2012-2013 Fellows

Alistair Hayden

Degree Sought : M.S. in Earth Science
Research Focus: Remote sensing of Antarctic glacial geomorphology: Quantifying alpine glacier dynamics and regional climate change

School Name : St. Columbkille Partnership School
Teaching Partner: Scott Hess
Alistair's Project GLACIER Site


Alistair Hayden is in his final year of a research Masters studying glacial geomorphology in Antarctica. His work seeks to answer questions of glacier dynamics and regional climate change using a combination of fieldwork in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica and remote sensing of Victoria Land (which host the Dry Valleys), Antarctica. He is developing new techniques to analyze the highest resolution imagery publicly available for this work, and using his field seasons to compare the results to ground-based measurements and to extend the amount of data he can use.


Through the GLACIER program, Alistair works with Scott Hess at the Saint Columbkille Partnership School, a Catholic school in Brighton. Mr. Hess teaches 5th-8th grade science, so Alistair gets to work with all these levels as well. Together, they are developing new lessons for an inquiry-based, sustainability-focused curriculum that incorporates examples of contemporary science to teach the dynamicism of science by example. Their main lesson creation objective is to develop a weather unit in which the students build their own weather instruments and then use them to collect their own weather data to compare to Antarctic weather data from Alistair`s field season.
Sponsored by the NSF GK-12 Program