-like topography at its peaks. Arvidson, who is deputy principal investigator for the Athena Science Payload on the Mars Rover Exploration Mission in 2003, has used this site as a test base for Mars mission rover and sampling experiments.
Griggs took a thermistor, a sort of thermometer with different probes, to gather temperature information at surface and subsurface areas near the seeps. With the information she gathered over six days, she then returned to the University at the beginning of the fall semester and began developing a thermal model to determine how much solar radiation the surface of an approximately 6,500 square-foot area would receive.
To get this model, Griggs needs to know how different areas of the surface are shadowed. She uses a separate model to help her determine this; it can calculate the amount of each area shadowed at any given time of the day. By finding out the position of the Earth's surface and the percentage of each pixel that's shadowed, she then determines the solar radiation the surface is receiving.
"When we run this model over the course of several days, we can generate a map of surface temperatures," Griggs said. "To check for accuracy, I compare those surface temperatures to temperatures remotely sensed from ASTER, a multisensor on the satellite Terra."
Griggs said her model should be completely operative by next summer, when she goes again to Mauna Kea with a group of new Pathfinder students to do environmental research. She will be able to field-check the data her model generates to see if her calculations are a match for the field conditions.
She also will have a different focus, when she goes up even higher to do fieldwork near Lake Waiau.
Ordinarily, Griggs' work would be the focal point of the Pathfinder program capstone experience, a thorough analysis of research results that constitutes an honors thesis. But her work both this summer and next will go toward her master's thesis.
Griggs and her nine counterparts --Sean Rovito, Erin Donovan, Rachel Novick, Deia Schlossberg, David Ullman, Megan Murphy, Meg McCarthy, Bryan Brody and Brian Yanites --who went to Mauna Kea are partaking in one of the nation's rarest academic programs. A descendant of two other programs Arvidson fostered during the '90s (the Focus and Hewlett programs), Pathfinder brings together a group of students for four years with one adviser. The emphasis is on addressing problems from multiple perspectives.
Griggs' fellow Pathfinder students used sophisticated stereo-imaging technology for topographical mapping and thermal imaging to sense heat, ground-penetrating radar, and digital elevation maps to learn a wide variety of things about Mauna Kea's ecosystems. They work in conjunction with scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's Johnson Space Center and NASA's Ames Research Center, whose equipment they use and whose expertise they share.
All of the Pathfinder students will address some aspect of environmental sustainability for the Mauna Kea Ice Age Natural Area Reserve in their honors theses and independent studies. They also will have input into a final paper that will be presented to the reserve's caretakers.
"The work the students do is very challenging and very important for increasing our understanding of the hydrology and ecology of Mauna Kea, and in addressing key issues associated with sustainability of the reserve," Arvidson said. "The area is also a Mars analog. For the past three years, we have written proposals to work within the reserve during the students' junior year, worked on the mountain during the summer, did analyses during the senior year, and submitted reports to the reserve managers. We have developed a very good relationship with the managers.
"The bonus is that we also collect data for an area that looks like Mars and has surface processes that may be similar to those that are or have been active on the red planet."
During the fall semester of their freshman year, the students get their first field experience at Missouri's Big Muddy Wildlife Refuge. The second semester they go to California's Mojave Desert, which also is a Mars analog.
The first semester of the sophomore year finds them on Hawaii's Big Island, and they travel there again for the Mauna Kea experience between their junior and senior years.
Each day this summer, the Pathfinder troupe began at sea level in subtropical conditions and, driving up the steep trails, reached the summit at 13,000 feet, where the landscape is a cold, dry tundra.
"That was quite a transition," said Griggs, referring to the daily change in elevation. "The first day we did a ton of hiking, and we exhausted ourselves hopping from one place to another to find research sites.
"It was just a great experience to be in a group of people doing serious research.
You get to help others out in what they're doing, and this exposes you to situations
you don't necessarily find in the classroom."
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