Jason Thomas

9/23/10

Article: Going to Extremes

In the field, Roman Dial dangles hundreds of feet off the ground, bikes over mountains,

paddle through rapids, and ski over glaciers; doing many dangerous activities for science. When

he is done with all of that, he competes in wilderness adventure races. He is a professor of

biology at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage. He does ecological research in hard-to-get-to

places.

Dial became involved in extreme science when he paired his passions: biology and

outdoor adventure. At 9 years old, Dial spent his summer in Alaska with his two uncles, going

through the tundra. That was when he found his passion for outdoor adventure. A year later,

he knew he wanted to be a biologist. He had a great science teacher who encouraged him. Dial

returned for college where his adventures overshadowed his studies. He earned advanced

degrees in math and biology.

Today he studies ice worms. They are nocturnal and live on glaciers. No one knows their

life span, their migration, or their survivability of the winter. Some people don’t even believe

they exist. Dial’s findings thus far suggest that ice worms bury into glaciers where it is warmer

than the surface.

His favorite topic is forest canopies which host different ecosystems than the forest

floor. They are hard to reach and study which is perfect for Dial, an extreme scientist. Dial uses
his mountain climbing abilities to reach the canopies. He sets up traverses to cross from one

tree to another once he gets up there. He mostly goes to Costa Rica and Borneo, where he

studies canopy food webs. No one had studied food webs for canopies before Dial. Dial

wrapped plastic collars around tree bases. They prevented lizards from climbing and eating

insects. Without lizards the insect population doubled, increasing leaf damage by 50%. This

had a ripple effect on the entire ecosystem, showing just how closely linked everything is. He

hopes his studies help us understand biodiversity. He wonders how diversity on Earth is being

affected by the cutting down of trees and the falling of canopies.

Even Dial has bad days. In Borneo, he slid too fast on a traverse and hit a branch like

George of the Jungle. Thousands of ants then crawled up the tree he was holding onto. Dial

rappelled to the ground and a sticky poisonous centipede bit him.

His outdoor skills allow him to study canopies better than anyone else. Dial has found

his niche. He tells us we should find something we are good at and use it in our work.

I enjoyed reading this article. I learned that science doesn’t have to be all about

laboratories and staying indoors. I believe being hands on about science can help us

understand it better.