One of the earth's most remote travel destinations, Svalbard is an archipelago slightly more than one-third the size of the state of Michigan. Largely unknown, it lies east of Greenland in the southern Arctic Ocean, within 400 miles of the North Pole.
John Corkery, a senior geology major at Lawrence, returned in August from three weeks of rigorous field research on Spitsbergen, the archipelagošs largest island. Sitting on the boundary of a major tectonic plate, Svalbard has experienced four major episodes of mountain formation over the past 1.5 billion years, making it a geologists' vision of nirvana.
Corkery went to Svalbard as research assistant to Marcia Bjornerud, associate professor of geology, and as a guest of the Norwegian Polar Institute. A grant from the Eloise Frick Cherven Memorial Fund, named for a 1976 Lawrence graduate in geology, also helped meet his expenses.
Just to reach the island meant a 14-hour flight to Tromso, Norway, followed by a four-day ocean crossing on an NPI vessel to a small research outpost. From there, Corkery and Bjornerud were shuttled by a small boat to their isolated campsite at eastern Krossfjorden, just north of the D'Arodesbreen glacier, 20 rugged miles away from the nearest something that might pass as civilization.
Devoid of vegetation save for scattered patches of mosses and lichens, Spitsbergen is a harsh, potentially dangerous place of broken rocks, powerful glaciers, steep mountains that rise swiftly from the ocean's edge, wandering polar bears, and a sun that never sets in summer.
Among the first researchers to step foot on this part of Spitsbergen, Bjornerud and Corkery spent their days hiking as much as 15 miles, conducting detailed mapping and structural studies in metasedimentary Proterozoic rocks that had previously only been studied at the reconnaissance level. Their scientific mission was to document major structural features--faults and folds--to better construct the tectonic history of the region. They also collected large rock specimens for isotopic and paleontological dating by the NPI.
"Svalbard is so messed up, geologically speaking," Corkery says. "It's one thing to look at rock samples in the laboratory, but on Spitsbergen you could see their relationship to all the other rocks and the landscape. It was just phenomenal. As stark as it is, it still is easy to experience sensory overload."
"This was a truly unusual research opportunity for an undergraduate student like John," says Professor Bjornerud, a veteran of five previous expeditions to Svalbard, who first met Corkery in a class she taught last spring. "He is to be commended for fully embracing the experience. Working conditions in the field were often difficult, if not dangerous-- crossing thigh-deep icy streams, climbing treacherous slopes covered with broken rock, carrying rock specimens as large as 15 pounds in a backpack all day--but we managed not only to complete our mapping but, in fact, gathered more data than we had thought possible."
Long a lover of the outdoors, Corkery took a circuitous route on his way to the study of things geological. After graduating from high school in 1985, he spent seven years working as a field electrician for a Detroit contractor. But, when a persistent yearning for other types of mental stimulation couldn't be silenced, he traded wires for guitar strings--which he first began plucking as a 10-year old--enrolling at Schoolcraft College with renewed dreams of becoming a music teacher.
Three years later he found himself playing his guitar at the Lawrence Conservatory of Music. When his musical ambitions faltered, he struck a positive chord with a latent love--geology. Corkery says his Svalbard research experience confirmed that he finally has made the right choice.
Poised to graduate in December with a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology, Corkery says that his new goals include graduate studies and an eventual return to his home state to work for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources or some other environmental entity.
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