Total Clips: 3 Headline Date Outlet    Bering Glacier Melting Faster Than Scientists Thought 08/16/2008 YubaNet    Wolf Bones Show Environment Change 08/16/2008 RedOrbit    Studying Volcanoes With Balloons 08/15/2008 RedOrbit Bering Glacier Melting Faster Than Scientists Thought 08/16/2008 YubaNet Return to Top The Bering Glacier across Vitus Lake. Image: Michigan Technological University Aug. 15, 2008 - A new system of measuring water melt shows that the Bering Glacier--the largest glacier in North America--is melting at double the rate that scientists thought. The glacier is releasing approximately 30 cubic kilometers of water a year, more than twice the amount of water in the entire Colorado River, said Robert Shuchman, co-director of the Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI). 'This could potentially change the circulation of coastal currents in the Gulf of Alaska,' Shuchman said. Those currents are key factors in tempering climate, redistributing nutrients in the water and providing adequate food for the salmon and marine animals, he explained. As glaciers melt, sea levels rise, and 'sea level rise affects everyone,' Shuchman added. 'If it continues to rise at this rate, parts of the state of Florida could be under water at the turn of the next century.' The MTRI team, working with U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) scientists, designed the sensor that enabled BLM to accurately measure and analyze the melting of this Alaskan glacier. Shuchman and his team, along with BLM and USGS, have been studying the glacier for the past decade with an interdisciplinary team of geologists, oceanographers, botanists, and marine mammal, bird and fish experts. 'Our glacier observations are 10 times better and 10 times less costly than data collected the old way,' Shuchman said. Before MTRI developed its autonomous sensor to collect data as it occurs, scientists had to make dangerous and difficult treks to remote regions to measure glacial melting. Wolf Bones Show Environment Change 08/16/2008 RedOrbit Return to Top U.S. researchers said the bones of wolves can provide scientists with a better picture of environmental change than tree rings can. 'Since the widespread combustion of fossil fuels, we have put a human fingerprint on atmospheric carbon dioxide,' Joseph Bump, a forest science researcher at Michigan Technological University, said in a release. 'That fingerprint shows up in trees, and it shows up in animals that eat trees, but it shows up with the least variation in the top predators.' Bump and his colleagues studied moose and wolf bone samples dating back to 1958 from Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. They also looked at 30,000-year-old bones from extinct dire wolves and prehistoric bison pulled from the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. They found the wolves provide a clearer record of environmental change than the plants, the moose or the bison. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Studying Volcanoes With Balloons 08/15/2008 RedOrbit Return to Top People do all kinds of crazy things in Hawaii, but flying balloons over a volcano usually isnt one of them. Unless youre Adam Durant, that is. Durant, an adjunct geological sciences faculty member at , and colleagues took meteorological balloons to the Kilauea volcano this summer to make the first on-location measurements of volcanic gases as they actually spew from the mouth of the volcano. The Kilauea volcano began erupting in March. Durant and Matt Watson, also an adjunct faculty member at Michigan Tech, are working with Paul Voss of Smith College to measure the temperature, composition and water content of the volcanic gases. Durant and Watson both are Michigan Tech alumni who are doing postdoctoral work at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. 'The first flight was a success and made the first in situ measurements of gases in a volcanic plume using meteorological balloons,' Durant reported in a talk at Michigan Tech. In addition to seeing volcanoes up close