Info for Students

Field Studies is a seven-week intensive field course for students interested in high-latitude landscapes. We study Earth system processes, ecology, glaciology, and climate change; and make connections with the arts, humanities, policy, and science communication. We are based in McCarthy, Alaska, a community within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve.

The curriculum is geared toward undergraduates, but graduate students and students unaffiliated with a university are also welcome.  We work with graduate students and researchers to accommodate their research goals in the program. WMFS generally meets departmental field research and/or capstone project requirements in addition to general credit requirements – we can provide information to students and/or their home institutions for any questions related to credit transfer.

In the frontcountry (3 weeks), students live by the Wrangell Mountains Center campus in McCarthy, Alaska, taking classes, studying, and participating in cooperative living as part of the Wrangell Mountains Center community, which includes researchers, artists, staff and faculty.

In the backcountry (4 weeks), students learn to travel through remote terrain conducting research and natural history observation, supported by interdisciplinary faculty.

LIFE IN TOWN

Daily life in town revolves around the Wrangell Mountains Center campus at the “Old Hardware Store” headquarters. Students and instructors work alongside local residents to experience off-grid life in a rural National Park gateway community. Classes take place at the Old Hardware Store and at nearby sites outside. In addition to coursework, students participate collaboratively in cooking meals, maintaining facilities, and tending a garden. Workshops, lectures, and artist residencies hosted by the Wrangell Mountains Center create diverse learning opportunities.

Sample Day in Town:

8:00 – Awake in “Tent City,” a group campsite surrounded by mountains. Gather with fellow students and walk the 10 minutes to the Old Hardware Store. Along the way, ravens fly overhead and you make note in your field journal.

8:30 – Breakfast (A couple students were up early with staff to light the wood stove, make coffee, bake muffins, and start packing lunch).

9:30 – Morning meeting: Introduction to the day’s activities; announcements.

9:15 – The group splits to spend the day with local experts. For example:

Half the group travels to the cabin of a local resident to learn about innovations in subsistence living, and recent wildlife observations.

The other half of the group attends a hydrology lecture with a visiting researcher. After lunch, walk to the nearby river bluff to practice geology research techniques that students may use in upcoming field research projects.

4:00 – Free time for work and rest. Bask in the sun by the creek and read a paper for tomorrow before doing a couple garden chores like watering and picking fresh greens or raspberries for dinner.

6:00 – Dinnertime.

7:00 – Attend an optional Wrangell Mountains Center Summer Arts and Sciences Lecture Series presentation by a visiting artist or scientist.

8:30 – Sun will be out for several more hours - find a wildflower you're studying and do a detailed sketch for a portfolio assignment.

9:30 – Back in Tent City you wind down for the day, organize your notes, talk with your friends, and prepare for sleep. 

From McCarthy, we trek up the glaciers and into surrounding mountain terrain. The location is ideal for studying biophysical change on and along glaciers during climatic shifts past and present.  We focus on the flow of material and energy through a landscape always in disequilibrium; landscape structures of focus include sediment-covered and bare ice glaciers, rock glaciers, hydrological systems, permafrost, alpine tundra, boreal forest, and sites of human habitation. The Kennicott Valley reveals 230 million years of evolution and transformation at multiple spatial and temporal scales.

Along the glacier margins we learn to observe deglaciation and ecological succession, signs of which are most evident on the landscape following the 1860 Little Ice Age maximum. We see how older moraines indicate the extent of previous glacial highstands. Landslides, cliff faces and visibly massive sediment transport by rivers and ice demonstrate tectonic uplift, denudation, and ecological adjustment to unstable conditions. Exposed metamorphosed basalt, limestone, and shale sequences reveal processes occurring with the geological formation of western North America, including island arc and oceanic plateau formation and migration. Effects of the ongoing Yakutat microplate collision with North America show in the volcanic high peaks at the head of the valley and in igneous facies, dikes, and sills; and in the ~2000 meter uplift of the terrain around McCarthy, which was exhumed largely by Pleistocene glaciations to form the present pattern of peaks, plateaus, and U-shaped valleys. Ecosystems show adaptation to this instability and to seasonal extremes, dependent on factors like summer productivity and on energy imported from elsewhere by terrestrial and aquatic migrations. The land use patterns and relationships of human beings are a part of landscape processes, and like our other systems of focus, they reverberate across space and time. Articulating the links between these systems across temporal/spatial scales can be considered the “meta-narrative” of the program, our constant guiding framework.

LIFE IN THE BACKCOUNTRY

On week-long and three-week backpacking trips, glaciers, rock glaciers, and alpine ecosystems are primary learning environments. Glaciers melt while walking on them, rivers cut new channels, plants sprout and go to seed in a few weeks. Complementing field observations, students read and discuss literature on landscape features and processes encountered.

Sample Day in the Backcountry:

7:30 – Awake in your tent on a river bar near an alpine meadow. Pack your bag and join your cook group for a camp stove breakfast.

9:00 – Packs on and ready to go. After reviewing the route for the day, backpack down a valley, keeping water, snacks, and field notebook handy to record observations of marmots and ptarmigan, and shifts in rock types with descent. 

10:00 – Hike over moraine to Kennicott Glacier ice.

12:00 – During lunch, a faculty talk on post-glacial plant communities.

3:00 –  Students split into teams to investigate ice topography and diagram hypotheses for its formation.

5:00 – Make camp. Set up your tent and organize field notes from the day; join your cook group to make a hearty dinner. 

7:00 – Conversational seminar on article about land use history in the Copper River Valley and Wrangell-St. Elias region.

Inquiries

Question you’d like to ask us about the program? We’d love to talk. Please get in touch using the form below and we will follow up with you shortly. Or email program coordinator Joseph Boots-Ebenfield: fieldstudies@wrangells.org.