Getting girls on ice
Lauren Vargo is a researcher behind one of New Zealand’s major climate projects, tracking the decline of the South Island’s glaciers. Vargo recently got a grant through the Marsden fund to investigate how much of the annual glacier melting is due to clima
As a teenager in high school, I was never really into science. I guess I never felt like there was anyone saying ‘‘Oh, you’re really great at this, this is something you can do and be good at’’. But I did love hanging out outside and exploring in the wilderness.
At university, I took an environmental geology class, and realised you can do something in your job that means being outside or studying the outdoors.
In my last year, I got to work as a research assistant – we went to Alaska and studied how the glaciers there have been changing. I got to see this really cool connection between studying climate change and getting to study the natural world and exploring these wild places.
My PhD project [in New Zealand] was using snowline photos [to do] two things. One half was using the old photos to quantitatively measure how the glaciers have changed in the past, and the other half was using photos that we’re currently taking – taking hundreds of photos every year from a plane – and building 3D models of the glaciers so that we can see the volume changing from year to year.
Brewster Glacier is pretty easy to hike up. Well, I shouldn’t say it’s easy. Usually by the time you get there you’re exhausted and very sweaty, and then you can’t walk for days afterwards. But you can walk up there in about five hours with giant packs full of gear.
When you’re standing on [the glacier], when we go and do field work, you can’t really tell how it’s looking different. But when you see those [photos] from year to year, it is really surprising. I was first there in 2016 and then by 2022, it just looks so much more . . . skeletal almost.
The Girls On Ice programme has been running for over 20 years in the United States. My colleague had the idea first, to start it here in New Zealand with the goal of getting more teens into science and particularly teen girls or gender-nonconforming or trans students who maybe aren’t always targeted as much as boys, to show them science is something you can do and be good at, and have a job doing.
I just went and did an expedition with Girls On Ice in Alaska. They look for people who have interests in either science or art or the outdoors, but then also people who haven’t had the opportunities to pursue those interests, whether it’s financial, or maybe their family just doesn’t want to prioritise taking them into the outdoors – people it would be most transformational for.
We spent about a day hiking to where we set up our camp. And then we pretty much lived in the spot next to the glacier for eight or nine days.
The first day we just taught them how to put their crampons on, how to walk around safely with their ice axes, how to self arrest, so if you slip and fall, [you know] how to dig your ice axe into the snow so that you don’t fall too far. For some students, this was very far from anything they had done before. It was cool hearing their feedback . . . We broadened their horizons.
Girls On Ice is planning to launch its first New Zealand expedition in January 2024. Email girls-on-ice@vuw.ac.nz for more information.