I’m Caleb Walcott!
My name is Caleb Walcott, and I am a PhD student at the University of Buffalo, in Buffalo, New York. I was born in Alaska, grew up in Portland, OR, and attended undergrad at Middlebury College in Vermont before moving to Buffalo. I am primarily a glacial geologist with broad interests in paleoclimate, geochronology, and GIS-based glacier reconstructions. Specifically, I study past glacier and ice sheet changes to help predict how ice sheets and glaciers will react to future anthropogenic-caused warming. For this, I use a technique called cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating, through which we can tell the age of glacial deposits from the Last Ice Age when glaciers and ice sheets were much larger than today!
I think it's really exciting to explore your home region and try to imagine how different the climate was in the past.
My work takes place in southeastern Alaska, Greenland, and western New York - in our backyard. I am particularly interested in exploring glacier change in the Arctic, as the area hosts both the Greenland Ice Sheet and many modern glaciers. I also enjoy working in western New York, as the area was once covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet, and had an Arctic-like climate.
I am inspired by the beauty of the natural world and a desire to shed light on climate change and its effects on our world and its residents - us humans, flora, and fauna. I also enjoy sharing my work with younger people to get them excited about the outdoors and exploring our planet.
For any younger readers out there - I think I have the coolest job ever! I get to hike, camp, boat, fly in helicopters and floatplanes, and spend time in places where few have been before.
Outside of my work, I love to cook - especially fresh pasta, - bike, ski, read, and explore western New York.
I am half-Japanese, with two half-Japanese parents, and I grew up in a tight-knit Japanese-American community in Portland, Oregon. Adults in the community were sushi chefs, teamsters, car mechanics, insurance salespeople, and restaurant owners - there were no scientists, and certainly no geologists!
As a child, I loved reading my dad's stashes of old National Geographic magazines and dreaming of one day going to the Arctic, but for me, it was just a dream - no one in those photos looked like me, and I did not realize polar sciences were an option. With a lot of luck and a bit of hard work, I am fortunate enough to find myself working in polar regions and want to help ensure that anyone can feel at home and comfortable in polar sciences.
My first connection to polar exploration was through old National Geographic magazines I unearthed in our basement.
My father had bought troves at garage sales, and I have fond memories of spending rainy days immersed in these magazines and imagining myself in the South Pacific, on safari in Africa, climbing to Machu Picchu, or hanging out with penguins in Antarctica.
I was always especially drawn to the polar regions and feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to make them come true.
Everyone in my life has been super supportive of my career choices. I'm not sure my mom and dad want to hear how often we fly in small planes and helicopters, or about the abundance of bears in our study regions, however! I would like to think my cats miss me when I'm gone, but who knows with them…
I hope to continue my work as an educator and researcher. I would love to expand my study areas to the southern hemisphere eventually, but am loving Alaska and Greenland so far. I am also passionate about changing and diversifying the polar field work and geoscience communities.
My fellow graduate students and peers across affinity groups, such as Polar Impact and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Geoscience (AAPIiG) are my biggest inspiration. It brings me so much joy to see folks who share similar backgrounds making huge strides in polar and Earth sciences. The only advice I have for folks is: don't be afraid of saying what you want and seeking out opportunities. This is a skill that was not easy for me to learn, and it is really intimidating at first, but I have been so much happier and had so many more opportunities once I felt comfortable asking about them.
