Mike Retelle

Mike Retelle teaches courses that focus on Earth surface environments and records of environmental change. His courses include an introductory course called Earth Surface Processes (Geo 103), Sedimentology (Geo 210), and Quaternary Geology (Geology 310). Mike also alternates teaching several field-based short term units: Limnology and Paleolimnology of Maine Lakes, Field Geology in the Canadian Arctic and Glaciation of Northern New England.

Currently Mike is involved in several research projects in high latitude areas of the North Atlantic region. He has worked in the Canadian arctic since 1981 focusing on glacial and sea level history and high resolution records of climate change preserved in annually layered sediments in lakes. Mike is a participant in a National Science Foundation (N.S.F.) funded synthesis of arctic climate records of the last 2,000 years.

He recently began working in the Shetland Islands with Bates Professors Gerald Bigelow (archaeologist in Environmental Studies Program) and Michael Jones (History) on the Shetland Islands Climate and Settlement Project. His role is to recover and analyze lacustrine sediment records that preserve records of environmental change during the period of occupation of the archaeology sites (Late Holocene-age sites span Norse to 16th century occupation).

In 2005, Mike began working in western Spitsbergen (Svalbard, Norwegian arctic) on the Svalbard REU Project (National Science Foundation, Research Experience for Undergraduates program. This project involves the study of modern processes in a high arctic glacial-fluvial-lacustrine system and the investigation of longer term and high resolution climate change from lake sediment cores.

Closer to home he collaborates with Tom Weddle from the Maine Geological Survey on studies of the glacial and postglacial history of Maine. He also works with students in a long-term monitoring program of coastal erosional and depositional processes at Seawall Beach at the Bates-Morse Mountain Preserve