WWU's Alia Khan takes her students to study snow and ice in Greenland - virtually

New curriculum developed via a grant from the National Science Foundation

WWU Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Alia Khan has been to some pretty remote places in her quest to sample snow and ice from across the globe: the tops of the Himalayas and the Andes, the remote arctic archipelago of Svalbard, and, this winter, return trips to Antarctica.

These are places she needs to visit to better understand how global climate change is impacting the Earth’s cryosphere - the snow and ice that plays such a crucial role in keeping the planet cool – and how quickly the cryosphere is receding.

WWU Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Alia Khan and Chilean colleague Edgardo Sepulveda collect data in front of Collins Glacier on King George Island in Antarctica.

But last spring for the first time, Khan was able to take her students along - through an immersive virtual curriculum experience developed by Khan and colleagues at the University of Colorado and Montana Western University - to another one of the hotspots for research on the changing nature of snow and ice: Greenland.

“The Arctic is warming at two to three times the global average. The large Greenland Ice Sheet plays a huge role in the Arctic’s regional energy balance, which is a large component of the global energy balance, and regulation of the global climate. Warming temperatures and increased surface melting of the Greenland ice sheet is causing Earth’s ‘cryospheric mirror’ to shrink and darken,” said Khan. “But what we also need to understand is that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t just stay there, it impacts the whole world, from sea level rise to the weakening of the polar vortex that causes more extreme winter weather farther south.”

After the Antarctic Ice Sheet, Greenland’s mantle of snow and ice is the largest in the world, and is melting faster than its South-Pole counterpart.

“When we proposed to develop this unique curriculum, we knew it would not only fill an area of critical need in polar and geospatial education, but could also give students an opportunity to increase their sense of place and connection to polar environments,” Khan said.

After the Antarctic Ice Sheet, Greenland’s mantle of snow and ice is the largest in the world, and is melting faster than its South-Pole counterpart.

The curriculum, called Polar PASS, was funded by a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, and was built over the course of two years by Khan and her colleagues, using 360 imagery taken by other scientists on-site in Greenland the first summer after the grant was received. Polar Pass utilizes “Flat VR” technology – no goggles are needed – to transport students and educators to the tiny Greenland village of Kangerlussuaq, where they begin their virtual journey to the ice sheet.

Over the course of the quarter, students make their way up from Kangerlussuaq, working up the Watson River valley through both glacierized and non-glacierized watersheds. Along the way, students conduct GIS exercises, track the seasonal evolution of snow albedo (reflectiveness) using actual data from Earth-observing satellites and explore 360-imagery of the watershed. The imagery, video, and GIS data all combine to give the students a better feel of what is happening in Greenland over the summer melt season, and how it is changing due to a warming environment.

Khan said the change is happening on the ground in Greenland so quickly that some of the imagery taken for when the curriculum debuted last spring already needs to be updated.

“Our hope is that with the next round of NSF funding, we will be able to turn this project from Flat VR to a full 3-D environment, which would obviously be even more immersive,” Khan said. “We are also going to make the curriculum free and open to all educators after this summer, so that more students can benefit from it.”

The new approach to teaching students about Arctic environments and research was, not surprisingly, quite popular.

Audrey Malloy, a student from Khan’s class last spring, said the unique and innovative approach to the class was refreshing and interesting.

Khan said she and her colleagues hope to make Polar PASS free to any and all educators, from K-12 through Higher Ed, later this summer.

“I thought Polar PASS was an excellent alternative to the traditional in-person learning style,” Malloy said. “The accessibility to explore and experience some of Greenland virtually allows any student or individual to learn and interact. I felt like I was taking a piece of Greenland with me after completing the curriculum."

Teaching the class opened up new avenues for inquiry in both students and teachers, as WWU Environmental Science grad student Sally Vaux, who was Khan’s teaching assistant last spring, said.

“Teaching online requires creativity and flexibility, and this course was no different. What makes the Polar PASS curriculum particularly interesting and worthwhile is that it was designed to be dynamic and collaborative by combining mapping, graphing, and group work to analyze real data from a rapidly changing place,” she said. “By engaging students and instructors with a variety of modalities, it allowed us to gain insight into, and make connections with, Greenland from a distance.”

Khan said another future project utilizing this technology is to do a similar virtual trip up the Nooksack River valley to the glaciers of Mount Baker, using GIS data and research collected by Khan and her students in the field each summer.

“We know climate change is also impacting the glaciers in the North Cascades. While students in my classes at WWU get to physically visit some of these places, students from Montana cannot visit them as easily. Thus, as part of a continuation of this work, my students and I are also collecting imagery from the Nooksack River basin so students from outside WWU can visit virtually visit our incredible local watershed and the glaciers and deep snowpacks that help to feed it,” she said.

For more information about the PolarPASS curriculum, go to its public-facing landing page at https://serc.carleton.edu/polarpass/index.html or contact WWU Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Alia Khan at alia.khan@wwu.edu.