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2012
Meetings
November
Speaker: Dr. Blaine Griffen
Topic: "Invasions and Extinctions: Mechanistically
understanding the link".
Dr. Blaine Griffen, from the University of South Carolina Biological Sciences
and Marine Science programs, spoke on invasive species. He is
particularly interested in investigating invasive species and local extinctions.
The overarching goal of Dr. Griffen's research is to improve our ability to
predict the responses of populations and communities to human induced changes in
their natural environment. Dr. Griffen is a published researcher, a celebrated
marine biologist, an assistant professor at the university who offers great
opportunities for students in his lab, and an advocate of community outreach
programs that encourage education in the sciences. He was awarded earlier this
year with the Rising Star award by the University of South Carolina.
Dr.
Griffen has a PhD from the University of New Hampshire and was a Postdoctoral
Research Associate at the University of Georgia. He has been an Assistant
Professor at the University of South Carolina since 2008.
Columbia Star Newspaper article about this
meeting
October
Speaker: Dale Stewart
Topic: "Trail of Tears Water Route Expedition 2012: Revisit and
Revelation of the Untold History"
In our Explorers Club talk, Dale
discussed the expedition (which was just completed a few weeks
back)
Introduction
In June 2012 I will depart Ross's Landing by
kayak, located on the Tennessee River at the site of present-day Chattanooga,
Tenn. It was named for John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation
from 1828 - 1866.
I will paddle the entire water route taken by at least
four detachments of Cherokees, 1,226 miles along the Tennessee, Ohio,
Mississippi, and Arkansas rivers. Understanding the history of the Trail of
Tears provides insight into the early growth of the U.S. and can provide
perspective about other events and even issues society faces today. It is
American history.
The purpose of the challenge is to inspire, educate and
engage the citizens about this little known route of the Trail of Tears. I will
also raise money to assist with the construction of the new Cherokee Children's
Home in Cherokee, North Carolina.
Brief History
"Trail of Tears"
describes the journey of Native Americans forced to leave their ancestral homes
in the Southeast and move to the new Indian Territory defined as "west of
Arkansas," in present-day Oklahoma. Through coerced or fraudulent treaties,
Indians had been given the choice of submitting to state jurisdiction as
individuals or moving west to preserve their sovereign tribal governments. The
metaphoric trail is not one distinct road, but a web of routes and rivers
traveled in the 1830s by organized tribal groups from Alabama, Florida, Georgia,
Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Four detachments from the
Cherokee Nation came west by the Water Route. They were taken from the gathering
camps and placed on boats in the Chattanooga area. They continued down the
Tennessee River until they came to Muscle Shoals. Here they were placed on the
railroad and carried around the shoals where they boarded boats for the trip
down river. They continued down the Tennessee River to the Ohio, then down to
the Mississippi to the Mouth of the Arkansas River. It was tricky here, because
of shallow water. So they usually entered the White River Chute at Montgomery
Point, worked their way around Big Island and re-entered the Arkansas River for
their journey upstream to Ft. Gibson.
The Challenge
As you can
imagine, this sort of challenge will require an enormous amount of work before I
even get to the start line. Fundraising, sponsorship, boat selection, raising
finances, food, equipment, transport, timings, and raising the profile of the
challenge will need to be organized. All this even before I have put in the
training hours paddling and building up my stamina!
More about our
speaker (from Dale Stewart):
As to my biographical sketch - I am an
explorer, adventurist, conservationist, and educator. My exploration philosophy
is to immerse myself in extreme and often hostile environments, going alone and
learning from indigenous people and what the wild has to offer. Recently
returned from living with a remote Maya tribe near Sand Creek, Belize. I am also
a published author, speaker, trainer and risk management consultant.
I
like extremes and feel at home where I find myself; jungle, desert, mountain or
Arctic conditions. My expeditions have taken me from the highest peak in the
Sahara, Emi Koussi, in the Tibesti Mountains of northern Chad, from kayaking the
fjords near Svalbard, Greenland, and from the rain forest of Central and South
America, to teaching wildlife rangers in South Africa, and living and learning
from remote indigenous people on four continents.
I am a practitioner of
the art and science of survival and changing the deception of powerlessness
people often feel when crisis strikes. I use this knowledge and experience to
help others around the globe achieve their own personal targets and succeed in
their own harsh environments. Many of my corporate clients are Fortune 50
companies and I also provide Field Risk and Expedition Training programs to
Universities. I have appeared on CNN, Fox News, and a number of National Radio
programs and have provided risk and security consultation to major movie and TV
studios filming in remote areas worldwide.
Yours in Adventure,
Dale
Stewart
Trail of Tears Water Route 2012 - A Voyage of Discovery
Please
read the following documents from Dale if you would like to learn more about the
Trail of Tears and Dale's expedition planning:
Trail of Tears Water Route
Challenge
Education
program
Expedition Field
Skills
Expedition
Field Skills Planning
September
Speaker: Skip Steele
Topic: "Building Micronesia"
Skip’s talk was about the two years he worked in Micronesia
(primarily Truk, Ponepe, Palau, and Kosrae islands) building up
the infra-structures for water, power, shore facilities,
roads, and runways for a 727. Some of
this construction work also involved diving where Skip certified 6 divers at
Kosrae. Skip’s presentation included photos and videos of the
islands (above and below water) including scenes of the interesting ancient
cultural ruins of Ponepe.
Skip Steele is a graduate of the US Naval Academy with a B.S.
Degree in Engineering and he received an M.S. Degree in Engineering. He has been
cross trained in several different engineering disciplines at several major
universities. Mr. Steele had a long and distinguished career as an engineer in
America's space program from Vanguard to Apollo. He designed the ALSEP package
that the astronauts left on the moon to measure seismic activity.
At age 78, he received an M.B.A. Degree and he recently returned
from serving as an engineer in Afghanistan. He is also a Certified
SCUBA Instructor.
July
Speaker: John Rose Ph.D.
Topic: "Wakulla Springs to the Ocean: The Challenge Ahead"
The
Woodville Karst Plain is a region of approximately 1150 square
kilometers south of Tallahassee Florida. It is an important source of
drinking water and is also a sensitive and vulnerable ecosystem. The
Woodville Karst Plain Project has been exploring the caves in this area
since 1987. This work has resulted in the exploration of 68km of mapped
cave system. On July 28, 2007 the team succeeded in making the
connection between Wakulla Springs and the Leon Sinks System. This was
the crowning achievement in what has been a string of record setting
exploration dives for distance and depth. While making the connection
between these two systems had been a priority goal of the organization,
the pursuit of this goal has resulted in other unexpected exploration
discoveries. Since then attention has shifted to making the connection
between Wakulla Springs and the Gulf of Mexico. The talk described
past and present exploration as well as the technical challenges that
will have to be overcome in order to explore the cave system linking
Wakulla Springs and the Gulf of Mexico.
Dr. John Rose is an
Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of
over 60 technical papers in bioinformatics, machine intelligence, and
computational science. Dr. Rose was a NASA Institute for Advanced
Concepts Fellow in 2001 and has conducted research funded by NSF, NIH,
NASA, DOD/ONR, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, BMFT (German NSF
equivalent), as well as the Sloan Foundation. He has been a
member of the Woodville Karst Plain Project since 1995 and, in addition
to being one of longest tenured gas divers in the project, currently
serves as the Project Engineer.
June
Speaker: Jean T. Ellis, Ph.D.
Topic: "Wind Impacts on Dunes and Beaches/Marine Policy"
Dr.
Ellis received her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2006. Her
research focuses on coastal and aeolian geomorphology and the impact of
humans on the coastal environment. She approaches her geomorphic
research from a field and instrument intensive perspective. In the
field, this means measuring characteristics of wind, waves, and sand
transport, often with custom instruments. Her current projects focus on
small-scale aeolian sand transport (vertical and horizontal sand flux
and ripple formation) and wave transformation around breakwaters. The
latter project compares field and laboratory collected data. She has
also received funding to use satellite data to identify areas in the
coastal zone for conservation and restoration, with an emphasis on
wetlands.
Columbia Star Newspaper article about this
meeting
April
Speaker: William L. Graf, Ph.D.
Topic: "The Life and Times of the Florida Everglades"
The
Florida Everglades is a 6,000 sq km remnant of what was once a 12,000
sq km wetland in central and southern Florida, populated by a unique
array of biota and defined by unusual hydrology and
geomorphology. The purpose of this presentation is to explore how
science, policy, and politics have interacted with each other to
produce the present degraded ecosystem, and to provide a basis for the
ongoing Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP).
Historical analysis of the Everglades ecosystem and south Florida shows
that there have been distinct periods of interactions among science,
policy, and politics: the pre-development era before 1890 when
natural hydrologic and ecosystem conditions prevailed, the development
era of 1890-1980 that saw the installation of a vast water control
infrastructure, and the restoration era after 1980 that has seen
attempts to reverse ecosystem damages while preserving the water supply
and flood control benefits of the system. Science has slowly
developed explanations for Everglades forms and processes, but at each
step science has served the needs of the prevailing policies for the
region. Politics that grew out of a culture tuned to public
investment in economic development strategies have guided decision
making. Modern adaptive management and incremental adaptive
restoration are also products of goals established under the influence
of cultural forces. The history of science for the
Everglades has been adaptive to changing demands by society, with a
constant stream of new research questions driven not by research
curiosity but by economic and environmental necessity.
Our Speaker:
William
L. Graf is University Foundation Distinguished Professor Emeritus at
the University of South Carolina, and Senior River Scientist at The
Nature Conservancy.
His BA, MSc, and PhD (with a Certificate in Water Resources Management) are from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
His
primary research, teaching, and service interests are in river
hydrology and geomorphology, as well as work at the intersection of
science and policy for public land and water. He has served as
consultant and expert witness in 31 legal cases.
He
has published more than 140 journal articles, book chapters, and
reports, as well as authoring or editing 7 books and leading the
production of 6 additional books by federally sponsored science
committees he has chaired. His work has been supported by 65
grants.
His
contributions have been recognized by awards including the Founder’s
Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a
Fulbright Senior Fellowship, the John Wesley Powell Award of the U.S.
Geological Survey, and numerous other awards from major geographic and
geologic societies.
He
is a Past President of the Association of American Geographers, and
presently chairs the Geographical Sciences Committee of the National
Academies of Science, where he is a National Associate. He was
recently elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science in recognition of his science and policy contributions for
rivers.
He
has served as chair or member of 20 National Research Council
committees providing science advice to federal decision-makers dealing
with rivers. President Clinton appointed him to the Presidential
Commission on American Heritage Rivers, and he now serves on the
Environmental Advisory Board to the Chief of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers.
Columbia Star Newspaper article about this
meeting
March
Speaker: April Conway
Topic: "Pygmy Hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis) Conservation in Sierra Leone, West Africa"
The Topic:
"Pygmy
Hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis) Conservation in Sierra Leone,
West Africa". April Conway will discuss her study area, and study
animal, briefly and then give an overview of the research that has been
conducted over the past 2 years in Sierra Leone, including:
1) Camera trap surveys: The use of cameras in the forest to detect pygmy hippos.
2) Baiting trials: Testing a variety of baits to attract hippos to cameras.
3) Radio transmitter attachment: Design and testing of several attachment methods for a radio transmitter.
4) Pit trap trials: Development of a method for safely capturing pygmy hippos.
5) Human conservation perceptions: administered questionnaires to local people.
6) Awareness raising activities.
More about our Speaker:
April
Conway is a PhD candidate and Fulbright Scholar who is studying the
endangered pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis) on and around
Tiwai Island, Sierra Leone. Her dissertation focuses primarily on
research technique development which will facilitate better
conservation decisions regarding this elusive species. Before entering
graduate school, Ms. Conway spent 2 years in Niger, West Africa as an
environmental educator with the Peace Corps. In her small rural
village, she organized women and children’s gardens and tree nurseries,
participated in giraffe surveys and rode her camel Frances to the
weekly market. She is co-advised by Dr. John P. Carroll and Dr. Sonia
M. Hernandez.
Columbia Star Newspaper article about John M. Fisher being awarded the L.Ron Hubbard Explorers Award for 2012
February
Speaker: Colonel Mark "Puck" Mykleby
Topic: "National Security, Sustainability, and Citizenship"
The Topic: "National Security, Sustainability, and Citizenship" Americans
have become too accustomed to looking to our military to solve our
problems. But today, our security depends just as much on what happens
within our borders as the containment of outside threats. National
security is the responsibility of every citizen. More on this subject
can be found in the following article by Colonel Mykleby: http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1035 More about our Speaker: Colonel
Mykleby is currently serving as a special strategic assistant to the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colonel Mykleby was commissioned
as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps following his graduation
from the United States Naval Academy in 1987. He was designated a naval
aviator in April 1990 and as a qualified F/A-18 pilot in December 1990.
From January 1991 to May 2006, Colonel Mykleby served in five fleet
fighter squadrons and performed numerous operational squadron billets
to include Director of Safety and Standardization, Pilot Training
Officer, Aircraft Maintenance Officer, Operations Officer, Executive
Officer, and Commanding Officer. He is a graduate of Marine Weapons and
Tactics Instructor School, the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun),
and the Allied Air Forces Central Europe’s Tactical Leadership Program
(TLP). Colonel Mykleby’s operational experience includes five
deployments (land based and ship borne) to the European, Pacific, and
Southwest Asian theaters. He has participated in combat operations in
support of Operations PROVIDE PROMISE, DENY FLIGHT, SOUTHERN WATCH, and
IRAQI FREEDOM. Colonel Mykleby’s staff experience includes
serving as the George Washington Battle Group liaison officer to Joint
Task Force-Southwest Asia (Eskan Village, Saudi Arabia) in 1997,
serving as a Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) Staff Training
Program (MSTP) instructor from 1999-2001, and serving as the Harry S.
Truman Battle Group liaison officer to the NATO Combined Air Operations
Center Five (CAOC-5) headquarters (Poggio Renautico, Italy) in January
2003. In June 2007, Colonel Mykleby was assigned to the US Special
Operations Command (USSOCOM) where he served as an international
engagement/liaison officer for USSOCOM. In August 2007, he was tasked
to stand up USSOCOM’s Strategy Division and, as Deputy Division Head,
lead the development of strategy for Special Operations Forces. In July
2009, he was assigned to the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Colonel Mykleby graduated from the United States Naval
Academy with distinction in 1987. He graduated from the Marine Corps
Amphibious Warfare School in 1995. He earned a Masters of Military
Studies from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in 1999. In May
2007, he graduated from the Air War College with distinction and earned
a Masters of National Security Studies. Columbia Star Newspaper article about this
meeting
January
Speaker: Dr. Will South
Topic: "Nature and the Grand American Vision: Masterpieces of the Hudson River School Painters"
Dr. Will South serves as the Chief Curator for the
Dayton Art Institute, a position he assumed in the fall of 2008. More
recently, he was the Curator of Collections for the Weatherspoon Art
Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, since 2000. He
received his doctorate in art history from the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York in 1994. Last year, he published "Marking
the Past/Shaping the Present: The Art of Willis Bing Davis", an
exhibition catalogue on this prominent African American artist. He has
also published widely in the field of American impressionism and
modernism. Will’s undergraduate training was as a painter, and he has
always remained an active artist averaging a one-person exhibition
every two to three years. The most recent shows have been at Gallery
510 in Dayton, Ohio’s historic Oregon District. His work is in numerous
private collections from coast to coast.
The Topic:
Forty-five
magnificent paintings from the rich collection of the New-York
Historical Society will be on view at the Columbia Museum of Art this
fall, beginning November 19, 2011 and on view through April 1, 2012 in
a major traveling exhibition Nature and the Grand American Vision:
Masterpieces of the Hudson River School Painters. These iconic works of
19th-century landscape painting are traveling on a national tour for
the first time and are circulating to four museums around the country
as part of the Historical Society's traveling exhibitions program
Sharing a National Treasure. The Columbia Museum of Art is the only
stop in the Southeast.
Columbia Star Newspaper article about this
meeting
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