Global Initiatives of the Institute for Quaternary and Climate Studies
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UMaine Quaternary and Climate Research Locations

The University of Maine Institute for Quaternary and Climate Studies has expanded the scope of its activities and put an increased emphasis on climate research.

"Climate has always been a key integrating feature of our work," says George Jacobson, director of the institute, which conducts interdisciplinary research on the natural world during the Quaternary, the geological period that spans approximately the last
2 million years. "Our research is very broad: paleoecology, archaeology, glaciology, oceanography and other topics. Climate links them all."

The institute now is the home of the Maine State Climate Office, led by climatologist and research associate professor Gregory Zielinski. Co-directing the institute is Paul Mayewski, one of the world leaders in the field of ice core research.

Established in 1972, the institute now includes 22 faculty members from six departments: anthropology, geological sciences, biological sciences, history, computer science and marine sciences. The first of the non-agricultural research units on campus, it integrates scientists across departmental lines, and enables faculty and students to share laboratory facilities. The stable isotope laboratory in the Sawyer Environmental Research Center and the ion chromatography lab in Bryand Global Sciences Center are managed directly by the institute.

A new ice core storage facility on campus provides access to "a type of historical library," says Mayewski, who has developed many of the techniques that are standard in ice core research today. Currently, stored cores come from Asia (including a 23,000-foot high glacier on Mt. Everest), the Arctic, the Antarctic, South America, the Yukon and Iceland. Some of the Antarctic cores contain ice layers that are as old as 500,000 years, while some of the Arctic cores go back 250,000 years.

Institute faculty and students have focused on Maine, but they also pursue answers to questions worldwide.

"The scientific questions that we deal with require us to go where the answers are. We can't understand how the global climate system functions without understanding the geographic patterns in atmospheric and ocean circulation. We have to know how the system functions, and with what timing, to know what's happening in Maine," says Jacobson.

Memoranda of understanding have been drawn up between UMaine and many research institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology of the Kingdom of Nepal, and the University of Newcastle in Australia. In addition, the University is associated with laboratories at the University of Stockholm and the Southampton School of Oceanography, among others.

Mayewski works with the Museum of Science at Boston (www.secretsoftheice.org), as well as with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where a permanent ice core display developed by Mayewski is in the Hall for Planet Earth.