Sarah
Johnston, a senior geology
major, was aware of the pitfalls of doing research in Russia's remote Kamchatka
Peninsula.
The
drawbacks include iffy weather, no communication with the outside world, the
legendary Russian bureaucracy, and grizzly bears.
The
reward was a chance to do scientific research where few Westerners – let alone
college students – have ever been.
So
Sarah had no hesitation about joining Professor of Geology John Garver and nine
other researchers who spent part of last summer deep in the middle of nowhere.
Was it worth it? “It was great,” she says. “I'd go back in an instant.”
The
summer's visit was a good one, according to Garver, who had been to Kamchatka
on four previous occasions. The weather was beautiful (he remembers one trip
where he was trapped in a tent for ten straight days by pounding rain).
Although Russian officials vetoed their original research plan at the last
minute, they still were able to go to a part of the peninsula they were
planning to visit eventually. And the grizzly bears – more abundant here than
anywhere else in the world – left them alone.
Kamchatka
has long fascinated geologists, and when the area was opened to Western
scientists in 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Garver and long-time
colleague Mark Brandon of Yale University were eager to visit. Having done
extensive fieldwork on Mesozoic and Cenozoic tectonics in British Columbia and
Washington, they were intrigued by the chance to establish a similar program on
the other side of the Pacific. At about the same time, the support of an
anonymous donor enabled the College to bring Russian scientists to campus for
extended visits. One of the visitors, Nikolai Sobolev, used his Russian
contacts to assist Garver and Brandon, who obtained a National Science
Foundation grant in 1993 and promptly made their first visit.
“It's
an area where the continental plates are grinding against each other,” Garver
says. “We think that understanding the active tectonic process might help us
with things like oil and mineral exploration. If you're exploring for oil, it
would be real handy to have a blueprint of how it came about.”
Despite
the initial enthusiasm by Western scientists, few have persisted like Garver
and Brandon. Obtaining the proper permits, for example, is a laborious process
involving several levels of the Russian bureaucracy. Garver says he does
encounter other non-Russian scientists on his trips, but, “Basically, you could
put all the Westerners in one room.”
Sarah
Johnston can attest to the bureaucratic difficulties. When Russian officials
told the team that it couldn't go to its planned research area on the coast
this summer, her research idea went out the window. The team hastily put
together an alternative plan, and Sarah is back on track to do a thesis that
examines when a certain set of conglomerates was deposited.