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")
James Balog has been a leader in photographing, understanding and interpreting the natural environment for three decades. An avid mountaineer with a graduate degree in geography and geomorphology, James is equally at home on a Himalayan peak or a whitewater river, the African savannah or polar icecaps.

To reveal the impact of climate change, James founded the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most wide-ranging, ground-based, photographic study of glaciers ever conducted.  National Geographic showcased this work in June 2007 and June 2010 issues. The project is also featured in the 2009 NOVA documentary “Extreme Ice," and in the feature-length documentary, "Chasing Ice," premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012.

EIS has been recognized with the Heinz Award, the Missouri School of Journalism's Honor Medal for Distinguished Service, the Aspen Institute’s Visual Arts & Design Award, and the Galen and Barbara Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure. Mr. Balog has received the Leica Medal of Excellence, the International League of Conservation Photographers Award and the North American Nature Photography Association’s “Outstanding Photographer of the Year” award. He was named "Person of the Year" for 2011 by PhotoMedia magazine.

James is the author of seven books, including Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress Report, published in 2009 by National Geographic Books. "ICE: Portraits of the World's Vanishing Glaciers," will be released in the fall of 2012.

Among his other volumes are Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest (2004), Wildlife Requiem (1984), Anima (1992), and Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife (1990). His work has been extensively published in most of the world’s major pictorial magazines and is in dozens of public and private art collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Corcoran Gallery, the Denver Art Museum and the Gilman Paper Company. In 1996, James was the first photographer ever commissioned by the U.S. Postal Service to create a full sheet of stamps. David Holbrooke's documentary film A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn explores his thoughts about art, nature, and perception.

James lives in the Rocky Mountains above Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Suzanne, and his 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

Jason Box, Ph.D. (Click here to go to the Jason Box website)
Dr. Box has made 21 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. Visit his web site: http://bprc.osu.edu/~jbox/

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.

Jeff Orlowski
An accomplished photographer, filmmaker and pianist, Jeff came to Boulder from Stanford University. He is the cinematographer on much of the footage of the EIS team on location in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland and Montana. Jeff is also the director of the feature length film, Chasing Ice, which will premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Daniel B. Fagre, Ph.D.
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.

Conrad Anker
Renowned Alpinist Conrad Anker approached James Balog about placing EIS cameras on Everest at the 2007 Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure ceremony in April 2008, where James was the recipient and Conrad the presenter. A member of The North Face climbing team, Conrad was able to secure funding from the company to make the Everest cameras possible.  In 2010 he led a five-person EIS field team to the Khumbu Valley to install five time-lapse cameras.

EIS SUPPORT TEAMS

Camera Assembly/Maintenance/Field Support

• Adam LeWinter - Associate, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, NH
• Corey Jaskolski, Tuatara Systems - Nat Geo Timer Design
• Dave Finnegan, US Army Corp of Engineers - Hubbard Glacier Cameras
• Shad O'Neel, USGS - Glaciologist, Alaska
• Svavar Jónatansson - Field Assistant, Iceland
• Nicholas Korzen - Field Assistant, Alaska
• Eran Hood - Associate Professor Environmental Science & Geography Program, University of Alaska Southeast

Film Team

• Jeff Orlowski - Director and Post Production, Boulder, CO
• Ben Phelan - Video, Luminous Media, Boulder, CO

Operations

• Sport - Operations Manager/Administration, Boulder, CO
• Matthew Kennedy - Editor and Time-Lapse Operations, Boulder, CO
• Michael Aisner - Marketing/Consulting, 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, Member, Icelandic Glaciological Society
• Dr. Konrad Steffen, Director, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES),
  University of Colorado
• Dr. James White, Fellow and Director, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado, Boulder
• Dr. Christian Vincent, Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l'Environnement, Grenoble, France
• Dr. Martin Truffer, University of Alaska
• Dr. Mark Fahnestock, University of New Hampshire

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