NOVA LABS

Mission 1, Ellesmere Island, Canada: Students land in the Arctic tundra and are guided through this mission by paleontologist Jim Basinger and paleontologist Jaelyn Eberle. The player encounters a 360° video petrified forest environment and, through videos and interactive mini-games, must piece together fossils from ancient trees and animals to determine what this environment looked like 50 million years ago.

Mission 2, Lab Exploration: Students go from the field to the lab in Mission 2. At the National Lacustrine Core Facility in Minnesota, geoscientist Julie Brigham-Grette helps student find clues to the past locked in lake cores. Then, at the NSF Ice Core Facility in Colorado, glaciologist Christo Buizert helps students analyze ancient ice cores to determine the role carbon dioxide at the poles has played in our planet’s temperature.

Mission 3, Greenland and Antarctica: Finally, students are flown to the Jacobshavn Glacier in Greenland with climate scientist David Holland and to Antarctica with ecologist Jay Rotella, where they will learn how warming waters are impacting ice at the poles, and what that means for the animals that call Antarctica home.Students will complete the Polar Lab with an understanding of how Earth’s natural climactic variations, from hot house to ice house conditions, and of how human activity is currently disrupting that pattern with potentially global consequences. The Polar Lab is an interdisciplinary resource, spanning Earth, life, and physical sciences.