Andrew Klein

Your research focuses on physical geography and geographic information science. How did you become interested in this field? In particular, how did you get involved in Antarctic research?

Okay, this is going to be a long, winding answer. I grew up in Iowa and became interested in geology and geography, specifically glacial landforms. Then as an undergraduate at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, I majored in both geology and environmental studies with a core in geography. One of the faculty members in the geology department, Gerry Webers, did field work in Antarctica, in the Ellsworth Mountains, way back in the 1960s and ‘70s. So, as an undergraduate, I used Landsat satellite imagery – way back in the early Landsat 4 and 5 days – to try to map the lithology of the Ellsworth Mountains. Certain features you could find, others you certainly couldn't.

A little aside: At the time when I was an undergraduate in 1989-90, Will Steger, of Minnesota fame, was doing a dog sledding expedition across Antarctica. So, the Antarctic was very popular in Minnesota. Also, in the 1960s, two Minnesotans decided that they were going to snowmobile to the North Pole. A geographer at Macalester, Jerry Pitzel, proved that they got to the North Pole, since there's always been some questions about whether or not Robert Peary actually hit the actual geographic North Pole. So, all this is to say that I had an interest in polar regions.

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After doing remote sensing and GIS as an undergraduate, I did a PhD at Cornell University, focusing on geomorphology and modern glaciers in the Andes. Then I went to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, working with Dorothy Hall on MODIS satellite imagery and snow remote sensing. That’s my background as a cryospheric remote sensor.

I got to Texas A&M as an assistant professor in 1998. Chuck Kennicutt, in the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group and the Oceanography Department, was planning an environmental monitoring program at McMurdo Station and hired one of our graduate students to do GIS work. Given my background as an undergraduate Antarctican, I got very interested. I said, “Well, there's this new professor here who knows exactly how to do this GIS stuff, and I've done a lot of field work in cold regions.” So, I got onto the project at the time, and it was a nice fit.

How did your work with Chuck and others on oil spills and human impacts at McMurdo help the US Antarctic Program meet its obligations to the Antarctic Treaty?

I think we really helped the US be a leader in this space, and we were commended for doing this work over the number of years.

So, the motivation for this work goes back to the Madrid Protocol, which was signed in 1991 and went into force in ‘98. A requirement within the Antarctic Treaty System is that national programs and operators monitor their operations to try to minimize their environmental impact. And so that is why we did this research, to help the US meet its Treaty obligations in saying that we were actually monitoring McMurdo Station, which had probably the largest impact in Antarctica at the time. That program lasted from 1999-2015, so we’re no longer doing that monitoring. But I think we really helped the US be a leader in this space, and we were commended for doing this work over the number of years. I hope it helped inform making some management decisions, too.

How many Antarctic field seasons have you completed since the first one in 1999?

I’ve deployed 18 times. I went to McMurdo 15 times, and we did two seasons at Palmer Station under this environmental monitoring program. I also sailed on the Gould on another more recent ‘Gradients’ project led by Chuck Amsler, so that was my 18th.

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Wow! What was your initial impression during your first field season?

...as a geographer I’ve worked many other places worldwide. There are only two places where I've walked off an airplane and just been totally blown away.

You know, as a geographer I’ve worked many other places worldwide. There are only two places where I've walked off an airplane and just been totally blown away. One was La Paz, Bolivia, where I got off at like 4,000 meters altitude and the Andes were in the background. The other was when I got off on the sea ice at Ross Island. It's just this impressive, pristine environment. It's like nowhere you've been before. I went down every season for 15 years, and every time there’s a couple of moments in a field season when you sit and go “Wow!”. The beauty of the place just overwhelms you.

And has your impression of Antarctica changed over the years?

After a few years, why you really wanted to come back wasn't necessarily the physical landscape, but the people you've worked with forever and ever and ever.

The Antarctic is always impressive, but doing the kind of work we did – the impact of science and operations – we spent all of our time at the science station. I wasn’t one of those scientists who gets to come into McMurdo, be around for not too long, and then fly out to some really cool, remote place to do the research. We did everything around McMurdo and sites within helicopter distance on Ross Island and the McMurdo Dry Valleys. After a few years, why you really wanted to come back wasn't necessarily the physical landscape, but the people you've worked with forever and ever and ever. For example, I feel very fortunate that I have gotten to spend I don't know how many years working with the scientific divers. I'm not a diver myself, but I've done dive support for many seasons, and it's pretty cool to get to work with that type of scientific support staff. It's working with the people over time that is just as important as working in the environment.

You also get a better understanding of the scale and scope of the size of the operations, so you really start to appreciate the support staff that go into making science possible.

Also, when you're down for your first field season as a new person in this really interesting social network, you're just getting adapted and it's all new and fun. But once you're there for a while you start to view it differently. You take a little bit more ownership of the environmental impact that you're having. You see it through those environmental monitoring lenses. You also get a better understanding of the scale and scope of the size of the operations, so you really start to appreciate the support staff that go into making science possible.

Has the way you or your colleagues conduct field work changed in light of your work with environmental monitoring and the establishment of SCAR's environmental codes of conduct?

Well, I hope we try to take better care of the environment than we used to! But in seriousness, you realize how slowly environments change in Antarctica. When you dump fuel in the Antarctic soil, it doesn't go away very fast. When you disturb a lichen or something, that disturbance is going to have a lot longer duration than in warmer climates where the physical and biological processes operate faster. So, you feel like you have to take care of this place you care a lot about. You’re studying the impact, so you want to minimize it.

One interesting thing is historical context. We did a lot of work on Ross Island, where there’s a lot of history. There are multiple historic huts from Shackleton and Scott. A lot of environmental problems are also historic. Big impacts happened when the Navy was running McMurdo in the 1960s through the ‘80s. Then the United States Antarctic Program cleaned up its act, so to speak, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. But even now, we're using fuel and other potentially hazardous materials in really harsh environments. So, you have to understand what you're doing in the context of not only the program since the 1950s and how it's changed, but also in the larger legacy of science.

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Very interesting and important work! You have also conducted research on tropical glaciers. Are there any findings from that work that is relevant to the Antarctic?

I haven't worked on tropical glaciers for years and years, but in the tropics, we've certainly seen the decline of glaciers. Maybe they'll reach some quasi-steady state at some point, but they’ve always been in a state of retreat since the Little Ice Age. And there are glaciers I’ve studied in the past that are gone. Retreating glaciers are concerns in Antarctica too.

Extending the question a little bit, I'll tell you about one connection from my previous work in the Andes, which involved mapping from satellites. At McMurdo, one of the major human disturbances was the destruction of this beautiful polygonal pattern ground, which is a permafrost feature. Turns out, this nice permafrost layer was a beautiful source of building fill – the Navy scraped it to form building material. The destruction of these periglacial pattern ground features is one of the things you can actually map as a way to look at the spatial disturbance around the station over time. So that was an interesting little tie-in which I wouldn't have expected as some of our indications of how we have impacted the local environment.

For another one of the projects I've been involved in, I've done some sea ice remote sensing in support of looking at macroalgae and the connection between its percent cover and percent sea ice extent on the Antarctic Peninsula. We also published a paper looking at Palmer Station relative to localized sources of black carbon in snow. A lot of people are interested in long scale transport of black carbon, but especially around science bases because we don’t want to contaminate the local penguin colonies. Activities like using a diesel generator have a localized impact you can actually see in the snow.

It seems like there are lots of useful applications of remote sensing. Now we're at the last question, which is: what advice would you give to early career scientists who want to get involved in Antarctic research?

Well, one is, I would say, do not do as I did and go somewhere else in the world to do your graduate research. I think I would have benefited from having pursued Antarctic research sooner, and maybe made those connections as a graduate student rather than as an assistant professor. Try to do a master’s or PhD with a scientist who has a lot of experience working in Antarctica. Also look at what their students have done. Ideally you want to work with somebody who has experience not only producing people who have worked in Antarctica, but people whose students then continue to work in Antarctica. Of course, you might go work elsewhere too, but if you want to work in Antarctica, find a supervisor who can give you a continued path to work there.

Also, you can begin to get interested in Antarctica as an undergraduate student as I did. I am happy to say that I got to work with an undergraduate student, Amanda Frazier, as part of an NSF-Funded ‘Observing the Ocean’ REU at Texas A&M on some of our environmental data. She is now working with Anne Todgham at UC-Davis and has gone on to do scientific diving at McMurdo as part of her research.

...latch onto a good mentor. And good mentors don’t have to be in your discipline.

The other thing I would say is hook up with a good mentor. I started working with Chuck in ’98 as a brand-new assistant professor while he was an established research scientist. He was a good mentor to me for all sorts of reasons. That collaboration was really important for other parts of my career, and Chuck worked really well at this intersection of science and policy in ways that some other people don't. So, I would say latch onto a good mentor. And good mentors don’t have to be in your discipline. I'm a geographer, and I have now done Antarctic research with Chuck Kennicutt and I've also written a proposal with Chuck Amsler at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Two different Chucks, two different disciplines. Also, the mentorship thing goes beyond just doing the scientific research or working in a lab together. A lot of the mentoring I got from Chuck Kennicutt happened while sitting at a bar – Duddley’s Draw – with him and our other friends. So that's important, too. It's hooking onto a mentor, who doesn't have to be in your discipline, but someone you like hanging out with.

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It's also important to being willing to reach out to people. We now have a lot better structure for early career scientists than we had when I was coming up, but I think sometimes they should take initiative too, and not always expect the institutional structures to be the ones driving how you make the connections. Finally, don't be afraid to go out of your research area. You know, you have a long career. I've worked with a lot of organic chemists, I work with biologists, I work with oceanographers, but I'm still doing Antarctic stuff. See how you fit in terms of a larger team that goes outside of your research area.

Thank you for the advice, and for speaking with me today!