Undergraduate Finds Research Trip an Invaluable Experience

When it came to writing an honors thesis, senior geology major Lyanne Yurco already had a strong base from which to work. In 2005 she accompanied associate professor Dr. Joseph Ortiz and one other student on a trip to the Arctic to study climate change, and brought back with her several samples to scrutinize with further research.

“I got in contact with Dr. Ortiz and began working in his lab,” Yurco says. “The summer after that, he asked me if I wanted to go on a research cruise to the Arctic. So I got to go up there and help collect sediment from the ocean floor [and conduct measurements]. When I got back, I decided to start work on one of the sediment cores… and decided to make that into a project for my honors thesis.”

Since evidence of climate change can be seen more clearly in the Arctic than in other climates, her research has a crucial bearing amid the current global warming controversy. Analyzing sediment from the arctic allows inferences to be drawn about the warm and cool cycles that the earth has been through.

“Basically,” Yurco explains, “[my research] helps paint a picture of the earth’s cycles: when they changed, how they changed and what was going on when they did. It’s just a small part of the story of what was going on during a certain time, but it helps with the overall picture of how things have changed. And because the arctic is so sensitive to climate change, it’s an important area for us to find out about future changes.”

Yurco hopes that Arctic research will soon discover answers to big questions. “Is the melting sea ice now a big problem, or is it part of a normal cycle?” she wonders.

She attributes much of her success with her research and thesis to both the trip and to the excellent faculty in the geology department. The experience she has had in the field, she believes, will be instrumental to her success in graduate school and more intensive field work in the future.

“It’s unique, and a lot of people don’t get to do this sort of thing,” Yurco says of the trip. “It provides me with some type of experience. Also, it helps me in a scientific sense in that I’ve seen the methods and techniques that go on during trips like this. The project itself is really good preparation for what I’ll be doing in graduate school.”

Following graduation with honors in August 2007, Yurco is attending the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miamifor a graduate program in paleoclimate, the study of past climate change and how it may affect the future.

The geology program at Kent State is ideal for students interested in the climate and how it has changed, Yurco believes. Many remarkable questions about the earth still remain unanswered. With issues of global warming making their way into the headlines more and more often, a clear understanding of climate change is becoming an increasingly crucial scientific goal.

For more information on research in the Arctic, contact the Department of Geology at 330-672-2680 or via e-mail at geology@kent.edu.