2010-2011

News Release

REF NO.: 104

SUBJECT: PSA: Johnson GEO CENTRE public lecture series

DATE: January 13, 2011

             As part of the festivities celebrating the 50th anniversary of Memorial University’s Department of Geography, the Johnson GEO CENTRE continues to sponsor a series of public lectures on the role of geography in all of our lives.
            Dr. John England of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta will speak on “Exploring Northern Canada: Geographical Perspective on Arctic Environmental Change” on Tues. Jan. 18, 2011.
            The public lecture will focus on the scientific, historic, and personal experiences of Dr. England’s four decades of research across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago concerning the nature of high latitude environmental change. He will focus on the mountainous, northernmost coast of Ellesmere Island and the story of its spectacular “Ellesmere Ice Shelf” – the oldest sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere.
            This ice shelf forms an enormous floating apron of sea ice attached to the Ellesmere Island coast across more than 250 kilometers. It was used by those that led late 19th century sledging expeditions as “a rolling prairie landscape.” 
It is now in rapid demise and despite its exceptional age, few in Canada know about this unique and disappearing landscape. In the course of Dr. England’s research across northern Ellesmere Island, he found historic notes from Sir George Nares (1875/76), and Adolphus Greely (1881/84), of the First Polar Year.
            The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Johnson GEO CENTRE.

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