GDC Project: ALISONAlaska Lake Ice and Snow Observatory Network

Over the course of the project, ALISON created a professional learning community that [1] increased knowledge and understanding of scientific inquiry and promoted polar science in the classroom, [2] contributed to scientific knowledge and understanding of lake ice and snow, [3] reduced teachers' physical and professional isolation, [4] improved ties and understanding between K-12 educators and university faculty, and [5] produced a unique data set that is archived at the Alaska Satellite Facility's Geodata Center, Geophysical Institute, UAF and is available from this web site (see Data Downloads). The ALISON project was made possible by Geophysical Institute researchers, Martin Jeffries and Kim Morris and educators, Delena Norris-Tull and Ron Reihl.

The educational rationale for ALISON was that teachers in Alaska experience significant physical and professional isolation; this causes high employment turnover rates and instability in schools, which affect student performance in science and mathematics.

The scientific rationale for ALISON identified lake ice thickness and duration as sensitive indicators of climate variability and change, and conductive heat flow through the ice and snow as a dominant component of the winter surface energy balance. However, few lake ice thickness, duration and conductive heat flow data were available in Alaska. This was a significant gap in knowledge at a time when many other aspects of the Arctic cryosphere were showing obvious signs of deterioration in response to climate change.

ALISON addressed both educational and scientific needs by [1] supporting teacher professional development and student learning in the local context through the study of snow and ice that [2] created scientifically valuable data that documented the lake ice and conductive heat flow variability in Alaska, which can be used for evaluating the performance of numerical models of past, contemporary and future lake ice and heat flow variability.