Educator is off to Arctic Circle to study global warming

By NOAH HOFFENBERG Staff Writer

Published on February 16, 2007

Jacques Cousteau. Indiana Jones. Alan Fortescue.

Cousteau was a world-famous undersea naturalist. And Dr. Jones, of course, made his fictional living by saving the world's archaeological treasures from the Nazis. But what of Fortescue? Simply put, he's out to save the world's ecosystems from annihilation.

For some, the juxtaposition of these names might be a stretch, but not for Fortescue, who in junior high school sported an Indiana Jones-like fedora, then named his son Indiana and later studied reef biostructures off the coast of Central America.

"In the sense that Indiana Jones is a crusader, sort of the Don Quixote type, the knight with the really important mission, I see myself as a champion for the environment, but also a champion for things that make human life really meaningful," said Fortescue, of Amherst, in an interview.

Fortescue, 38, is the director of education for the Earthwatch Institute in Maynard, an environment-focused organization whose goals are to study climate change, assess the health of the oceans, support wise use of resources and foster sustainable communities.

Earthwatch, which also has offices in Tokyo, Oxford, England, and Melbourne, Australia, offers "working vacations" of sorts, said Fortescue. People who sign up to participate in Earthwatch programs pay a fee - ranging from about $1,000 to $4,000 - to volunteer on an ecological expedition. Volunteers work alongside scientists subcontracted with Earthwatch, performing duties that are instrumental in actual environmental studies.

"You're really contributing to something that's real," said Fortescue.

"The experience is transformative and powerful in itself. As we move toward the future, I want to capitalize on what people experience in the field and help them focus it when they get back home."

Checking the permafrost

From Tuesday through Feb. 23, Fortescue is visiting the sub-Arctic in northern Manitoba, Canada, where he will be taking part in climate change research. This comes on the heels of a climate-change conference that took place in Paris last week.

Global warming is being felt first and most dramatically at the edge of the Arctic, where the world's peatlands run in a broad strip around the globe, Fortescue said. These wetlands contain as much as 20 percent of the world's carbon, often locked in permafrost. If global warming thaws the permafrost, the decomposing peat could release carbon dioxide and methane, the most significant greenhouse gases.

What happens to the peat there will not only alter the local ecosystem, but could also have dramatic consequences for the ecology of the entire planet, he said.

"This project is going to continue on, and preliminary results show that this will impact global warming significantly," Fortescue said.

Earthwatch has made education a primary goal as it moves into its fourth decade. And as director of education, Fortescue has the mission of teaching participants about the environment - its past, present and potential future.

"When I go out into the field, I've gone out to evaluate a project for educational value," he said.

In fact, Fortescue most often finds himself teaching teachers from across the world, who take the knowledge from their Earthwatch expeditions back to the classroom. His group gives out up to 300 fellowships a year for educators teaching grades K-12.

"I really try to make it meaningful for teachers to bring it back to the kids, but also as individuals for them to understand the global and local impacts as well. The educational component is just as important as the scientific component."

This is an area that Fortescue would like to see expanded in classrooms in the Pioneer Valley, where he attended Amherst middle and high schools, as well as the University of Massachusetts.

Fortescue spent his formative years in Amherst, and studied English and linguistics at UMass. He continued his education at the University of Utah, where he graduated with a master's degree in literature. Fortescue's was an education steeped in letters and the humanities, but it wasn't until later that he became immersed in the environment.

"When my daughter was born, that's when I got serious about environmental issues," Fortescue said. "When you have a child, you start thinking about all the things you want to show her. The quality of the environment (at her birth) was not so good. That sort of catalyzed me. I was going to take a stand."

Forming a base

He enrolled at the University of Virginia, where he earned a doctorate in higher education, leadership, policy and foundations, working closely with the school's environmental and business departments, forming a base for his work with Earthwatch.

One of Fortescue's earliest memories is the view from the Continental Divide on a family hiking trip when he was 4. His fear is that with "human progress," pristine places won't be around forever.

"It's clear that there could be time in the future when these things go away. These things may not be here for my daughter like they were for me," he said.

In his year of working with Earthwatch, Fortescue has traveled to Brazil, a coral reef off the coast of Belize, and the United Nations, where he presented his thoughts on sustainable development.

While in Brazil, Fortescue found himself chest deep in fresh and saltwater marshes, surrounded by caimans - small crocodiles - and nibbled by unseen insects, which his guide said "were only trying to digest him." Luckily, the guide said, Fortescue was too big.

During his coming trip to Manitoba and in all his expeditions, Fortescue aims to involve people from all walks of life in programs designed to make environmental challenges, and the science behind them, very real, he said.

Joining Fortescue in the field in Canada will be teachers from the United States and the United Kingdom. These teachers will be participating in what Earthwatch calls "Live From The Field," a distance learning experience where teachers communicate via Web and via satellite phone to their classrooms back home. During this experience, classrooms in the U.K. and U.S. will be linked live in a transnational conference call from the frozen North.

Foremost expert in field

Peter Kershaw, of the University of Alberta, has been leading this study for Earthwatch and continues to monitor ecosystem responses to global warming at the Churchill Northern Studies Center, perched on the edge of the Arctic tundra in Manitoba and in the Mackenzie Mountains in Alaska, said Fortescue.

Founded in 1971, the nonproft, nongovernmental Earthwatch supports scientific field research by offering volunteers the opportunity to join research teams around the world.

In the past 35 years the organization, with its $16 million budget (50 percent comes from donations and gifts and the rest from fees), has placed 85,000 volunteers into the field for a total of 10 million hours of fieldwork essential to environmental sustainability. Volunteers participate in 130 research expeditions in more than 50 countries.

"Even the most hard-core city dweller, deep down, has some need to know that the natural world is still there," Fortescue said.

To follow Fortescue's experience in Manitoba, and to read about other Earthwatch adventures, log onto www.earthwatch.org.

Noah Hoffenberg can be reached at nhoffenberg@gazettenet.com.