The Best School Year Start Ever: the Glaciology Camp

What could be a better start for the school year than to participate in a Glaciology Camp?!

For 23 students and three teachers, this opportunity became a reality as they participated in the sixth edition of the Glaciology Camp held last September on the Ortles Mountain.

P1120222 — Students doing research in the field. Author: Valter Carbone

The idea to involve students in research activities started in 2011 when the Ortles Project was born. Starting from the first expedition in 2011, every year, the students of the schools of the Province of Bolzano (in both Italian and German languages) have the great opportunity to be selected and participate for a week in an immersive experience in the field, next to researchers such as Paolo Gabrielli, principal investigator of the Ortles Project.

P1110958 — Seminars at Franzenshöhe Hotel. Paolo Gabrielli , Principal Investigator of the Ortles Project explains features of the Ortles glacier. Author: Valter Carbone

Students took part in research activities in the Val di Mazia streams, sampling macroinvertebrates for monitoring the quality of the water.

P1120200 — Monitoring the quality of the water by sampling macroinvertebrates. Author: Valter Carbone

The apex of the campus has been the roped party excursion on the glacier of Cima Solda thanks to the alpine guides of Solda.

P1120041 — Excursion on the glacier. Author: Valter Carbone

Activities and experiences of their time during the camp were presented by the students during the Science Days in Bolzano in October. Stay tuned to know more…

GLACIOLOGY CAMP 2016 PHOTOGALLERY

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Ortles Day: Research meets School through the Atlantic Ocean

Just some decades ago it would have been incredible to still imagine it! Three research centers in different locations connected to speak about science in front of an audience of students, teachers and researchers from different countries. This is what happened during the first ” Ortles Day”.

The multi-broadcast event among the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University, the European Academy or Research of Bolzano (Italy) and the Botanical Institute of the University of Innsbruck (Austria) has been a success in science and outreach. Topics of the meeting: ice cores, pollens and their use in the paleoclimatology. But the undisputed protagonist of the day has been the Ortles Project, that in 2016 turns 8 years old.

The value of this kind of event is building bridges between research and school that in countries,such as Italy, are really disconnected from each other. Students, both Italians and Americans, present at the meeting gave a vital impulse to the organization. They represent the future of science and the whole planet.

Here the program of the event.

Summer school in Glaciology 2014

The 4th edition of the summer school in Glaciology, organized in the framework of the Ortles Project, involved 22 students from Italian and German high schools of the Province of Bolzano.

The summer school occurred between Sep. the 16thand 19th at the Hotel Refuge Franzenshöhe, located at 2200 m along the road to the Stelvio Pass in South Tyrol. The first day of the summer school the students learned the geological and petrographic properties of metamorphic rocks that are typical of the Stelvio area (paragneiss and orthogneiss). In addition permafrost and the role that it plays in shaping the landscape were studied.

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