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EIS EXPEDITION TEAM

Founded by internationally acclaimed nature and outdoor photographer James Balog, the Extreme Ice Survey is very much a team effort. The project involves close collaboration between Balog and many experts in glaciology and atmospheric science, particularly Dr. Jason Box of Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center and Dr. Tad Pfeffer of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado.

James Balog ("BAY-log")
For nearly 30 years, James Balog has consistently broken new ground in the art of photographing nature. His work grows out of a lifelong passion for the environment as an artist, scientist, explorer, and adventurer. A former mountain guide with a graduate degree in geomorphology, James is equally at home on a Himalayan peak or a whitewater river, the African savannah or polar ice caps.

James is the author of Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress Report, released by National Geographic Books in March 2009. He is also the author of six other books: Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest and Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife, which were hailed as major breakthroughs in nature photography. His images are regularly published in The New Yorker, Life, American Photo, Vanity Fair, Sierra, Audubon, and Outside, and he is a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure. He is the first photographer ever commissioned to create a series of stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. Awarded the Leica Medal of Excellence and the premier awards for both nature and science photography at World Press Photo in Amsterdam, Balog's photos have been exhibited at more than a hundred museums and galleries from Paris to Los Angeles. The documentary film A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn explores his thoughts about art, nature, and perception.

James lives on a Rocky Mountain ridgetop high above Boulder, CO, with his wife, Suzanne, and daughters Simone and Emily.

"Each new series by James Balog represents a quantum leap in creativity, which takes us deeper into the ultimate mystery of humanity's relationship to the natural world. He is a visionary and his works are like sacred objects."
—James Nachtwey, TIME magazine photographer

Dr. Jason Box, Ph.D. (Click here to go to the Jason Box website)
Dr. Box has made sixteen expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet since 1994. His time on the inland ice exceeds 1 year. Dr. Box was awarded a NASA grant to support the installation and maintenance of Greenland EIS cameras. Jason is active in Greenland field work for EIS and is using EIS photos from Greenland to measure glacier speed changes, putting precise numbers on glacier flow sensitivity to climate. As an authority on the relationship between Greenland glaciers and climate, he’s authored or co-authored 26+ peer-reviewed publications directly related to ice and climate and has led, since 2003, the annual Greenland entries for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and American Meteorological Society's "State of the Climate" report. He was a contributing author to "Climate Change 2007", the definitive report on the science of global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Jason is a research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center and associate professor in Geography at The Ohio State University. Jason will be sailing to Greenland from Maine June-August 2009. Visit his web site: http://bprc.osu.edu/~jbox/

Dr. Tad Pfeffer, Ph.D. (Click here to see Dr. Pfeffer's exquisite photos of Columbia Glacier)
Dr. Pfeffer is a glaciologist at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research areas include the mechanics and dynamics of glaciers and heat and mass transfer in snow. He has worked on glaciers for 30 years, traveling to Alaska, Arctic Canada, Greenland, Antarctica, and mountain locations in North America and Europe. He has done fieldwork on Alaska's Columbia Glacier for two decades. Tad is also active in photography and photogrammetry of glaciers and landscapes, using imagery for both description and analysis of glacier changes. In addition to scientific publications, his photographic work has appeared in exhibitions in the Boulder/Denver area, in American Scientist, GEO (Germany), Geotimes, BBC television productions, and in the movie and book, An Inconvenient Truth, by Nobel laureate Al Gore. Tad's book, The Opening of a New Landscape: Columbia Glacier at Mid-Retreat, was published by the American Geophysical Union in December 2007.

Adam LeWinter
Adam LeWinter is the Research and Logistics Manager for the Extreme Ice Survey. While receiving his mechanical engineering degree from the University of Colorado, Adam specialized in assistive technology, developing sports equipment for those with physical disabilities. After University, he worked as both a design engineer and machinist in Colorado and New Zealand prior to joining the EIS team. Adam has brought his practical experience in product design and fabrication to the custom-made time-lapse camera packages used by EIS. In addition to working on the development of the time-lapse equipment, he manages the fieldwork necessary to keep the cameras running. Adam has been part of the field team on the majority of EIS trips to Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and Montana. Mountaineering, climbing, rope rigging, cold weather travel, and photography are all necessary skills for the challenging fieldwork. He believes that the combination of art and science—in his case photography and engineering design—is the ideal approach to capturing the staggering truth about the state of the world’s ice.

Jeff Orlowski
An accomplished photographer, filmmaker and pianist, Jeff came to Boulder and the Extreme Ice Survey from Stanford University. As director of post-production, Jeff creates the dramatic time-lapse sequences that are the center point of the EIS project. He is also the cinematographer on much of the footage of the EIS team on location in Alaska, Iceland and Greenland, and Montana. Jeff is also the director of the Extreme Ice Survey feature length film, “Chasing Ice”, debuting in 2010.

Michael Brown
A pioneer of adventure filmmaking, director Michael Brown has received more than 40 international film festival and industry awards, including three national Emmys. As the founder of Serac Adventure Films, he has covered topics ranging from first kayak descents of remote rivers in Chile to life-changing surgeries in Nepal. Michael has summited Everest four times from two different routes. His first ascent included a high-definition video camera, which he used to create the film Farther Than the Eye Can See, about blind climber Erik Weihenmayer. His most recent ascent was in 2007 to co-direct the MacGillivray Freeman Films' 3D IMAX production Return to Everest. Michael studied weather, climate, and geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder while doing research at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. He has worked on weather-related productions for National Geographic television, NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, OLN, the BBC, Rush HD, and the Discovery Channel.

Dr. Daniel B. Fagre
Dr. Fagre is both the ecologist and the climate change research coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey in Glacier National Park, Montana. Originally trained in wildlife biology and ecology, Dan has a unique perspective on the changes caused by global warming. He has been doing repeat photography on the dwindling ice masses of Glacier National Park for nearly 20 years. He is the author of the 2007 book Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy, and Management of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem.

Dr. Alberto Behar
Dr. Behar has worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, since 1991. He is currently Investigation Scientist for the Mars Odyssey Spacecraft and is on the DAN instrument team for NASA's next Mars landing craft, the Mars Science Laboratory (the DAN uses neutrons to detect water that might be lurking underneath the rover). He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering with a minor in astronautics and an M.S. with a specialization in robotics, both from the University of Southern California. His current scientific interests include developing, testing, and deploying architectures for future planetary surface spacecraft by testing them in remote, extreme environments on Earth. He develops instruments for field research in Antarctica and Greenland, including part of the EIS camera system, since 2003.

EIS SUPPORT TEAMS

Camera Assembly/Maintenance/Field Support

• Adam LeWinter - Research and Logistics Manager, Boulder, CO
• Corey Jaskolski, Tuatara Systems - Nat Geo Timer Design
• Dave Finnegan, US Army Corp of Engineers - Hubbard Glacier Cameras
• Shad O'Neel, USGS - Glaciologist, Alaska
• Chandler Enger - Field Assistant, Boulder, CO
• Neil Humphrey - University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY
• Svavar Jónatansson - Field Assistant, Iceland
• Kim Petersen - Russell Glacier Assistant, Greenland
• Brad Kahland - EIS Camera Assembly, Boulder, CO
• Matt Vellone - EIS Camera Assembly, Boulder, CO
• Blake Gordon - Field Assistant, Boulder, CO

Film Team

• Jeff Orlowski - Director and Post Production, Boulder, CO
• Ben Phelan - Video, Luminous Media, Boulder, CO
• Matthew Kennedy - Editor, Boulder, CO
• Danny Goldhaber - Editor, Boulder, CO

Operations

• Sport - Operations Manager/Administration, Boulder, CO
• Terri Cook - Development Director, Boulder, CO
• Michael Aisner - Marketing/Consulting, Boulder, CO
• Laura Caruso - Writer/EIS Content Editor, Golden, CO
• Jeffrey Kent - EIS Content Editor, Denver, CO
• Eric Turner - Web designer/Programmer, Denver, CO
• Bryce Tugwell - Web Developer and Strategy Consultant, Google Earth Developer, Laramie, WY
• Eric Eisen - Marketing and Product Development, Boulder, CO

Scientific Advisors

• Dr. Bernard Francou, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Quito, Ecuador
• Dr. Ian Joughin, Polar Science Center, University of Washington
• Oddur Sigurdsson, President, Icelandic Glaciological Society
• Dr. Konrad Steffen, Director, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES),
  University of Colorado
• Dr. Christian Vincent, Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l'Environnement, Grenoble, France

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