SALEM — It’s not that Brad Hubeny doesn’t believe in global warming. It’s not that he doesn’t think we humans have caused some of our climate problems. It’s not that he doesn’t agree that the melting of glaciers and Arctic ice are causing sea levels to rise.
It’s just that he sees it all as a lot more complex than that. And he should know.
A professor of geology at Salem State College and a Swampscott resident, Hubeny has been studying sea levels at Chesapeake Bay and core samples beneath North Shore ponds. Using little miracles like carbon dating, Hubeny and his fellow teachers can scoop core samples from marshes and tell you if they had a wet year or a dry year back in 10,000 B.C. In addition, he can measure sea levels — the rate of rise and fall, going back centuries — by examining the remains of marsh grass.
At the same time, the school’s six-member geology department is responsible for providing inspiration to young people, students going into the field in large numbers.
“The geology department is just wonderful,” said the recently graduated Jocelyn Brotherton. She credits Salem State and teachers like Hubeny for helping to launch her on what she hopes will be a career related to geology.
“Brad is very passionate about geology,” she said. “The geology department is wonderful. A good bunch to work with. And all very passionate about the science.”
“We did a lot of work on Sluice Pond in Lynn,” said Nicole Ritch, who graduated this spring. Core samples from the pond allowed her to help chart the coming of industrial production on the North Shore as she measured rising lead levels in the sediment. “We went out on a makeshift raft.”
It was a welcome opportunity to do fieldwork.
“I plan on still helping Brad out with some of the research,” Ritch said.
Raised in Hingham, Hubeny, 33, lives in Swampscott with his wife and son. He graduated from Hingham High and Bates College while earning his doctorate from the University of Rhode Island. He developed an interest in studying Earth while still a teen.
“Oceanography is actually a class at Hingham High School,” he said. The more he learned about it, the more time he spent outdoors sloshing through marsh grass and motoring over lakes and ponds, and the more he was drawn to the work.
“I can’t imagine being stuck in an office all day,” he said, carrying his aluminum core sampler toward the harbor.
That device has aided in his work at Chesapeake Bay, where he’s been able to examine thousands of years’ worth of sediment, each year represented in a line of deposits “like tree rings.” Hubeny plunges the core sampler 30 feet down and removes a tube of soil. By carbon dating the organic material within, he can determine what was growing where and when.
The type of growth he finds can help determine roughly where the high tide was during a given period.
“Sea level is going up,” he said, adding that melting sea ice is probably having an impact. “But it can’t be explained by just that. … We believe it’s tectonic.” In other words, the water level might be rising, but the shores of Maryland might be falling at the same time. “Preliminary results show sea level is going up faster than global sea level. We’re pretty intrigued.”
It’s a complex business, and Hubeny eschews catch phrases like “global warming” because they don’t tell the whole story.
“We are right now in an interglacial period,” he said. It’s been colder. And it’s been hotter. Water levels could rise by 20 feet. The more profound impact of hotter temperatures would be extremes of rainfall, he said.
“I’m not saying it’s necessarily going to happen. … All these effects will not put our planet in any situation that it has not been in before.”
On the other hand, he said, the suddenness of change indicates that human activity is having an impact on climate and everything that follows from that.
“It never got so warm so quickly,” he said.
Work closer to home has had Hubeny out on Lynn’s Sluice Pond with his students, collecting samples from the bottom of the pond.
“People love it,” he said of the work. “It’s fun to be outside.”
With the help of Hubeny and other teachers in the department, the students have created a series of reports on geology. Brotherton, for example, studied geological evidence in Connecticut that North America was once part of an enormous, single continent called Pangaea.
Brotherton was among several students who presented papers on her findings to professional conferences.
Up to 65 students are studying geology at Salem State, Hubeny said. It’s learning that prepares them for a variety of occupations, such as government work or oil exploration, even law school. For her part, Brotherton hopes to find a teaching job this fall in Florida.
“Right now,” Hubeny said, “the demand for geologists exceeds the supply.”
It is a field once associated with rock hunters and lab-locked scientists. Today, as Hubeny demonstrates, the search for evidence of Earth’s history is yielding invaluable clues to its future.
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