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WRVO’s The Campbell Conversations – Conversations in the Public Interest will feature an interview with Eugene Domack, the J.W. Johnson Family Professor of Environmental Studies, at noon on Friday, June 4. Domack will speak about Antarctica and climate change, the recent earthquake in Chile, the Deep Water oil well blow out and the local natural gas exploration effort in the Marcellus shale via hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking.

On January 4, more than 30 scientists from 11 states and four countries, led by  Hamilton's Eugene Domack, the J.W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences, embarked upon one of the most complex interdisciplinary Antarctic expeditions ever funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). During the two-month trip the scientists will be addressing a significant regional problem with global change implications, the abrupt environmental change in Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf System. The expedition is part of the NSF's International Polar Year (IPY) program.

More than 30 scientists from 11 states and four countries, led by Hamilton College Geosciences Professor Eugene Domack, will embark in January 2010 upon one of the most complex interdisciplinary Antarctic expeditions ever funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). During the two-month trip the scientists will be addressing a significant regional problem with global change implications, the abrupt environmental change in Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf System. The expedition is part of the NSF’s International Polar Year (IPY) program.

The National Science Foundation-funded LARISSA project, for which Eugene Domack is principal investigator, was the focus of an article, titled “New scientific mode - LARISSA represents one of the biggest IPY projects,” posted on Sept. 18 in The Antarctic Sun. The article detailed the project’s next expedition, beginning January 2010, which will bring together more than 30 scientists.

Eugene Domack, the J. W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences, attended the 16th International Symposium on Polar Sciences in June in Incheon, Korea, where he presented an invited talk titled “Larsen Ice Shelf System (LARISSA): A Multi-disciplinary Earth Systems Approach to Antarctic Environmental Change.”

The LARISSA team met at National Science Foundation for a Principal Investigators meeting on May 5 and 6 in Washington, D.C. LARISSA is a National Science Foundation-funded initiative that joins an international, interdisciplinary team together to address a significant regional problem with global change implications, the abrupt environmental change in Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf System. Lead Principal Investigator (PI) and Project Director Eugene Domack, the J. W. Johnson Family Professor of Environmental Studies, and Principal Investigator and Associate Professor of Biology Michael McCormick attended along with several representatives from National Geographic Magazine.

Eugene Domack, J. W. Johnson Family Professor of Environmental Studies, and Mason Fried '10 left on Friday, March 20, on a National Science Foundation-funded expedition to Antarctica on the U.S. Antarctic Program's research and supply vessel LM Gould. The three-week expedition will include visits to several locations along the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula including Palmer Station.

The Antarctic Peninsula is undergoing greater warming than almost anywhere on Earth, a condition perhaps associated with human-induced greenhouse effects. According to the cover article published in the August 4 issue of the journal Nature, the spectacular collapse of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, is unprecedented during the past 10,000 years. Eugene Domack, professor of geosciences at Hamilton College and the author of the paper, has been the lead scientist of a multi-institutional, international effort that combines a variety of disciplines in examining the response of the Antarctic Peninsula to modern warming. Domack says, "Our work contributes to the understanding of these changes -- where they are occurring first and with greatest magnitude and impact upon the environment."

The chance discovery of a vast ecosystem beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf will allow scientists to explore the uncharted life below Antarctica's floating ice shelves and further probe the origins of life in extreme environments. Researchers discovered the sunless habitat after reviewing an underwater video study examining a deep glacial trough in the northwestern Weddell Sea following the sudden Larsen B shelf collapse in 2002.