U.S. National Ice Core Laboratory Featured in New York Times Magazine Piece on Global Repositories

National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230

Posted July 17, 2017

Image: Geoffrey Hargreaves, NSF. In this 2011 photo, Brian Bencivengo, a former assistant curator at the U.S. National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL), holds a one-meter-long section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice core.

The NSF funded laboratory, in Lakewood, Colo., which stores, curates, and studies ice cores recovered from around the world--including the Arctic and Antarctic--is among the facilities worldwide featured in a July 13 New York Times Magazine story headlined “Arks of the Apocalypse.”

OPP, through an Interagency Agreement (PLR-1306660) with the U.S. Geological Survey, operates and maintains NICL.

The story features collections of rare, and in some cases vanishing, pieces of the natural world: “All around the world, scientists are building repositories of everything from seeds to ice to mammal milk — racing to preserve a natural order that is fast disappearing,” the story states.

The pieces adds that “[t]he study of air bubbles, dust and ash particles, isotopes, gases and organic materials frozen in the ice helps scientists understand past climates and predict future ones.”

Read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/magazine/seed-vault-extinction-banks-arks-of-the-apocalypse.html