Children’s Museum Hosts Earth Day Program April 22

1-4 p.m. Sunday, April 22, 2007

The Children's Museum of Oak Ridge will host a special program with music in recognition of Earth Day from 1-4 p.m. Sunday, April 22.
 
The program will feature a discussion on Arctic warming, "Arctic Climate Change: At a Crossroads for Environmental Action." Research scientists Lee Cooper and Jackie Grebmeier, who have spent more than two decades studying biological changes in the Bering Sea, will lead the discussion.
 
Music at the Earth Day program will be presented by R.B. Morris with Hector Qirko and special guest, the band Ga-Na-Si-Ta, which performs with the didgeridoo, a musical instrument of Australian Aborigines made from a long wooden tube, and djembe, a hand drum originating in Africa.
 
Seating is limited for this special program, so please call the Children's Museum, 865-482-1074, for reservations. Cost of the program is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, and $4 for children 3-18.
 
Grebmeier and Cooper, with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, are research professors whose research focuses on the Arctic area and the Bering Sea. They are taking part in the Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interaction project, one of the largest U.S. global climate change research efforts currently underway in the Arctic, a project of the National Science Foundation.
 
They are among co-authors of a paper published a year ago in the journal Science concluding that previously documented physical changes in the Arctic in recent years, including rising air and sea water temperatures and decreasing seasonal ice cover, are having a profound effect on Arctic life.
 
Cooper received his Ph.D. degree in oceanography from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, his master's degree in botany from the University of Washington, and his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
 
Grebmeier received her Ph.D. degree in biological oceanography from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, two master's degrees, one in biology from Stanford University and one in marine affairs from the University of Washington, and her bachelor's degree in zoology at the University of California, Davis.
 
The Earth Day program will feature music by Morris, a Knoxville singer, songwriter and poet whose styles include pop, country, and blues, and Qirko, a Knoxville singer, guitarist and band leader whose blues music is influenced by Latin themes and rockabilly. The duo has performed together on occasion for many years, and this will be their first performance together at the Children's Museum. The Hector Qirko Band recently appeared at the Children's Museum International Festival.  
 
The Children's Museum, 461 West Outer Dr., Oak Ridge, is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 1:30-4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
 
General admission to the Children's Museum is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors ages 62 and older, and $4 for children ages 3-18. Admission is free for children under 3 and museum members.

News from Children's Museum of Oak Ridge

For Immediate Release
Contact: Kay Brookshire, Media Consultant, 865.483.4644 kbrookshire@bellsouth.net
Mary Ann Damos, Children's Museum, 865.482.1074 chmor@bellsouth.net

UT Scientists to Describe Arctic Climate Change Research at Children's Museum

Last week, two University of Tennessee scientists sent the contents of a laboratory to Seattle to be installed on a Coast Guard research ship that will take them in May to the northern Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia.

There, Lee Cooper and Jackie Grebmeier will serve as chief scientists as they continue nearly 25 years of research on the impact of climate-driven changes on the ecosystems in the northern Bering Sea, near the Arctic Ocean. As they work on the National Science Foundation-supported project, the samples they collect and experiments they perform will keep them wet, cold and muddy during shifts that will last 12 hours and longer.

Before they leave, the scientists, a husband-and-wife team, will participate in an Earth Day Celebration featuring music and discussion from 1-4 p.m. Sunday, April 22, at the Children's Museum of Oak Ridge. They will lead a discussion on Arctic environmental change, "Arctic Climate Change: At a Crossroads for Environmental Action," using photos, video clips and other information about the research they and other scientists have conducted to relate the challenges that climate change brings.

As government-funded researchers, they have a responsibility for public outreach and explaining their scientific results, and the Children's Museum program gives them an opportunity to do that. Because of limited seating, reservations are required. Call the Children's Museum at 482-1074 to make reservations.

With so many years of scientific sampling in the region, the scientists have built a series of measurements over time that allow them to analyze trends in the biological changes among animals near the bottom of the sea and the impact on their predators, including sea birds, whales, walrus, and others.

Their research shows that ecosystems are changing, with declining biological productivity among benthic or bottom-dwelling populations, at the same time that sea and air temperatures are rising and seasonal sea ice retreats.

In an article in the journal Science last March, Grebmeier, Cooper and eight other scientists said changes they have observed in the northern Bering Sea support a continued trend toward more subarctic ecosystem conditions there, which could profoundly impact Arctic marine mammal and diving seabird populations, along with commercial and subsistence fisheries.

"A key goal is to understand changes in biological communities that appear to be occurring as sea ice continues to retreat in this system," Grebmeier and Cooper write on a web site about their Arctic research. They note that a collaborator is studying the declining population of a threatened sea duck, relating it to biological changes and the warming of sea water.

"We started out doing work in biology and biological oceanography," Cooper explained. "Given the change in the ecosystems and the warming climate, which is much more obvious there (Bering Sea) than in Tennessee, we turned it into the study of the impact of climate change on the biological community."

Last year, they conducted a month of shipboard work for the NSF project aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy in collaboration with Jim Lovvorn from the University of Wyoming and a research team of nearly 30 scientists from several universities, two oceanography institutions, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

They will spend May continuing that research project, and in June and July, they will board a Canadian icebreaker to track environmental changes from the southern Aleutian Islands to the northernmost tip of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, in a collaborative project with Canadian scientists from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and several universities.

Cooper and Grebmeier, with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, have also taken part in the Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interaction Project, one of the largest U.S. global climate change research efforts in the Arctic, that is also funded through the National Science Foundation.

Grebmeier received her Ph.D. degree in biological oceanography from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; two master's degrees, one in biology from Stanford University and one in marine affairs from the University of Washington; and her bachelor's degree in zoology at the University of California, Davis.

Cooper received his Ph.D. degree in oceanography from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, his master's degree in botany from the University of Washington, and his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Also on the program will be Randy Hudson with The Climate Project, bringing the message of Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." Music at the Earth Day program will be presented by Knoxville singer, songwriter and poet R.B. Morris with blues musician Hector Qirko and special guest, the band Ga-Na-Si-Ta.

Seating is limited for this special program that is geared to all ages and educational backgrounds, so please call the Children's Museum, 482-1074, for reservations. The regular cost of the admission to the museum is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, and $4 for children 3-18. Admission is free for museum members.