Globe-trotting geography PhD student is studying climate change in Andean glaciers
Our planet is alive. Earth is a dynamic and interconnected system with a rich and unfathomable history that spans millennia. Its rolling rivers snake through the landscape. Its mighty mountains scrape the skies. Its oceans and lands teem with life that feast on its abundant resources and influence the course of its future.
Forrest Schoessow, a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography, has spent most of his life exploring this world, trekking across its diverse terrains and studying its various workings. He canoed the length of its fourth-longest river, the Mississippi, which winds its way over 2,300 miles from northern Minnesota into the Gulf of Mexico. He once set out to voyage west from South Korea to the United States — a daring adventure that covered over 11,000 miles — without using an airplane. From Bolivia to Jordan, Scotland to Mongolia, Schoessow has left his footprint on the sands, snowdrifts and soils of locales around the Earth.
“I study Earth sciences, the globe, the interconnectedness of nature and humanity,” he said. “How can I study the planet without knowing the planet? How can I study global phenomena and planetary processes without having an appreciation of the scale?”