The University of Alaska Museum of the North is exploring spring at hands-on programs during the month of May.
Families are invited to drop in with children five and under at Early Explorers each Friday from 10 a.m.-noon. Junior Curators on Saturday, May 20, offers an opportunity for kids ages 6 and up to investigate the activities of spring.
For more information about the museum’s programs and events, visit the website at www.uaf.edu/museum or call 474-7505.
In one year, sea stars have almost disappeared from Kachemak Bay, Alaska.
This is likely the aftermath of a sea star wasting disease episode. The disease causes lesions, and may result in the loss of arms, making a sea star look as if it is melting or decomposing. Similar episodes have been spreading across the southern coast of Alaska and as far south as Baja California.
“In spring 2016 we counted 180 sea stars during our intertidal surveys, which was high in the books,” said Brenda Konar, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. “Just one year later, we counted only five sea stars.”
Konar and CFOS professor Katrin Iken are part of Gulf Watch Alaska, a monitoring program established by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council to better understand how intertidal and other marine ecosystems were affected by the 1989 oil spill. The intertidal zone is the area between high and low tide. Konar and Iken monitor Kachemak Bay on the Kenai Peninsula near Homer.
Their transect lines are small subsections of the intertidal at various locations around Kachemak Bay. They are used to represent the entire bay. These snapshots are helpful, because you can’t measure every beach in Kachemak Bay. By monitoring these transect lines every year, Iken and Konar can get a sense of how the bay is changing over time.
Sea stars are important top predators in intertidal ecosystems. They help keep prey populations in check, which helps maintain species diversity. Without sea stars, the kinds of species that dominate these intertidal communities could change.
“We will have to keep monitoring this area to see any long-term changes,” Iken said. “It could be that the prey of sea stars, such as mussels, limpets or chitons become more abundant, or maybe other predators become more abundant for at least awhile.”
It’s hard to gauge what normal numbers are, especially since 2016 was a big year for sea stars. But Konar explained that sea stars can usually be found all over Kachemak Bay. In 2015, 64 sea stars were reported along the transect lines, and 76 were reported in 2014.
“We don’t know why numbers spiked last year, or if it’s related to the drop we saw this year,” Konar said.
Diversity of sea stars along the transect lines also dropped from seven species in 2016 to two species in 2017. Previous years had five or six species along these lines. This year the researchers saw leather stars and blood stars, which are known to be more resilient to wasting disease than other species.
“The spread of the disease to Alaskan waters and its impact on sea star diversity may be related to the unprecedented warm waters that we experienced in the Gulf of Alaska in the past two years,” Iken said.
But things might look up in the future. Konar explained that sea stars started disappearing from intertidal zones off the coast of Washington, Oregon and California in 2014. Recently, baby sea stars are starting appearing again, and populations are rebounding.
“We’re at the height of this episode right now,” Konar said, “but we’re not suggesting that these regions will never have sea stars again. Kachemak Bay may just have a few years before we start seeing any kind of recovery.”
More information on this research can be found at the Ecological Trends in Kachemak Bay Gulf Watch project website.
Are you tired of playing the same “I spy” game with your family as you drive to the Chitina River for fishing or to the Alaska Range for a weekend getaway?
Spice up the road trip with new points of interest from the geoscience students and teachers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. As part of a class project, the students researched the geologic marvels flanking the Richardson Highway between Fairbanks and Gulkana Glacier. Then in April they took a road trip with their instructors — Chris Maio and Louise Farquharson — to present posters and a lesson at each feature.
“Many students had never been on the Richardson past Delta Junction and were so amazed that such an awesome landscape of mountains, glaciers and faults was just a few hours of easy driving from Fairbanks,” said Maio.
He said they can’t wait to redo the trip with family members and friends. Here are eight highlights they’re sure to share, along with geographical coordinates.
1. Ventifacts Junction
About 1.25 miles down Jack Warren Road, 64.07054, -145.70322
Anyone driving through Delta Junction will appreciate that “the windy city” lives up to its moniker. For thousands of years, wind-driven sediments have sandblasted stones in the area. This has eroded their surfaces into flat, angular planes that intersect at a “Y” ridge. The sculpted stones, called ventifacts, are easy to find on the north side of Jack Warren Road about midway between Phillips and Reeves roads.
2. From one moraine to the next
Turnout in front of Donnelly Dome, 63.77381, -145.76182
If you dig your foot into mud and push forward, a ridge of mud forms around the front and sides of your shoe. An advancing glacier forms a similar ridge, called a moraine, out of the dirt and rocks it pushes forward and deposits.
From Delta Junction south, the Richardson’s ribbon of asphalt overlays two major moraines left by past glaciations. The Delta Moraine formed when a massive glacier advanced north from the Alaska Range 40,000 and 70,000 years ago to where Delta Junction is today. The next one, the Donnelly Moraine, formed 21,000 years ago and reaches north from the range to near Donnelly Dome. Vegetation covers both moraines; however, the younger moraine has more small hills because the area has had less time to erode. The younger moraine also has small kettle lakes.
3. The Galloping Glacier
The old Black Rapids Lodge, on east side of highway, 63.52911, -145.85873
The original Black Rapids Lodge sits abandoned with views of the glacier across the street that once threatened it. In 1936-37, Black Rapids Glacier surged forward at a rate of about 250 feet a day. The lodge owners packed up and moved high, but the glacier, nicknamed the galloping glacier, eventually halted its advance and receded … for now.
4. River be dammed
Access across from Black Rapids overlook, 63.50283, -145.86127
You’ll need to follow trail several feet. There is a trail sign and a turnout.
During the last 3,000 years, the Black Rapids Glacier surged forward and dammed the Delta River, diverting its flow into a mountain side. The flow carved a gorge beside the mountain that filled with the picture-perfect Rapids Lake after the glacier receded.
5. That’s a glacier?
Turnout near Castner Creek, 63.40245, -145.73461
Stop at the turnout to view from the car or take a short hike.
A lot of gravel and vegetation cover Castner Glacier, making it easy to miss. During this trip,
Castner Creek was still frozen and made a good, if sloshy, path to follow alongside the glacier where you could hear little waterfalls trickle down the glacial ice into melt pools. It was also a great place to play banjo. Never travel on a glacier unless you are with an experienced guide. Crevasses and holes make glaciers dangerous.
6. The mother of all Alaska faults
Turnout near the pipeline, 63.3863, -145.73147
You can see it from the road and a turnout with an interpretive sign.
It once created an earthquake felt in Seattle. It stretches westward to the base of Denali — the tallest mountain in the nation. The Denali Fault is a type of tear in the Earth’s crust that arcs more than 400 miles across Interior Alaska. From the turnout, you can view the trans-Alaska oil pipeline where it has been engineered to cross the fault without breaking during inevitable earthquakes.
7. A rocky rainbow
Turnout near Rainbow Ridge, 63.28533, -145.66075,
Site of rock glacier, 63.29129, -145.66018
Can be seen from the car or turnout.
Rainbow Ridge is a magnificent slope of colorful rock that soars high above the highway. Two light-colored lobes stand out from the dark browns and reds. The lobes are rock glaciers, whose cores are made of ice-cemented debris that slowly creeps forward. Summer is the best time to see them, although they are there year-round.
8. Marking time with ashes
Off a dirt road from Richardson Highway, 63.20582, -145.51565
As you travel on the dirt road leading to Gulkana Glacier, you will notice mountains to the left. On one you can see a light-colored splotch contrasting with dark browns. The splotch is 
ancient volcanic ash from an explosive eruption in the Wrangell Mountains 5 million years ago. Scientists use the ash — called tephra —to help date events along the Denali Fault captured in the rocks both above and below the ash.
See a Google map with waypoints, more pictures and descriptions at http://bit.ly/2pu6OtQ.
More than 300 fourth graders from the Anchorage School District will gather at Westchester Lagoon on May 16-18 to receive hands-on learning about what it takes for salmon to survive and complete their life cycle in the city’s Chester Creek watershed and other urban streams. It’s part of the district’s effort to boost science, technology, engineering and math education.
Media are invited to cover the event on the morning of May 16. Buses with students from College Gate, Inlet View and Nunaka Valley elementary schools are scheduled to arrive at 10 a.m.
With help from Alaska Sea Grant through its Alaska Seas and Watersheds curriculum, the students have learned about their watershed and the salmon life cycle during classroom instruction. They have visited the stream nearest their school to apply their knowledge to determine if salmon can survive there.
During their visit to Westchester Lagoon, students will collect water quality data and macro-invertebrates in the lagoon, upstream from where Chester Creek flows into Cook Inlet. They will also observe juvenile salmon captured in minnow traps, and learn about the human history that has changed the area in ways that have both harmed and helped salmon. Westchester Lagoon is where freshwater meets saltwater, both of which salmon need to survive, so it provides an excellent location to promote marine literacy among Anchorage students.
This learning event is part of the Anchorage School District’s Watershed Education Program developed by the Anchorage School District STEM Department in partnership with Alaska Sea Grant, Alaska Geographic, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the 4-H program of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service, Get Outdoors Anchorage, and the Anchorage Parks Foundation.
Alaska Sea Grant is a statewide marine research, education, and outreach program, and is a partnership between the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program agents provide assistance that helps Alaskans wisely use, conserve and enjoy marine and coastal resources.
Changing food sources, shrinking ice, increasing diseases and invading southern species are taking their toll on Arctic marine animals. A new report from the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna, the Arctic Council’s biodiversity working group, suggests ways to monitor such changes across the Arctic.
The 60 international experts in CAFF’s Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Network included Russ Hopcroft, Katrin Iken and Eric Collins from the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.
The experts compiled the State of the Arctic Marine Biodiversity Report, which identifies trends in key marine species and highlights gaps in monitoring of several ecosystem components: sea-ice organisms, plankton, sea-bottom life, marine fishes, seabirds and marine mammals. Changes in these areas indicate changes in the overall marine environment.
Expert committees sifted through existing data on Arctic marine species, including seasonality, abundance, distribution and diversity. They discussed similarities and differences in international approaches to monitoring key species and used this information to recommend future monitoring.
The benthic team focused on bottom-dwelling animals, including sea stars and clams. Iken noted that some countries, such as Norway, Iceland and Greenland, operate formal benthic monitoring programs. Others, such as the U.S., Russia and Canada, tend to gather information project-by-project. The differences posed challenges for the benthic analysis, Iken said.
The benthic experts worked to determine where their monitoring approaches had common ground. Small variations in gear or methods, like differences in the mesh size of collection nets, can affect species measurements and research results. Even the naming of species is not always consistent across countries.
“If you’re looking to determine how a species’ range is changing over time, knowing what everyone calls that species is critical,” Iken explained. “We understand that we’ll never all do exactly the same thing, but this process has helped us evaluate when we can confidently compare our approaches, and when we need to be careful before we make any kind of comparisons.”
The plankton team said a central repository of plankton data sets would help in comparing methods and results. A lack of long-term data limits understanding of plankton distribution and community composition, they found.
“It is through repeated and ongoing sampling that we can begin to understand how species are changing,” Hopcroft said. “Long-term monitoring efforts can also reveal how efficient our methodology is in actually detecting plankton shifts.”
As in benthic analysis, countries have developed specialized regional approaches to monitoring plankton. The experts evaluated these to learn how processes can be improved.
“Plankton tend to rapidly reflect changes in ecosystem physics, but the challenge remains having enough data to see cycles or changes through the noise created by year-to-year variability within each region,” said Hopcroft. “Nonetheless, 70 years of observations in the Chukchi Sea suggest long-term increases in plankton productivity associated with decreasing ice cover and increasing temperatures.”
The sea ice biota team focused on microscopic bacteria, algae, and animals living in sea ice. This proved to be challenging, Collins explained, as researchers are still working to establish a baseline understanding of what kind of microbes live in the ice.
“The big takeaway for our team was that there’s essentially no monitoring for microbes that’s ongoing in the Arctic,” Collins said. “This is partially because we don’t have a solid understanding of the species in the region. Knowing what to expect when we go to a particular region to study is important, before we can branch into the monitoring realm.”
The sea ice team focused its discussion on strategies for developing sea ice microbe programs in existing research projects and exploring new ways to collaborate and standardize monitoring processes.
Refer to the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program’s Marine Expert Networks for more information. A link to the CAFF report is available at https://www.arcticbiodiversity.is/press-sambr.
In the early going of my second hike across Alaska along the route of the trans-Alaska pipeline, I chose to walk the highway rather than the pipe’s route to get up Thompson Pass north of Valdez. The road added six miles to our day. But I tried the pipe route up the pass 20 years ago and it was like trying to climb a 90-meter ski jump.
Most of my mileage so far on this trip has been on the shoulder of the Richardson Highway. The pipeline pad here in the mountains is still deep with punchy snow. You’d think a guy would have checked that out before starting.
The road, surprisingly, is quite pleasant. Cora doesn’t seem to mind being leashed. And only about 10 cars and trucks pass us each hour. Is Alaska becoming the land gone lonesome, with people headed down the Alaska Highway and moving out? I’ve seen a good number of U-Hauls. Or is it not Memorial Day yet?
If the people are still on their way in, the birds have beat them to the party. One, the Wilson’s snipe, forced me to stuff in earplugs while camping near Worthington Glacier.
On a crisp moonlit night, the snipes sliced through the mountain air with their winnowing call. It’s a bit spooky, like hysterical laughter that starts and ends soft but is loud in the middle. I’m pretty sure Cora never heard it before. She sat up a few times with pointy ears trying to figure it out. She gave up after a few hours.
A snipe makes that sound not with its throat but its tail. During breeding display swoops, the bird forces air through its outer tail feathers and generates sound. Anna’s hummingbirds generate a musical pop in the same fashion during their courting arcs through the air.
So what’s a shorebird like a snipe doing at the toe of a glacier, where most of the ground is covered in two feet of snow? These birds with beaks as long as pencils, some from as far south as Panama, are in the alpine to feed on the creatures living in the mud of the marshy areas up here and to have their babies. Summer is short.
Migrant birds are flooding into the high country of Alaska, and everywhere else in the state. Sitting here at an airstrip near Worthington Glacier, I hear the first three notes of the Sesame Street theme (“sun-ny day”). It’s the song of golden-crowned sparrows fresh up from the California coast. A fox sparrow that might have wintered in Pensacola, Florida, is doing his part to fill the soundscape, too.
The ptarmigan, cackling manically, must wonder what to make of all these visitors.
I’m all for them, even if they keep me awake. They are flooding the territory, and from the ground this country feels pretty big.
I’m happy to report a few successful encounters with one of the most dangerous animals we will encounter. Cora’s dog friend Freya returned to us early in the trip with a solitary porcupine quill protruding from her nose. We pulled it out with a set of hemostat pliers, but it took Chris, Ian and me holding her.
Since then, we’ve seen a few more porkys. They have Tina Turner hair of quills and seem as big as small bears.
Those hardy guys survived without hibernating all winter, clinging to spruce trees and eating their needles and bark, which are toxic to most other organisms. That is obvious when you crunch a needle that fell into your oatmeal.
So far, Cora has only barked at them and has come back when I called. Maybe she saw her buddy being wrestled and came to the conclusion that some things aren’t worth sticking your nose in.
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.
A University of Alaska faculty team will develop a new scholarship program to support Alaskans who want to become secondary science, technology, engineering and math teachers.
A $74,000 National Science Foundation grant will allow the team to build the plan for a Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program at the University of Alaska. The program will provide full scholarships to support Alaska STEM majors as they earn their teaching certificates.
“Students tell us over and over again that they need financial support for enrolling in a full-time teacher education program,” said Ute Kaden, one of the project leads and chair of the University of Alaska Fairbanks secondary education program. “Currently there are little to no funds available to support students who want to become teachers in Alaska.”
The state has a large number of small rural schools that grapple with high teacher turnover and an increasing demand for STEM instructors. Rural schools often have only one teacher responsible for teaching all the STEM subjects across multiple grade levels.
Kaden said the state needs innovative ways to increase the number of Alaska-educated STEM teachers. The team’s plan will draw on teacher preparation and STEM experts throughout the UA system to ensure that people who want to become teachers can get the educational resources they need at their home universities.
“This collaborative approach built on the expertise and resources of all three UA campuses will be sustainable and attractive,” Kaden said. “It has the potential to increase the number of Alaska-educated STEM teachers in a fiscally responsible, non-disruptive way.”
Other project leads include Steffi Ickert-Bond from the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Deborah Lo and Virgil Fredenberg from the University of Alaska Southeast.
The team will study successful programs at other universities, such as the UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin. The model started in 1997 as a student-focused way to recruit STEM majors and prepare them to become teachers. Now in its 20th year, Ickert-Bond said, UTeach has been implemented at 44 universities in 21 states and the District of Columbia.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Ute Kaden at 907-474-5721 or via email at ukaden@alaska.edu. Steffi Ickert-Bond at 907-747-6277 or via email at smickertbond@alaska.edu.
Twenty years ago, I was 34 when I walked away from a chain-link fence near Port Valdez and headed east. Those were the first steps on a summer-long trip across Alaska.
In a few days, I will begin to retrace those steps. This summer, I will try to again walk from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay along the gravel path that parallels the trans-Alaska pipeline.
The first journey, with my chocolate Labrador retriever Jane, occupied my whole summer of 1997, from early May until the end of August. With Jane, I ascended and descended the Chugach, Alaska and Brooks mountain ranges. We drank from creeks and rivers, fed a million mosquitoes and slept in a new place every night. We shared miles of trail with friends and family and did not set any speed records.
We walked for 120 days, from the time the geese were touching down until they left in big Vs. I wrote about that summer in a series of newspaper columns and a book, “Walking My Dog, Jane: From Valdez to Prudhoe Bay Along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.”
I’ll again be traveling with a dog, but my life is not as wrapped up in Cora as it was in Jane. This time I’ll also share some trail with wife Kristen and daughter Anna.
Why do it again? A few years ago, former UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers suggested I hike the trail at the 20-year anniversary. I had not thought of repeating the experience. For the most part, I agree with Talkeetna adventurer Dave Johnston’s philosophy: It’s a big world. Why do anything twice?
But I like returning to places, the nostalgia of remembered smells and sounds and images. Being outside is always appealing. I’m blessed with good health at 54. And, in 2017, my daughter is 10, just like my dog Jane was 10 during the last hike. Even if she’s not sure what to make of sometimes joining Dad’s summer plan, Anna comes alive when she’s outside and moving.
Like last time, I will try to send columns out every week. I haven’t yet figured how I’ll do that. My current plan is to bring an iPad mini and find a Wi-Fi signal when I can.
To again walk the trans-Alaska pipeline right of way over 800 miles of Alaska, I registered under what Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. calls a Right-Of-Way Use Guideline. It’s a piece of paper that allows me to access the right of way at my own risk, while requiring permission from private landowners the path crosses.
The loose plan is to cover about 8 miles a day, an increase from the 6 I averaged in 1997. I’ll hike with Cora, a peanut 3-year-old Lab-heeler mix. I’ll share miles with my girls and a few friends, some of whom covered the same ground with me in 1997.
What was it like in 1997? The Montreal Expos still existed. Bill Clinton just started term No. 2. The internet was a hatchling; answers came from a library rather than a touch screen. Spruce trees along the route were 20 feet shorter than they are today.
I’m maybe a little shorter now. Every cell in me has replaced itself since then. The biggest change from then to now is me as daddy and husband, both for more than a decade now.
And Alaska? I’ve been writing about the oversized peninsula for 20 years plus. I’m excited and anxious to get out and see the country pass at 2 miles per hour. Next week I’ll report from the tent, somewhere north of Valdez.
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.
PORT VALDEZ — We have launched on the pipeline hike version 2.0, 20 years after the first time.
I’m now sitting on the muscled root of a Sitka spruce by the pleasant rush of a creek. A bald eagle shrieks from the top of a tree nearby while a diesel ship engine thrums from the Valdez Marine Terminal a few miles away.
These rainforest woods, so different from my boreal forest home, have already given us shelter from cool, misty rain and a peek at the chestnut-backed chickadees’ few seconds of mating. Stately Steller’s jays have reintroduced themselves. Robins on their way north have practiced their songs a few notes at a time. The air smells salty, familiar and exotic at the same time to someone from middle Alaska.
To begin this trip, we have hiked all of two miles. “We” are my friends Chris Carlson and his son Ian from Fairbanks, along with their Labradoodle Freya. My dog Cora is thrilled to have her best friend along, untethered.
People we talked with in Valdez referred to this time as late winter. We are seeing why, with up to two feet of snow on the ground in places. It’s easy enough to tramp through but makes one wonder about the path through Thompson Pass, looming ahead.
My wife Kristen looked at the Valdez forecast on her phone as we drove to our take-off point.
“It says wintery mix of snow and rain the next few days,” she said. “No one likes a wintery mix.”
That forecast led to one more panic purchase of a light coat at The Prospector in Valdez and some new hiking boots for Ian.
So far, the wintry mix has stayed away. It is cool, and we’ve been walking through snow a lot, but Chris has also hung a speaker off his backpack and broadcast a Yankees game off his phone connection for me as I walked in his footprints. Life is good.
As I’ll be hiking up the ski-jump wall of the pipeline’s path up Thompson Pass soon, I expect no such magical cell tower connection. So, I’ll send a short column before I climb out of the rainforest and into the alpine.
Soon, I’ll say goodbye to Chris and Ian, who will drive back to Fairbanks as my family, Anna and Kristen, did a few days ago. I will walk alone with Cora for a while, maybe on the Richardson Highway to avoid some snow.
I’ll connect again when I can. By then, I will pitch the tent faster, run my mind slower and have more stories to tell. A slow trip across Alaska has begun. Thanks for coming along.
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell, who first hiked the trans-Alaska pipeline 20 years ago, is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.
There are a lot of ways to gather information about remote Alaska, including satellites, drones and helicoptering in to take field measurements. But Todd Brinkman also includes another approach: talking to the people who live there.
“I think working closely with communities results in stronger science,” said Brinkman, a University of Alaska Fairbanks assistant professor of wildlife ecology. “One of the main reasons I feel this way is they bring a very unique perspective to the conversation. They also are spending a lot of time out in the environment, interacting with the wildlife, and seeing some of these changes that we’re not going to see from our offices here at the university.”
Brinkman’s interest in involving local residents in framing and interpreting his research makes a lot of sense considering his scientific focus, which is on interactions between humans and wildlife. Brinkman estimates he is currently working on eight different projects, most of which in some way touch on the intersection between ecology and social science.
“In the field of wildlife management, we’ve largely ignored the human dimension, we’ve tried to look at these systems while isolating humans from them,” he said. “But I think that’s inappropriate because humans are influencing every natural system I can think of right now.”
Brinkman recently applied his research approach to the North Slope village of Nuiqsut, where he supplied subsistence hunters and fishers with camera-equipped GPS devices and asked them to take photos of environmental and social changes. The result was a database of more than 200 geotagged pictures and accompanying data documenting river erosion, wildlife locations, landscape changes from oil development, and even cultural events.
“It helped us understand what the community’s thinking about,” Brinkman noted. “It helped us better identify scientific research that we could conduct that would be of value to that area.”
The hunters’ observations and comments led Brinkman and UAF biology graduate student Taylor Stinchcomb to launch a project to track the noise generated by aircraft around Nuiqsut hunting areas, and to study how it might affect the patterns of subsistence animals and hunters. Brinkman and Stinchcomb set up field microphones in 2015 and 2016, and were able to gather full data from 13 units during almost 90 days of recording. Brinkman said Stinchcomb is in the process of analyzing the results, which will be presented back to the Nuiqsut community and also shared with agencies.
“This has been a problem for 30 years, and there’s really been no effective way to address it, so we’re just trying to get some baseline information on where and when this aircraft traffic is occurring, to maybe advance the discussion a little bit,” Brinkman said.
Brinkman first came to UAF as a doctoral student in 2003 after receiving a bachelor’s degree in biology and environmental science at Minnesota State University and a master’s degree in wildlife science at South Dakota State University. He was hired as tenure-track faculty member at the Institute of Arctic Biology in 2014 through the Alaska EPSCoR program. He works as a key faculty member in EPSCoR’s Northern Test Case, which focuses on the ways Arctic villagers are responding to environmental change and burgeoning oil and gas development.
But the Arctic is just a small part of Brinkman’s research focus. His projects are varied — refining a technique for locating polar bear dens, examining the impacts of Southeast Alaska logging on deer habitat, and studying the impacts of climate change on traditional harvests in Interior and Western Alaska communities. He’s also engaged in a NASA project that resembles his work in Nuiqsut but which focuses on the ways that climate change affects access to subsistence resources in Interior villages.
When asked to find the common threads in his projects, Brinkman can point to a few: large mammals, integrating the human dimension into ecological research, and also the fact that most of his research addresses contentious management issues. He says that’s a deliberate choice.
“Even though it’s being contentious can make for an uncomfortable work environment sometimes, the reason it’s contentious is because it’s important to people,” he said. “So you’re working on something that seems to matter.”
Scientists developing a project to study the Earth’s crust in China are looking toward EarthScope, a similar project in the U.S., as a model for multidisciplinary science and open data sharing.
Representatives from the SinoProbe project visited the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute this week after the 2017 EarthScope National Meeting in Anchorage. The 16 Chinese scientists toured the EarthScope National Office, which is housed at UAF, as well as other local research facilities.
The original SinoProbe project is winding down to make way for a new, larger version, called SinoProbe-II.
“It is part of a Chinese national priority to become the world leader in subsurface imaging by 2030,” said EarthScope National Office director and UAF geophysics professor Jeffrey Freymueller.
SinoProbe scientists wanted to learn about the U.S. program’s emphasis on research collaboration, data sharing and public involvement.
EarthScope data is available to the public on the internet, Freymueller said. That’s not the case with all of the SinoProbe data. It’s shared between participants and collaborators.
“SinoProbe scientists have told me ‘You guys can’t get rid of EarthScope — we use that data all the time,’” said Freymueller. “We are an example of best practices on how we deal with open data.”
SinoProbe-II is one part of large, ongoing scientific and infrastructure investments made by the Chinese government. For example, imaging information from SinoProbe complements the building of new subway lines; this geophysical information is especially important because one to two new lines are installed each year in Beijing alone, according to Freymueller.
“In terms of scientific advancement, essentially it is just a matter of time before they exceed us,” said Freymueller.
Because the Chinese are investing so much in science, this visit is not only a good opportunity to show off EarthScope’s work but also to pave the way to future collaboration, Freymueller said.
In addition to touring the EarthScope office, the group met with staff of the Alaska Earthquake Center and Alaska Volcano Observatory. GI researchers also took them on tours of the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility and the Geophysical Institute’s Poker Flat Research Range.
“The more we tell them about the GI, the more we may open potential doors to meet and collaborate in the future,” said Freymueller.
ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Jeffrey Freymueller, 907-474-7286, jfreymueller@alaska.edu
ON THE WEB: EarthScope Project: http://www.earthscope.org/
Even a casual Google search for the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, better known as HAARP, can get really strange, really fast.
HAARP attracts more attention than the average scientific research facility, likely because of its focus on an obscure area of the atmosphere called the ionosphere. This has led to misunderstandings about the purpose of the HAARP facility, said Chris Fallen, UAF research assistant professor in space physics and aeronomy.
HAARP cannot control the weather, contrary to one conspiracy theory. It has too little power and affects a different part of the atmosphere, Fallen said.
Neither can it manipulate our brains, as alleged by another theory. Generally, space physicists focus on regions more than 60 miles above our heads, where HAARP’s radio waves are 100 times weaker than those from mobile phones, he said.
What HAARP can do is heat small regions of the ionosphere and observe the effects. Often HAARP research is conducted during campaigns, where scientists gather and operate the facility’s ionospheric heating instrument to conduct experiments for a few hours each over the course of several days.
During the recent HAARP campaign in February, Fallen learned that public interest in the facility is more broad and positive than previously thought.
“When you look on Google, the top 10 results are almost all conspiracy theories, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that is most of the interest” in HAARP, Fallen said.
While Fallen’s main objective is to study HAARP’s artificial aurora, his secondary goal is to increase access to reliable information about the facility.
“Most of the real information about HAARP is contained in open academic literature that Google does not usually present in typical searches,” he said.
Fallen used social media earlier this year to alert the public to when the ionospheric heating instrument would be operating and at what frequency. During the four-day campaign, Fallen’s Twitter account and website had 10,000 unique visitors.
“I was surprised by the magnitude of the interest,” Fallen said. “My Twitter account went from an account with about zero traffic — my mom, maybe — to a large increase during the campaign.”
The opportunity to listen to HAARP generated a lot of attention. Hundreds of people sent reports of their audio observations to Fallen via Twitter, and many posted recordings of HAARP transmissions on YouTube. When websites that function as interfaces to digital radios became overloaded, helpful HAARP enthusiasts broadcasted the transmissions over YouTube Live.
“It was cool to see how many people were really engaged and enthusiastic about it,” Fallen said.
Many people were also interested in seeing the effects of HAARP in the sky. Because HAARP interacts with the same area of the atmosphere that creates the aurora, scientists can use the HAARP instrument to create airglow or artificial aurora. Photographers with equipment sensitive enough to capture the natural aurora can photograph the airglow created by HAARP.
While researchers were able to create an artificial aurora during the most recent campaign, and Fallen used Google Earth to communicate the approximate location of the airglow, he knows of no successful public photograph of the phenomena. According to Fallen, the airglow was probably too dim to capture due to equipment, ionosphere and weather conditions.
HAARP’s February campaign was the first conducted since the facility transferred to UAF ownership. Originally, HAARP was a program jointly managed by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. When the military no longer needed the equipment and planned to shut down operations, the keys to the facility were passed to UAF. Since August 2015, UAF has been responsible for operations and maintenance of the remote research station, originally developed at a cost of about $290 million, pending final transfer from the USAF.
The February campaign included researchers from Cornell, Virginia Tech, Los Alamos National Lab, Naval Research Lab and UAF. Researchers from all over the world are interested in using the HAARP facility because it offers a way to look at what is happening in a region of space that is hard to study, Fallen said.
The ionosphere affects long-distance radio communication, GPS navigation, and satellite communications and radar. Though the heating energy from HAARP is a tiny fraction of the energy that routinely comes from the sun, the ability to control and time the heating process allows scientists to conduct research more effectively.
If the idea of heating a portion of the atmosphere sounds a bit jarring, don’t worry: The effects of its operation are minimal and dissipate within seconds to minutes of turning off HAARP’s instrument.
“It’s like putting a space heater in your backyard on a cold day,” said Fallen. “If you put your hand right in front of it, it feels hot. But when you turn the heater off, the warmth goes away quite quickly.”
Fallen believes that the more the public interacts with HAARP, observing its effects for themselves, the more it will become clear: There really are stranger things out there than the HAARP facility.
Alaska Sea Grant and partners have placed five fellows in one-year positions with state and federal agencies in Alaska. The aim is to advance the fellows’ careers as well as support marine and fisheries policy in Alaska.
The State Fellowship program helps to strengthen Alaska’s workforce dedicated to healthy fisheries, coastal communities and ecosystems by encouraging recipients to begin their careers in Alaska.
Chelsea Clawson, who is earning her master’s degree in fisheries at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, will take a job at the U.S. Geological Survey, while Genevieve Johnson, also in the fisheries master’s program at UAF, will work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center.
The North Pacific Research Board and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Landscape Conservation Cooperative have created a joint position for Liza Mack, who is nearly finished with her Ph.D. in indigenous studies at UAF.
Danielle Meeker, completing her master of advanced studies in climate science and policy at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will take a job at the Alaska Office of the Lieutenant Governor. Kim Ovitz, earning her master’s in fisheries at the University of Maine, will work at NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service.
The new Alaska Sea Grant State Fellows will start their jobs between July 1 and late September 2017.
The fellowship matches highly motivated and qualified graduate students and recent graduates with hosts in state or federal agencies in Alaska for 12-month paid positions.
The program is modeled after the Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship, which places young professionals in federal agencies in Washington, D.C., or in Congress. Both fellowships provide experience and networking opportunities that help recipients to transition from academic study to the working world.
Alaska Sea Grant is a statewide marine research, education and outreach program, and is a partnership between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and NOAA. Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program agents help Alaskans wisely use, conserve and enjoy marine and coastal resources. Learn more at www.alaskaseagrant.org.
University of Alaska President Jim Johnsen announced today that has selected Daniel White to become the eighth chancellor of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. White will succeed UAF Interim Chancellor Dana Thomas and will assume his new position on July 1.
White, a Fairbanksan with a long university career, is currently vice president for academic affairs and research for the University of Alaska system. He joined UAF’s faculty in 1995 as a professor of civil and environmental engineering. He then served in successive administrative roles within UAF. In 2005, White accepted an appointment as interim director of the Institute of Northern Engineering, the research unit of UAF’s College of Engineering and Mines. After a national search, he was hired as director of INE in July 2006. In 2010, he was appointed as the associate vice chancellor for research. With this appointment, he became head of the Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization. In late 2014, White was named interim vice chancellor for research at UAF and in March 2015 he became the UA System vice president for academic affairs and research.
“I am so pleased to announce this appointment,” Johnsen said. “Dan brings a depth of knowledge about the university from many perspectives. From his work in the classroom and his role in innovation and commercialization of intellectual property to his administrative leadership in research and academic affairs, he will be a huge asset to UAF faculty, staff and students.”
He stood out, Johnsen said, from a pool of highly qualified candidates. The selection committee received 24 applications and invited four finalists to Fairbanks. Of those four, White was the only candidate from Alaska. After a rigorous round of public forums and meetings with staff, faculty, students and Johnsen, the choice was clear, Johnsen said. “Dan White is the person who can best lead UAF forward in these challenging times.”
As a registered professional engineer in the State of Alaska, White’s expertise in sanitary engineering led him to conduct research on drinking water protection, development and treatment. While pursuing issues related to freshwater in the Arctic, he spent considerable time in rural villages and remote locations. White pioneered research on how climate change affects drinking water, water resources and related infrastructure, and his work has led to a better understanding of water resources for rural communities and the potential impacts of climate change.
“It’s an honor to be asked to serve as chancellor at UAF,” White said. “I am committed to the institution and its faculty, staff and students. I will seek to foster strong relationships throughout the state and build on UAF’s status as the world’s premier Arctic research university. As a leader in innovation, we will seek to do more to commercialize developments, supporting our local and state economy. Even while we serve as the state’s research university, UAF will continue to serve a critical role in Alaska’s rural communities and Fairbanks through its community and technical education.
White’s salary will be $300,000, which is the amount earned by UAF’s previous three chancellors and interim chancellors.
White earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Colorado College and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Washington University. He received his doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1995.
White and his wife Ann Marie have lived and worked in Fairbanks since 1995 and have two children.
Outgoing Interim Chancellor Dana Thomas will leave the chancellor post on June 30. Johnsen praised Thomas’s leadership of UAF during the past year, citing his commitment to students and faculty and his insight into the budget issues facing the university.
When I walked this same path 20 years ago, I averaged six miles each day. After a few weeks in 2017 of hiking the path of the trans-Alaska pipeline, it seems easy to do 10 miles a day.
Back then, sometimes my backpack weighed 60 pounds. I’m trying to keep it half that weight now. I started from Valdez with a load of 32 pounds.
Most of the reduction is due to clever people who have engineered lighter gear because consumers wanted it, and because of breakthroughs in materials available to designers.
Jay Cable of Fairbanks pointed me to a few of my biggest weight savers. He recommended a single-compartment backpack that resembles a stuff sack (no extra bag on top, few pockets, not much padding on the hips or shoulder straps). It is about one quarter the weight of the external frame pack I used in 1997.
Jay also recommended my three-person nylon tent. It’s roomy enough to squeeze in three people and has been a luxury for just me and Cora in the early going. The fabric is breathtakingly delicate, not much thicker than tissue paper. The zippers seem like they belong on a windbreaker. I’ve held my breath a few times while shoving it into its bag, but so far so good. The tent weighs less than four pounds.
Another weight saver has been my water purifier, a sterilizing pen that magically kills bad things in the mountain and swamp water I’ve been drinking. It performs this function with a dose of ultraviolet light. It’s one-third the weight of the pump filter with a ceramic core I used last time.
Because we live in a golden era of worldwide shipping, when I sit against a black spruce, I eat apricots from Turkey and dried mangos from the Philippines, almonds from California and cranberries from Massachusetts. I bought them all at Fairbanks stores and made them part of my food drops.
My menu is quite similar to 20 years ago, with two notable improvements. One is instant coffee in single-serving packs. The other is Alaska-based freeze-dried foods; there is no treat that tops smoked sockeye salmon chowder at the end of the day.
For all the innovations I carry, my communications equipment weighs three times as much as it did in 1997. Then, I had a palmtop computer that ran on AA batteries. I needed to find a phone line to send these columns, but the computer was the size of a paperback book and weighed less.
Now I’m carrying my first-ever cell phone, a tablet that doesn’t like the cold and a pocket camera. All are hungry for electricity, which my friend John Arntz gifted me in the form of a portable battery charger the size of two cell phones pressed together. All of these electronics are much heavier than the setup 20 years ago but allow me to send columns from the tent when there is a cellular signal.
My right front pants pocket holds a digital camera. With a large memory card, the number of photos I can take seems infinite. That’s quite a change from 20 years ago, when I shot slide film in groups of 24 and 36 and did not see the shots until weeks, sometimes months later.
My favorite new gizmo by far is my pocket GPS with color maps installed. It also allows me to communicate by satellite anytime, anywhere.
The GPS has been my little orange friend on lonely stretches. It sends a blip to satellites every few hours so people can track me. It has also allowed me to check in with my wife every night, and chat during the day with John and other friends. Biologist Susan Sharbaugh has faithfully sent me baseball scores every night from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Yay.
Twenty years ago, there was no help available from intelligent hunks of plastic and metal orbiting 500 miles overhead. What will the next 20 years bring?
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.
Download text and photo captions here.
In a cramped workshop at his home near Fox, Orion Lawlor is working to develop the technology that could someday allow people to live on Mars.
Lawlor’s creations are modest — small plastic beams and thin, hollow cylinders that can be filled with powdered rock. But items like those, which are created by his one-of-a-kind 3-D printer, may eventually become the components for creating habitat in space.
The creations earned Lawlor, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a winning entry in the most recent phase of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge in May. That included a prize of $14,070 from the U.S. space agency, which is seeking innovative ways to build structures on distant planets.
Lawlor was one of only two winners in the first phase of the global competition, even though he has no background in architecture or civil engineering. The other was Foster + Partners, a multinational architecture firm.
“I’m certainly working outside my area,” Lawlor said with a smile. “I pretty much write code for a living.”
Despite that inexperience as a builder, Lawlor said he was intrigued after hearing about the NASA challenge last fall. He taught a robotics and 3-D printing course at UAF a few years ago, and got some construction advice from UAF student Alexander Medeiros, who graduated this spring with a mechanical engineering degree.
Lawlor’s homemade 3-D printer, called the Alaska90, is a monument to do-it-yourself construction. The device, which he designed on a computer, mainly includes components made by a smaller 3-D printer. They work alongside improvised materials such as steel rods from a foosball handle, a large plastic funnel and reused vitamin containers hanging from strings.
The competition is rooted in the reality of lengthy space missions: Astronauts probably won’t have the luxury of bringing many building materials on a long, expensive journey.
“We’ve done space exploration where you bring it all — food, water, everything — but NASA has realized that’s just not sustainable,” Lawlor said.
Instead, the foundation of the NASA contest is to use what’s available when astronauts arrive at their destination, using a 3-D printer as a primary building tool. That involves crushed basalt dust, which would probably be abundant on the surface of a moon or planet, and the leftover plastic food packaging that would be needed to supply a ship’s crew on a six-month trip to Mars. Resources on Mars could conceivably be used to make additional plastics after astronauts were settled. The contest requires the use of at least 70 percent rock dust and as much as 30 percent plastic in the designs.
For his entry in the competition, Lawlor used computer software to design a large 3-D printer, then made its components with a smaller printer. He said much larger “scaled up” designs capable of printing buildings could be made by repeating that process over and over.
The next phases of the NASA competition will come later this summer, including the design and construction of a load-bearing 3-D printed beam. The lessons learned from those efforts will ultimately be used to build a near 5-foot-wide dome during a head-to-head competition in Illinois in September.
The project could also have applications much closer to home. One of the sponsors of the NASA competition is the machinery company Caterpillar, which is intrigued by the possibilities of 3-D printed construction. In a webinar outlining the rules of the competition, Caterpillar producer Mike Dimmick said the competition could have implications for building both on distant planets and here on Earth.
“We think this is a chance to be part of something truly exciting and also truly forward thinking,” Dimmick said.
Lawlor is skeptical that any of his designs will be directly sent to Mars someday, but he is excited to be part of a competition that could help build and tune the technology needed to reach that goal. After studying the issue, he said using automation to create buildings on Mars feels like it could be possible soon.
The project meshes well with an unrelated NASA project Lawlor has been working on with a group of students. They’re creating a robotic vehicle that will mine dust, which could become the key ingredient in building materials on Mars.
“It actually seems surprisingly plausible to be building infrastructure up there,” he said.
Nothing makes Greg Shipman and his colleagues happier than a challenge.
“We have to be ready for whatever walks through that door,” said Shipman, manager of the machine shop at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.
Often, that means creating something mechanical for scientists. Earlier this spring, their work took a more prosthetic turn. A radiologist at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital asked the crew to create a 3-D plastic model of a 12-year-old’s thigh bone, or femur. The model would allow the surgeon assigned to the child’s case to visualize how the surgery would be completed.
For this patient, it was particularly important that the femur be properly aligned. Just a few degrees of rotation could mean the difference between normal knee function and long-term instability of the kneecap. The measurement would have to be very precise — something that is difficult to achieve using two dimensional CT scan images, according to Keir Fowler, the FMH radiologist who worked with Shipman.
“You don’t see the whole bone on any particular image, so it’s hard to do highly precise measurements,” said Fowler. “We also wanted to compare how one femur looked to the other side, so that you can get a nice matching alignment.”
Fowler compared this project to the field of engineering, where scientists frequently have to build prototypes to test their ideas.
“If you have a set of schematics and diagrams that’s all well and good, but to actually determine if a working model is going to function properly, you have to make a model and do demos,” Fowler said.
When Fowler spoke with Shipman, they only had one week before the surgeon was scheduled to operate. To further complicate the process, no one was allowed inside the Elvey Building that weekend due to a construction project. The equipment, the printers and the computers were all moved from the machine shop in the basement of the Elvey Building to the Akasofu Building next door so that the team could get to work creating the model.
The 3-D printers operate in much the same way as CT scans, Shipman said. A bone scan is made up of a series of slices that, when stacked upon each other, make the full bone. The printer builds the bone model by extruding or “printing” layers of thin plastic until the model is complete.
It’s a much simpler process than the traditional methods used by machinists, which entails carving a solid chunk of metal or plastic, Shipman said. “With 3-D printing, you still have to design, but you can design almost without limitation — anything you can draw you can print.”
That technology allowed the machine shop team to complete the model in just a few days. The surgeon received it on a Monday — just in time to review the model before the Tuesday morning surgery.
“Think about that — you could help this kid walk properly the rest of his life,” said Jesse Atencio, a technician with the GI’s Research Computing Systems. “The concept is so abstract. You know you’re printing out [a model of] something real that is inside that person’s body … it’s something you can hold and look at all sides of.”
The 3-D printers are mainly used for projects at the Geophysical Institute and UAF in general. However, the possibility of further collaboration with the hospital remains.
“This is the kind of collaboration that makes it really valuable to have resources like this available in a town like Fairbanks,” Atencio said. “Without the university this kind of thing would not be possible.”
A new exhibit at the University of Alaska Museum of the North tells the story of an Alaska woman whose love of polar bears and passion for the North led to an extraordinary collection. Polar Passion, now on display in the museum’s Special Exhibits Gallery, contains a select portion of the artwork that Grace Schaible has collected over the past several decades.
A longtime Alaska lawyer, as well as the state’s first female attorney general, Grace Schaible has donated hundreds of works of art to the museum. She also amassed one of the largest collections of polar bear artwork in the world, including hundreds of sculptures, prints and paintings.
Mareca Guthrie, fine arts curator at the UA Museum of the North, said Schaible’s collection includes artwork by nearly every well-known Alaska painter and printmaker from a 40-year span of the state’s history. “It was challenging to select only a small portion of her collection to display for this exhibition,” she said.
“I was particularly excited to showcase part of her extraordinary collection of Inuit artwork from Nunavut and the Northwest Territories in Canada. These prints and drawings are internationally recognized for their cultural and artistic significance. To my knowledge, the museum has never held an exhibition of them before.”
In 2015, Schaible donated more than 800 pieces to the museum, including prints, paintings, photographs, sculptures, carvings, drawings and collectibles that had been on display in her home and former law office. The donations range from Alaska Native and Inuit art to original oil paintings, as well as what she called “cutesy” items.
Angela Linn, senior collections manager of ethnology and history, said it’s important to preserve these objects at the UA Museum of the North. “Some of the pieces meet our goal of having a full representation of the arts of Alaska’s indigenous peoples, including walrus ivory carvings from Iñupiaq, St. Lawrence Island Yupik and Yup’ik artists in the state.
“The collectibles are important also, as they represent a more popular view of polar bears. Examinations of how the polar bear is depicted by both serious artists and pop culture can provide insights into the public perception of this iconic Northern creature.”
Many of the artworks on exhibit in the museum’s permanent galleries were donated by Schaible, including “Arctic Shadow,” the large bronze sculpture of a polar bear by Jacques and Mary Regat on display on the upper level, and paintings by Eustace Ziegler, Claire Fejes and other artists. The exhibit includes a walking tour brochure to help visitors find those.
Another feature of the exhibit is the story behind the “Ice Walker” Raven’s Tail robe woven by Sitka artist Teri Rofkar. Linn said Schaible commissioned the piece based on her friendship with the artist, even though polar bears are not a typical Tlingit theme.
The exhibit includes footage of Rofkar creating the robe and video of the 2015 Festival of Native Arts when the robe was worn on stage by a traditional dancer. “I’m particularly happy that we’re featuring that footage,” Linn said. “The robe represents Grace’s love of polar bears, from the fur around the top to the colors used. It took a year for the artist to create the robe, which has been featured in the Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery since it opened in 2006.”
Schaible is one of the university’s most generous supporters. She has endowed scholarships and helped raise millions of dollars for the museum. The University of Alaska Fairbanks named her one of just three Philanthropists of the Century this year.
Guthrie said Schaible’s interest in the museum began when she was an undergraduate at UAF in 1945. “She was instrumental in moving the museum to its current location in 1980 and again with the expansion in 2005. The museum wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for Grace. It is an honor to be showcasing a portion of her collection and presenting information about her legacy with the museum and the university.”
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Mareca Guthrie, fine arts curator, at 907-687-9132 or mrguthrie@alaska.edu, and Angela Linn, senior collections manager of ethnology and history, at 907-474-1828 or ajlinn@alaska.edu
ON THE WEB: www.uaf.edu/museum/exhibits/special-exhibits/polar-passion
Who is this girl, hair in braids, emerging from the tent with a full backpack?
She is 10 years old, a recent fourth-grade graduate, out here with a friend from her class. Within the 20-year-old tent they share, they stay up for hours, chatting and giggling. It is mountain music.
The girl, my daughter Anna, spoke to me a few days ago as I walked beside her.
“I’m never coming out here again to hike the pipeline,” she said. “You made a bad decision.”
At the time, it was hard to debate with her. Forty mile-per-hour winds shoved us, drilling raindrops into our cheeks. The girl is good at arguing. I tell her she would be a good lawyer, though I hope she does not pursue that line of work.
The two girls, Anna and Salak Crowe, were hiking the path of the trans-Alaska pipeline with me, their moms, and my friend Andy Sterns. For nine days, they joined me through the Alaska Range, from Meiers Lake to Black Rapids.
Their 60 miles of trail featured the worst weather I’ve felt in one month of hiking. Sub-freezing temperatures each night. Rain, wind and graupel pellets during the day. One morning we woke to 3 fresh inches of snow.
We adults were freaking out. How are we going to keep the girls warm? The first three days, we broke the golden rule, handing the girls bowls of oatmeal through the tent flap. We fretted about hot chocolate spills on sleeping bags.
But when it came time to hike, the girls popped out of their tent with backpacks full and boots on. A ready adult carrying bear spray would get them striding down the trail to warm up.
And there was one of my favorite images: the girls, leggy as newborn moose calves, walking hip to hip, talking, singing, never running out of things to say. Anna walks with a bounce in her step that reminds me of my younger brother. Salak has a light, pigeon-toed stride that looks like her father’s.
Their smiles and happy chatter warmed my wind-chilled heart. There were other times, of course, when Anna whined at the wind and her cold feet. She vocalized exactly what I was feeling. I had to walk away sometimes and let Kristen take over.
Our girl does not “suffer in silence” as my mom often requested of her five children. Anna is a lot like me, which leads to perhaps greater understanding but also a lower tolerance to our shared impatience.
During nine days of Aleutian weather, both girls impressed us. There is perhaps something to growing up Alaskan. River trips with real hazards of bears and splashy water. School playgrounds where 20 below is just something to dress for. Endless summer days with no school!
I didn’t have those elements growing up in a New York mill town. My parents did, however, take the five kids on camping trips to the Bertrands’ upstate property, and somehow to Maine in a Volkswagen bus. There the outdoor seeds were planted.
But this open-air world has been thrust upon Anna and Salak. Regardless of where they end up (Anna says she likes Brooklyn, where her aunt lives), the girls will be shaped by this place.
On this trip, they showed they belong. Led by Salak, who has a great sense for outdoor living, (shown when she placed rocks on her mittens so they wouldn’t blow away), they pitched their tent and lit the cook stove. Their hiking pace was as fast as the adults. They weathered the elements with less alarm than we did.
Hiking alongside Anna, I told her I want to be on the trail with just her and Cora later in the summer. I don’t want to force her along, and I’m indebted to Kristen allowing my selfish mission, but I think time alone with her will be fun for both of us.
“No,” Anna said. “I’m not coming back out with you. This is your trip, not mine.”
I did not argue with her logic. However, just like me, “no” is often her immediate response to a proposed plan. She needs a while for a notion to cook. Sometimes, she changes her mind.
A few days ago, I said goodbye to Kristen, Salak’s mom Jennifer, and the two girls, snug in the car as the wind rocked it where it sat next to the old Black Rapids Lodge. Just before I continued down the trail with Andy and Cora, the car door swung open.
Out ran Anna. She jumped in my arms for a hug.
“So, will you come out and see me again?” I asked.
“I’m thinking about it,” she said, squeezing me before climbing down. “Love you.”
A rising middle class, a growing economy and increasing concerns about food safety and pollution in China are creating opportunities for Alaska to sell more wild salmon to Chinese consumers, according to a new report.
Researchers with the University of Alaska and Purdue University completed a marketing study that indicates strong potential for increasing sales of Alaska salmon in China, the world’s second largest economy and the state’s No. 1 export market.
The study, called Consumer Preference and Market Potential for Alaska Salmon in China, was recently published by Alaska Sea Grant, a partnership between University of Alaska Fairbanks and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Due to China’s rapid economic expansion, the country’s growing middle class has increasing amounts of disposable income. The study’s authors found this burgeoning consumer segment desires and can afford high-end food products, including wild-caught Alaska salmon.
“The response to our survey in three major Chinese cities shows that consumers, if presented with more opportunities to purchase Alaska salmon, would favor the wild fish because of its health benefits, pristine source waters and sustainability,” said Quijie “Angie” Zheng, one of the study’s co-authors. Zheng teaches at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Researchers interviewed more than 1,000 shoppers in grocery stores in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou during June and July 2015.
Key findings:
ON THE WEB: http://bit.ly/2qU1Gxh
