November 20, 2002
Keeling Participates In Expedition
To South America
Bowling Green, Ky. - Dr. David Keeling, head of Western Kentucky University's Department of Geography and Geology, recently returned from a 12-day expedition to southern South America.
Representing the American Geographical Society and WKU, Dr. Keeling helped lead the expedition to the fjords of Chilean Patagonia, Cape Horn and the Falkland Islands. Dr. Keeling is a national councilor and webmaster of the American Geographical Society (www.amergeog.org).
Participants in the expedition sailed aboard the "Clipper Adventurer," a Class-1 icebreaker, to investigate environmental change in southern South America and to learn more about global climate change, ecology and natural history.
Dr. Keeling led explorations of retreating glaciers, ecology hikes in the Patagonian rainforest, a tour of the Torres del Paine International Biosphere Reserve, an expedition landing on Cape Horn and an environmental assessment of the Falkland Islands.
Seventy-six people participated in this educational expedition, and Dr. Keeling gave three formal lectures on global economic change affecting Chile, ecology in southern Patagonia and the Falkland Islands conflict. Two highlights of the expedition were hiking on the massive Garibaldi Fjord in the Beagle Channel of Patagonian Chile and standing at the southernmost tip of the Western Hemisphere at Cape Horn.
For more information, contact Dr. Keeling at (270) 745-4555. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
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