Following the warmest March Alaskans have ever felt, forecasters are predicting a mellow transition from ice to water for most big rivers in the state.

Things don’t always go that way during spring breakup, when chunks of river ice freed from the cold grip of winter can lock up in river bends and back up water into communities.

Already this spring, weak river ice fractured and dissolved early enough to set new records in the Nenana and Kuskokwim ice classics. In both contests, people bet on when a tripod standing on nearby river ice will fall as the ice disintegrates.

“It’s remarkable that it’s April 23 and breakup has already started in many places,” said Crane Johnson of the National Weather Service’s Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center. He and University of Alaska Fairbanks climate scientist Rick Thoman gave a recent presentation on what Alaskans can expect for river breakup in 2019.

Residents of Alaska villages like Eagle on the Yukon River and Bethel on the Kuskokwim hold their breaths every year, wondering if spring ice jams will force cold river water into their homes. This year, at least on Alaska’s two largest rivers, there is a lower-than-normal threat of spring flooding, Johnson said.

He also said that due to cooler conditions and more snowfall along the Koyukuk River, in Northwest Alaska and on Alaska’s North Slope, there is a normal chance of spring flooding there.

In the recent past, many of Alaska’s major rivers would be blue-white and solid in late April. After a historic warm March and early April this year, many Alaska rivers have ice-free segments.

In one strange example, Johnson showed that the Kuskokwim River in mid-April had open water both in Bethel and hundreds of miles upriver, in Nikolai. Ice on big Alaska rivers has in the past broken up like a row of falling dominoes, with ice first melting upstream and then progressing downriver in a predictable fashion.

River ice is weak throughout the state, Johnson said, and people choosing to walk, snowmachine, drive or ski on it should take care.

“This year, you can’t travel to places you normally could during the last week of April,” he said.

Spring air temperatures are the most important factor in river breakup (just ahead of snowpack depth and thickness of river ice). Temperatures have been been very warm over most of Alaska, encouraging what researchers call a “thermal” breakup, during which ice rots and rivers flow on to the sea with little drama.

“Dynamic” breakups happen when spring temperatures stay cool until they suddenly warm, flushing snowmelt onto river ice. This pulse can shove chunks of ice together to create a dam that pinches a river’s flow, causing water to ooze over riverbanks. In late May 2013, an ice dam at Bishop Rock backed Yukon River water into Galena and flooded every building in town.

With many rivers in late April 2019 already starting to mush out, the scientists at the river forecast center predict low flood potential for almost every village in Alaska. They will fine-tune their predictions in early May, when their “River Watch” team of pilots and meteorologists fly small planes above Alaska rivers and eyeball known ice-dam spots.

River transitions from solid to liquid are a big deal in a state that has fewer miles of paved road than Vermont. A longer open-water season means villagers can fire their outboard motors later in the fall and earlier in spring, but Thoman pointed out that a spring like this one might both give and take away boat travel.

“Once snowmelt gets going, you think that’s it,” he said. “But then it backs up and goes from water to snow-covered ice again. The ice is too thin to snowmachine on and you can’t boat. Is this a feature of our new climate?”

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.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has announced the students named to the deans’ and chancellor’s lists for the fall 2018 semester. The lists recognize students’ outstanding academic achievements.

Students receiving a 3.9 grade point average or higher are placed on the chancellor’s list, while those receiving a grade point average of between 3.5 and 3.89 are named to the deans’ list.

UAF is a Land, Sea and Space Grant institution, and is the leading doctoral degree-granting institution in the state of Alaska. Since it was founded in 1917, UAF has been internationally recognized for research relating to the Arctic and sub-Arctic, in areas such as biology, geophysics, engineering, natural resources and global climate change.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Students who have earned academic honors but have requested that their directory information remain confidential may not appear on the public honors list.

• Chancellor’s list
• Deans’ list

The University of Alaska Fairbanks will host a delegation of Canadian professionals and indigenous leaders next week to discuss renewable energy research and technology.

UAF’s Alaska Center for Energy and Power will welcome the visitors as part of the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. Participants from the Yukon, Nunavut, Manitoba, Quebec and the Northwest Territories will visit Alaska from April 28-May 3.

During their visit, the group will meet with professionals and policymakers in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Kotzebue. Each community is exploring or implementing renewable energy technologies, including the use of wind, solar, biomass, thermal energy storage and more.

ACEP Director Gwen Holdmann said remote communities in Canada and Alaska share many of the same energy challenges. With more than 300 remote communities that rely on high-cost diesel power, Alaska has a strong interest in improving the performance of both new and existing power systems.

ACEP helps develop solutions to those challenges through applied energy research and is a global leader in developing energy systems for remote electric grids. The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa selected ACEP to host the delegation due to the center’s extensive resources and expertise in the energy sector.

“Remote Alaska has served as the front line of renewable microgrid innovation, and our own successes, mistakes and lessons learned can help other communities take larger steps toward their own energy security and innovations,” Holdmann said.

The International Visitor Leadership Program is the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program. Through short-term visits, current and emerging foreign leaders can experience the U.S. firsthand and cultivate lasting relationships with their American counterparts.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photo and interview opportunities will be available in Fairbanks. A welcome reception will be on Sunday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m. in the Brooks Building Gathering Room at UAF; on Monday, April 29, the group will take tours of the Power Systems Integration Laboratory on the Fairbanks campus at 1:30 p.m. and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center at 3:30 p.m.; on Tuesday, April 30, the group will take an 11 a.m. tour of Lifewater Engineering. To coordinate a visit, contact George Roe at 206-454-9189 or Amanda Byrd at 907-978-0305.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: ACEP Director Gwen Holdmann, gwen.holdmann@alaska.edu, 907-590-4577.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences has selected “Nanuq” as the name of a new 40-foot coastal research vessel to operate out of Seward.

The Nanuq, which gets its name from the Inupiat word for polar bear, will replace the research vessel Little Dipper.

The college received over 100 name suggestions from across UAF. Martha Westphal, a program manager at the UAF Community and Technical College, submitted the winning name.

The Nanuq will be commissioned and available for use in early June 2019.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has created a new leadership academy aimed at building students’ ability to create positive change in their local, national and global communities.

The Virgie Dunlap-King Academy for Social Change is named for longtime local educator, community leader and volunteer Virgie Dunlap-King, who passed away in May 2018. The academy is recruiting for its first cohort of students now.

“Virgie King’s lifetime of service illustrates that one person can make a difference in the lives of thousands and shape the fabric of a community,” said Keith Champagne, vice chancellor for student affairs at UAF. “I envision the Virgie Dunlap-King Academy inspiring many generations of UAF students to become agents of social change in Fairbanks and and communities around the country and the globe.”

The cohort will consist of 15 students who will begin meeting in the fall. The academy will run throughout the academic year and include a mix of workshops and group service opportunities designed to help students plan and execute individual projects that contribute to social change, known as Nanook Legacy Projects. Throughout the year, members of the cohort will also work with community organizations and local schools and will serve as mentors as part of the local African American Student Leadership Conference, a program for local youths that Dunlap-King founded more than three decades ago.

“My mother’s life was marked by service,” said Dunlap-King’s daughter, Jessica King. “I truly appreciate the University of Alaska Fairbanks for recognizing her efforts in the community and honoring her memory. Our family looks forward to the development of tomorrow’s leaders and know this program will help cultivate those individuals. ”

Completion of the academy will make students eligible to apply for graduation with leadership honors.

The Virgie Dunlap-King Academy will be the third in a three-year student leadership development series at UAF. Other programs are the First Year Leadership Academy and the Nanook Alliance.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Cody Rogers, 907-474-6026, cbrogers@alaska.edu.

When Kristy Jones-Robbins and Zach Sanders receive their master’s degrees from the University of Alaska Fairbanks on Saturday, the Eagle Community School teachers will have quite the cheering section: Nearly half of their hometown will be there to see it happen.

Jones-Robbins and Sanders, who represent two-thirds of the teaching staff in Eagle, are bringing their students to Fairbanks this year for their spring field trip. Twenty-one students, joined by 10 adult chaperones, will watch them accept their new diplomas at the Carlson Center.

For Jones-Robbins and Sanders, it’s more than just a chance to bring a familiar audience to the commencement ceremony. They both earned their UAF degrees by taking online courses while remaining in Eagle. It’s a realistic path to higher education for rural Alaskans who don’t want to leave home, and they’re happy to serve as models.

“We wanted to be an example to our students,” Jones-Robbins said. “Sometimes they can’t visualize it until they see it happen.”

Both Jones-Robbins and Sanders pursued their UAF education degrees to fill gaps at Eagle Community School. They’ll be the only two teachers when the school loses a position next year.

Sanders, who was working as a special education aide, stepped in to a teaching role two years ago when a job suddenly opened. He was hired through the state’s Teaching While Training program, which allows someone with a bachelor’s degree to teach while they pursue their certificate.

Jones-Robbins has had her teaching certificate for the past 24 years. She moved from Georgia to Eagle in 2013 to become the principal-teacher. She began pursuing a special-education degree three years ago after the Alaska Gateway School District offered to pay for her classes to address the hard-to-fill position.

Although it was a slow process, both Sanders and Jones-Robbins said the convenience of online classes and support they received along their journeys has been worth it.

“It’s been a long road, but a really great experience,” Jones-Robbins said. “It’s been a good, quality education.”

Picking up those diplomas will be a highlight of the trip to Fairbanks, but it won’t be the only one. Jones-Robbins said the school typically has a field trip each fall and spring, packing up students from preschool to high school. This year’s trip also will include a visit to the UA Museum of the North, a much-anticipated stop to the CRREL Permafrost Tunnel, and a UAF tour for the high schoolers. The field trip will conclude with a day at Denali National Park and Preserve.

Many Eagle families visit Fairbanks to stock up on groceries and other supplies, but a more leisurely visit will be a first for many students, Jones-Robbins said.

“It’s usually a mad-dash shopping trip — they don’t get a chance to go to the museum or even walk around UAF,” Sanders said. “They’re going to be doing things that we take for granted.”

A new grant will allow students from Colorado State University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to assist with veterinary care in remote Southwest Alaska communities.

The $450,000 award, provided by PetSmart Charities, will support operational costs for a veterinary clinic through the Hub Outpost Project in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region. A veterinarian, a veterinary technician and students at CSU and UAF will help establish a hub for veterinary care in Bethel and a mobile program to work in villages in the region.

Working in partnership with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., the clinic will provide Bethel and area communities with spay and neuter surgeries. The clinic will also treat some diseases and work to prevent disease transmission between humans and animals.

The two-year program is expected to provide about 3,000 spay and neuter surgeries, as well as anti-parasite treatments and free vaccinations for small animals. About 30 veterinary students will have the opportunity to participate in the program.

Dr. Laurie Meythalar-Mullins, who will serve as the community outreach and public health veterinarian for the program, said that she is eager to join the Bethel community and start work on this “one-of-a-kind project.”

UAF and CSU have collaborated on a veterinary degree program since 2015. Students in the program study for two years at UAF before spending their final two years completing their degree at the CSU campus in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“This project is important for our veterinary students,” said Dr. Danielle Frey, CSU’s director of veterinary international and outreach opportunities. “Not only will they be able to gain additional experience in veterinary skills, but they will also be able to learn more about community health, the connection between humans and their pets, and how strongly their health is tied with these animals.”

The Hub Outpost Project is designed to bring animal medicine to an underserved region while offering more educational opportunities for veterinary students. An overpopulation of dogs has been difficult to address due to the expansive geography and lack of infrastructure in the region, said Dr. Arleigh Reynolds, a professor in the UAF Department of Veterinary Medicine. Pet owners in the region also have limited access to vaccinations, which has increased the danger of communicable diseases such as rabies.

Reynolds cited the project as an example of UAF and CSU’s commitment to the One Health concept, an approach to public policy and research that focuses on the ways that environmental, animal and human health are interconnected.

“This program is a great example of how a One Health approach can be used to bring community members and human and animal health professionals together to work on managing several large, related problems,” said Reynolds, who also serves as the director of UAF’s One Health program.

Deborah Turcott, acting president of PetSmart Charities, feels the initiative will improve interactions between pets and people, and enhance the health and quality of life of thousands of animals.

“This hub-and-spoke approach to veterinary care has proven successful, and the Hub Outpost Project will effectively provide access to routine veterinary care for up to 15,000 dogs throughout a 400,000-square-mile region,” she said.

PetSmart Charities is a leading funder of animal welfare in North America, dedicated to celebrating the connection between people and pets. Partners in the Hub Outpost Project also include YKHC, the city of Bethel, the Bethel Police Department and several local rescue and animal health organizations.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Laurie Meythalar -Mullins, http://Laurie.Meythaler-Mullins@colostate.edu; Arleigh Reynolds, 907-474-6610, ajreynolds@alaska.edu; Danielle Frey, Danielle.frey@colostate.edu

A team of researchers has a plan to slow the melting of northern sea ice using a sand-like substance.

Leslie Field is an inventor trained in chemical and electrical engineering who lectures at Stanford University in California. She and her team member, Alex Sholtz of the non-profit group Ice911, recently presented at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in front of a dozen scientists who work on northern sea ice.

Field and Sholtz shared their idea of spreading hollow glass beads over ice that floats on the northern ocean. After field testing the material on the surface of frozen lakes, they saw it increases sea ice’s reflectivity and can slow its melting. That, in turn, could help slow the Earth’s warming.

Northern sea ice has been on the wane since satellites have allowed us to observe it in the late 1970s. Though relatively few people have seen the ice floating on the northern oceans, scientists have many times pointed out sea ice’s function as the refrigerator of the world. The blue-white mass the size of a continent grows in thickness and extent during the polar winter and shrinks in spring and summer. Sea ice reflects sunlight and prevents the dark ocean from absorbing heat.

The Ice911 team is hoping to slow the summer loss of sea ice, and perhaps restore it over time, by making it melt less with the application of their reflective dust.

The powder is mainly silica in the form of hollow glass spheres, each smaller than a period. It’s available commercially in large amounts, and Sholtz showed results of tests of quail and small fish eating it with no apparent problems.

As one possible deployment method, the researchers envision blowing the white sand from a device mounted on the backs of large ships to coat newer sheets of sea ice, in order to make them brighter. They figure a thin layer can increase the reflectivity of ice by 50 percent.

Field targeted northern sea ice after watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. She figured an engineering solution might be the way to go in restoring sea ice to what it once was.

“Ninety-five percent of the Earth’s heat shield is gone,” Field said, citing a NOAA Arctic Report Card number describing the decline of thicker, multiyear sea ice since 1985. “No natural process is going to bring that back.

“By slowing ice melt in strategic areas, we can restore Arctic ice,” she said.

Alaska researchers who attended Field’s and Sholtz’s talk have their doubts about the feasibility of the idea.

“Ice911 is doing this for noble reasons, but I sense a disconnect between what pencils out well on paper and how it could be implemented on a practical basis,” emailed UAF oceanographer Seth Danielson, who has spent the past few summers shipboard on the Bering and Chukchi seas, studying the warming ocean waters and the creatures affected by them.

Danielson wonders how blowing out glass beads would work in such a windy place, and points out that icebreakers used would themselves decrease the reflectability of the pack ice field as they broke through it.

Rob Rember of the International Arctic Research Center pointed out that the large ships the team proposes using both consume a lot of carbon and spew a good deal of greenhouse gases.

“The large icebreakers we use for our expeditions consume about 35 tons of diesel fuel per day,” he said.

Field listened to those experts and tried to enlist them as team members for her effort, which she hopes will be a reality by 2022.

“Is this a massive endeavor? Yes,” Field said, “But look at what we’re fighting against.”

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.

UAF’s special education program has earned the online teaching support certification from Quality Matters. UAF is the fourth university in the nation to earn this designation, which requires that all online faculty undergo training in best practices for online course delivery, have ongoing pedagogical support, are encouraged to pursue professional development to increase their knowledge and skill in online teaching, emphasize instructor availability and feedback to learners, and collect and use feedback from learners to improve online teaching.

Quality Matters is an international, U.S.-based nonprofit organization that is recognized as a leader in quality assurance for online education.

UAF’s special education program earned the Online Program Design Certification in 2018.

The largest commercial harvest of seaweed in Alaska is taking place this month.

Blue Evolution, a California-based company that cultivates, harvests and distributes Alaska-grown seaweed, is expected to haul in up to 200,000 pounds from waters near Kodiak Island within the next two weeks. Previous harvests have been a fraction of that size, but, as the mariculture industry grows in Alaska, Blue Evolution is also expanding.

Working with local resident farmers, the company produces seed from wild seaweed plants and grows them into kelp starts in an onshore hatchery at the federal government’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center Kodiak Laboratory. Blue Evolution then supplies seeded string to local farmers who plant them onto longlines in late fall, cultivate their crops during winter and harvest in spring.

The company is collaborating with the University of Alaska and Alaska Sea Grant on seaweed research aimed at developing cost-effective cultivation methods for several native species. Seaweed farming is a growing, multibillion-dollar industry worldwide and presents a new economic opportunity for coastal Alaska.

“It suits my family because we set gillnet for salmon during the summer and supplement our income with seaweed farming during winter,” said Lexa Meyer, who co-owns and operates Kodiak Kelp Co. with her husband.

Seaweed farming is taking off as a global industry that provides a nutritious, sustainable food source that is an alternative to terrestrial food products that often require lots of arable land, fresh water, antibiotics, fertilizers and pesticides, said Beau Perry, who founded and runs Blue Evolution. Perry described seaweed farming as “regenerative,” in that it creates additional nursery habitat for marine fauna, sequesters carbon dioxide and buffers the effects of ocean acidification. Although much of his company’s seaweed is grown in Mexico, Perry sees Alaska as an ideal place for aquatic farming to expand.

“There’s over 30,000 miles of coastline with pristine waters. The sea-to-table movement is growing as people want to know more about where their food comes from. Alaska is well-positioned to take advantage of this,” he said.

Rather than harvesting wild kelp, Perry sees Alaska’s opportunity in farming it out of regional hatcheries. It’s sustainable that way and does not disturb natural kelp beds which provide fish habitat.

Mariculture, which includes seaweed farming, is still a nascent industry in Alaska, but state officials report a growing number of permit applications over the past two years. The state recently created a mariculture development plan that aims to grow a $100 million industry within 20 years.

ON THE WEB: blueevolution.com; alaskaseagrant.org

NOTE TO EDITORS: Arrangements can be made for reporters to observe the seaweed harvest up close. High resolution photos are available.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Beau Perry, founder and chief executive, Blue Evolution, 650-714-5540, beau@blueevolution.com. Lexa Meyer, Alaska mariculture manager and kelp farm owner/operator, 907-942-4366, lexa@blueevolution.com. Alf Pryor, commercial fisherman and kelp farm owner/operator, 907-942-1417, alfpryor@deadhumpy.com.

To learn more about one of the largest environmental changes of our lifetimes, Brittany Jones studies clam breath.

Jones is a student earning her Ph.D. at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She is an expert on creatures that live in the muck covering the underwater continental shelf off western Alaska. There, sea ice waxes and wanes on the relatively shallow waters covering the former Bering Land Bridge.

The drastic shrinkage of that jigsaw puzzle of blue ice during the last few decades, and especially the last few years, is like the sudden loss of a solar reflector the size of Texas, with California pasted on.

“The sea ice loss has been unbelievable,” said Jones’ colleague, oceanographer Seth Danielson, who sailed in the Bering and Chukchi seas the last three summers. “To see that much open water this time of year is not something we’d have expected to see this decade or next, or the decade after that.”

All the new heat absorbed by a dark northern ocean has had big effects on creatures great and small, from whales that can now travel and feed way farther north than before to seabirds mysteriously dying of starvation on what had been the richest ocean waters on Earth.

To get a better picture of what is happening, scientists like Jones and Danielson have boarded a research ship during the past few summers and sailed through the Bering Strait on the Bering and Chukchi seas. They have sampled everything from seawater to copepods — crustaceans the size of dust specks — on June cruises of the 261-foot research vessel Sikuliaq.

One of Jones’ tasks was to determine the respiration rates of clams found on the seafloor, about 120 feet beneath the salty gray surface. Her work confined her to a windowless shipboard lab, kept at the temperature of an ice cube. The cool room might have helped her avoid seasickness, she said.

There, she would set on a table clams scooped from the sea floor that ranged in size from a pumpkin seed to a chicken egg. Using a toothbrush, she scrubbed algae from shells and placed each clam in its own glass jar. Using sensitive instruments, she measured how much oxygen each clam was taking in with its primitive set of gills.

Like us, the clams use oxygen to help convert their food, in this case “algae mush,” into energy.

Jones’ goal is to find out the respiration rates of five species of clams. And why should anyone care about clam breath?

The respiration rates of clams and other animals are numbers scientists can plug into ecosystem models. The computations might help them figure how much food the entire suite of creatures affected by sea ice needs to survive.

As the ocean is warming — the Bering Strait area has for the past four years been several degrees above the long-term average — living things need more food. Jones and others have found that creatures of the sediment increase their respiration rates with warmer temperatures.

In a lab back at UAF, Jones also studies worms and shrimp-like amphipods that populate the vast ocean floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas. Hundreds of miles inland, Jones is now squinting through a microscope, learning more about what the tiniest creatures are telling us about a change so massive it is hard to comprehend.

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.

Arctic researchers traveled to western Alaska last month to gather snow depth data, which they believe may be a missing link needed to improve how global climate models predict changing Arctic conditions.

Rapid warming is transforming the Arctic, triggering a cascade of changes across entire ecosystems. Scientists are grappling with how to incorporate degrading permafrost, the expansion of northern shrubs and disturbances such as wildfires into global climate models.

University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers are collaborating with several U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories on a project called Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic to improve predictions of Arctic environmental change.

“Our goal is to measure it, translate data into equations, and incorporate those into computer models,” said NGEE Arctic director Stan Wullschleger in a recent interview.

One important question NGEE Arctic is exploring is where, when and why the Arctic is becoming wetter or dryer, and what the implications are for the climate system. The answer could improve how models represent carbon, energy and water processes in the Arctic.

“Current global climate models aren’t built to transition from a very wet environment to a very dry environment,” said hydrologist Bob Bolton from UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “They currently don’t represent these big landscape transitions.”

In some areas of the Arctic, that is exactly what is happening. Degrading permafrost can cause the ground to slump and ponds to form, making the environment wetter. In other places, the permanently frozen ground thaws, the ground more easily drains and the landscape becomes drier.

Although it sounds bizarre, thawing permafrost isn’t just a summer problem. Winter and snow play a role too.

“It’s all about insulation,” Bolton said. “Snow insulates either warmer or colder.” The amount depends, in part, on how early and deeply the snow accumulates each autumn and how rapidly it melts each spring.

An early snowfall in autumn may trap summer heat in the ground, giving permafrost more time to degrade even as outside temperatures drop. The opposite is true with a late snowfall in spring. If the ground refreezes after the snowfall, additional cold can be trapped in the surface soils, delaying summer thaw.

However, snow is extremely variable across the Arctic, and depths can be difficult to predict. An unsuspecting winter traveler may suddenly plunge from knee-deep to waist-deep snow in only a few steps.

What makes snow accumulate in some areas but not others? To find out, Bolton and colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory are painstakingly inventorying the snow pack across multiple study sites near Nome.

It is becoming clear that shrubs play a big part. They trap snow, and that deeper snow adds insulation.

“We have hints that in shrubby areas the permafrost is either completely degraded or degrading much more rapidly than in non-shrubby areas,” said Bolton.

The interconnected nature of the Arctic makes NGEE Arctic’s multidisciplinary expertise valuable. With researchers at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Brookhaven and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories, as well as UAF, the team is well prepared to explore the complexity of vegetation ecology, biogeochemistry and hydrology across the Arctic system.

“We knew going in that we were going to study certain processes, such as vegetation dynamics and the microbial production of carbon dioxide and methane. But, as it turns out, all of those processes are coupled and interconnected,” explained Wullschleger.

The multidisciplinary environment gets Bolton excited about field work.

“I enjoy spending time in the field talking science and bouncing ideas back and forth,” he said. “Stan’s a veg guy. We have different perspectives. He looks at a shrub much differently than I do. I just see it as a thing on the landscape that traps snow.”

In addition to the challenges of understanding a complex and changing ecosystem, NGEE Arctic faces the challenge of gathering data during the winter at a site accessible only by snowmachine or helicopter.

Weather conditions can abruptly shift, so NGEE Arctic crews always prepare to spend the night in the field. Field safety officer Bob Busey, an engineer at the International Arctic Research Center, makes sure crews are as safe and comfortable as possible.

“My role first is to make sure that everybody stays safe, and then my second role is that we collect as high of quality of data as possible,” said Busey. He packs a large safety kit for the field site, complete with an Arctic Oven tent and wood stove, but even the helicopter and personal backpacks receive smaller versions.

Busey’s field philosophy goes beyond just physical safety. He focuses on creating a healthy atmosphere by encouraging friendliness, humor, adequate sleep, upfront communication and the occasional gourmet gummy bear.

 NGEE Arctic is funded by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Wild salmon, king crab and halibut are hallmarks of Alaska cuisine. But another ocean product is increasingly making it way onto store shelves and dinner plates. It’s a sea vegetable called bull kelp — a salty, crisp plant packed with vitamins and nutrients such as calcium, iodine and iron.

A small but growing company in Alaska’s state capital, Juneau, is harvesting kelp from local waters and turning it into tasty products like salsa, pickles and seasonings. Barnacle Foods is owned and operated by Lia Heifetz, Max Stanley and Matt Kern, who were born and raised in Southeast Alaska. The team started the company in 2016 with the goal of providing delicious, locally harvested and sustainable food. Their long-term vision is to create jobs and help Alaska boost its food security.

“There are so many high-quality foods in Alaska. Our seafood, for example, is world-renowned for its quality and sustainability. But many of our foods are abundant for very, very short periods of time. We want to help play a role in harvesting and processing local ingredients and turn them into shelf-stable foods that are available throughout the year,” said Kern.

Kern and Heifetz began experimenting with turning kelp into salsa in their own kitchen. The couple’s next step was to sell it at Juneau’s Public Market and Food Festival, where the product quickly sold out. That’s when they knew it was time to ramp up production and launch a business. To sell food commercially in Alaska, an individual or company needs a number of permits to ensure that their products are safe for human consumption. Heifetz and Kern turned to Alaska Sea Grant for help.

A partnership between National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, Alaska Sea Grant serves as one of Alaska’s process authorities, which means it can certify the safety of food production.

When Barnacle Foods was developing its product line, the company would frequently send samples to Alaska Sea Grant’s seafood specialists.

Seafood technologist specialist Chris Sannito, an Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory agent based in Kodiak, along with Brian Himelbloom, a retired UAF seafood microbiologist, would evaluate the company’s kelp pickles and salsa for pH levels and other factors. Sannito and Himelbloom also assisted with jar sterilization techniques.

“We look over the scheduled process the manufacturer intends to use. That’s the exact step-by-step process they follow to make their product as well as the specific ingredients they use,” said Sannito, who works out of the UAF-owned and -operated Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center. “We make sure they’re doing it by established scientific schedules. We also ask for a final product to make sure the levels we’re looking at in the lab are the same as in their facility.”

Sannito has given Barnacle Foods a clean bill of health and is impressed with the products, both ingredients and labeling.

“They have really nice packaging and the products look appetizing,” he added. The kelp products are currently sold online and in specialty food stores and gifts shops in Alaska. Barnacle Foods is also expanding its reach into the Pacific Northwest and California, including the New Seasons Market chain in Oregon and Washington, food co-ops in the greater Seattle area, and Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco.The company had earlier operated a mobile storefront in downtown Juneau out of a converted shipping container. But the lot it sat on is being developed, and Barnacle Foods had to move. For now, the owners are focusing on the wholesale business of selling to distributors and stores.

One customer in Anchorage is Summit Spice & Tea Company, a popular store and tea café in Midtown. Owner DeeAnn Apgar features a large table of Alaska-made products ranging from sea salt made in Sitka to Alaska umami sauce. At the center of the table, piled high, are stacks of Barnacle Food pickles, salsa and seasonings.

“Alaska is so far away from the rest of the country. It’s hard to do farm-to-table here. But products like kelp pickles from Southeast Alaska certainly help bridge the gap,” she said.

Sometimes being a scientist requires a bit of detective work.

Andy Seitz, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, needed his detective hat when an alarming number of his fish tags started popping up to the surface of the ocean early.

“At first we speculated an equipment malfunction,” Seitz said.

Seitz and CFOS researcher Michael Courtney have been using pop-up satellite tags to study chinook salmon since 2013. A satellite tag is attached to a fish, where it collects data on temperature, depth and ambient light intensity. On a pre-programmed date, the tag releases from the fish, pops up to the surface of the ocean and transmits its stored data to satellites that researchers can access from a computer.

Seitz and Courtney were testing whether the tags are an effective tool for studying chinook salmon ecology and behavior. They focused on understudied late-stage marine salmon that have spent more than a couple of years at sea.

“It has been assumed that the early stage in the ocean is more dangerous,” Seitz said, “and that fish become safer as they grow.”

The Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim Sustainable Salmon Initiative and the Pollock Conservation Cooperative Research Center funded the project.

Early in this project, a number of the tags were transmitting data sooner than expected. Each tag is programmed with an “abort mission!” sensor that is triggered when the tag is inactive for three days, telling the tag to automatically transmit data to satellites even if it’s before the programmed release date.

Seitz and Courtney had tagged big chinook salmon off the coast of Dutch Harbor in December, when temperatures in the Bering Sea are about 4 to 6 degrees Celsius (about 39 to 43 degrees Fahrenheit). But in many of the prematurely transmitted datasets, the researchers noticed a sudden spike in temperatures days before the data was transmitted.

“The depth records of these tags were still moving up and down, sometimes down to 400 meters, and remaining at this 25-degree [77°F] temperature,” Seitz said. “The only place that can happen is in the stomach of a warm-blooded salmon shark.”

After exiting a shark’s digestive system, the tag would pop to the surface and remain inactive, triggering data transmission.

The researchers tagged 43 late-stage chinook salmon between 2013 and 2017, and 35 of the tags transmitted data back to satellites. Marine predators, including warm-blooded salmon sharks, cold-blooded fish and marine mammals, consumed 19 of the 35 tagged fish.

“These results do show that pop-up satellite tags are an effective tool for learning about chinook salmon ecology and behavior — and mortality, too,” Courtney said. “There aren’t any other research methods that allow you to continue to collect data after a fish has been consumed.”

These results also suggest that late-stage marine salmon may not be as safe as originally suspected.

This study was recently selected as an editor’s choice in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences because it provides new information on a previously understudied salmon life stage. Seitz and Courtney are working on proposals to continue their studies. With additional years of tagging, the team can consider how predation rates change annually and regionally, and what this means for chinook salmon populations.

Wade Albright said his job was like “drinking water out of a fire hose” at one point.

He was working as a technician at the Alaska Satellite Facility, part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute, and was challenged every day. He had been at ASF for several years, but the learning curve is steep at an organization that processes complex scientific data.

Almost two decades later, this March, he was named deputy director. Now he helps lead one of UAF’s largest units, which produces satellite data for national and international clients to study complex topics such as climate change.

“Especially being here in Fairbanks, Alaska, we see the changes that are happening with climate change every day. We know climate change is real,” he said. “So, helping to see the first imagery as it comes across, helping validate those results and helping us realize how the planet is changing, that’s satisfying.”

It’s that kind of work that drew him to ASF: the big antennas, working directly with NASA and the technology. For Albright, the science is interesting but even more so are the people behind it.

“I enjoy my job,” he said. “But what I enjoy most is the people I work with and helping them do their job.”

It took him years to figure out his passion for leadership.

In college, Albright changed his major six times and eventually graduated from UAF with a bachelor’s degree in geography. He excelled with high grades, but wasn’t sure how he wanted to dedicate his career.

On the recommendation of a friend, he took a job in ASF as an operator, an entry-level position staffing ground stations and processing satellite imagery. Within two years he was promoted to lead operator and, over the years, has led most of the groups in the organization.

As deputy director, he sees himself as a facilitator.

“One of management’s primary tasks is giving the technical staff the tools they need to do their job,” he said. “Our job as management is to provide strategic direction, give them the tools, then get out of the way and trust them to do their job.”

Even though he later earned an MBA, Albright does not have a formal science degree. He believes a strong work ethic and the ability to learn are the most important professional qualities.

“What you need to have is the ability to learn, a method and a structure to learning,” he said. “Find out the ways that you learn best, and apply those to everything you do. It’s really important that we continue to learn as we grow older. When you stop learning, you stop being useful.”

Now the fire hose is more like a garden hose, but Albright faces challenges every single day and keeps an open mind.

“I’ve been here 23 years, and there’s still a lot for me to learn,” he said. “It’s a very challenging field. It’s very deep. It’s very complex, and there’s so many different things you can do with it.”

Fifty years ago, a ship long as the Empire State Building sailed toward obstacles that captains usually avoid.

The icebreaking tanker Manhattan was an oil company’s attempt to see if it might be profitable to move Alaska oil to the East Coast by plowing through the ice-clogged Northwest Passage.

Begging his way aboard was Merritt Helfferich, then 34 and a do-all guy at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Helfferich, whose life of adventures also included the first hot-air balloon flight from Barrow, Alaska, died in New Mexico on May 2, 2019. He was 83.

Back in the late 1960s, Helfferich heard of Humble Oil and Refining Co. executives recruiting a team of Alaska engineers to ride the ship and measure the properties of sea ice it crushed along the way. He wanted in.

When the ship’s launch was delayed and invited professors needed to teach their fall classes, Helfferich shot up his hand. He was soon gasping in wonder at a dock in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There, he saw the giant ship he was to ride all the way north to Prudhoe Bay.

The largest ship ever to fly an American flag, the Manhattan busted its way north in search of heavy ice. If the Manhattan could prove its worth, Stan Haas and others with Humble Oil envisioned the recently discovered North Slope oil moving away from Prudhoe Bay in superships even larger than the Manhattan.

Helfferich remembered bunking on the ship in a section right over one of the nickel-iron propellers, so large the shaft that spun them was 18 inches in diameter.

“At a certain speed there was a maddening wah-wah-wah-wah,” he said in a 2013 interview. “We’d say, ‘Go faster or go slower.’”

When the sea ice bashed a Doppler speed-tracking system — one of the few setbacks for the ice-strengthened tanker — Helfferich and other scientists on board helped track the velocity of the Manhattan by throwing a block of wood to the ice and counting the seconds it took for the ship to pass it. His main duties were to helicopter out to ice in the Manhattan’s path and test its thickness, saltiness and other features he vowed to keep secret from oil companies that had not pitched in for the Manhattan experiment.

After leaving Chester, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 24, 1969, and reaching Prudhoe Bay and then Barrow by Sept. 14, the Manhattan returned through the Northwest Passage and returned to New York by Nov. 12.

Helfferich, who was aboard for most of the trip before flying back from Arctic Canada, remembered a smooth ride for the most part. The tanker-icebreaker handled most ice easily, though it sometimes needed to be nibbled out by icebreakers from Canada and the U.S. that accompanied it.

Despite a few problems, such as an iceberg puncturing part of the hull and being turned back by congested ice floes in McClure Strait (but still being able to reach Prudhoe Bay through Prince of Wales Strait), the Manhattan proved the possibility of moving oil year-round through the Northwest Passage. But Humble oil executives concluded an 800-mile pipeline was a cheaper way to go.

Helfferich flew back to Fairbanks after that 1969 adventure and got back to other endeavors, including a raft race 50 miles down the Tanana River and a rocket range in Chatanika that had his fingerprints all over.

Helfferich, smiling as he always seemed to be, once described his reaction to unusual proposals from bosses, co-workers and friends.

“I said yes to everything.”

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 version of this column appeared in 2013.

Firefighters from four local fire agencies will be on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus on Tuesday, May 21, from 5-9 p.m. for a wildland firefighting exercise.

The exercise will not involve any fire. It will simulate an incident where a wildfire is threatening structures. About 20 fire vehicles and 40 fire personnel will be on campus for the exercise.

Most of the exercise activities will take place on the north side of campus. North Tanana Drive will be closed for the duration of the exercise from Kuskokwim Way, near Hess Village, to Sheenjek Drive, near the State Virology Lab. Toklat Way, which is behind the Reichardt Building, will also be closed.

In addition to the closed roads, members of the public and campus community may notice increased activity in the area, including firefighters in wooded areas and near buildings, and multiple fire vehicles staged along the roads or in parking lots nearby. Fire vehicles will also be staging at the parking lot across from the Patty Center.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks will offer waivers and scholarships to cover fees for local soldiers and airmen who are deployed during the fall and spring semesters of the 2019-2020 academic year.

“When combined with their tuition benefits, this means soldiers will have minimal, if any, out-of-pocket expenses associated with their online classes,” said Jackie Morton, director of UAF’s Department of Military and Veteran Services. “UAF wants to thank our soldiers for their service and support them as they further their education and increase their competitiveness for promotion.”

The program is open to any active-duty soldier or airman stationed in the Fairbanks North Star Borough who is deployed as part of a named military operation, as well as any Alaska National Guard service member deployed under the same circumstances. UAF launched the new program after the announcement that soldiers from Fort Wainwright’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division are scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this year.

The university will waive application fees for soldiers who want to enroll in classes through UAF eCampus. Deployed soldiers, including those who are already taking classes from UAF, will also be eligible for scholarships to cover their fees during the fall and spring semesters.

For instructions regarding how to apply for the waiver and scholarship, contact the UAF Department of Military and Veterans Services at 907-474-7400, via email at uaf-veterans@alaska.edu or stop by Room 104 in the Eielson Building on the Fairbanks campus.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Jackie Morton, jemorton@alaska.edu, 907-474-7400.

Over the weekend, testing at UAF’s new heat and power plant created noisy conditions, especially near West Valley High School. The testing was planned but took longer and was louder than anticipated.

As part of its testing, the plant must run at or nearly at full power to make sure it works properly. Doing so often creates more steam than can be used, so it is vented. The turbines were tested last weekend, starting at about 9 a.m. and finishing shortly after 4 p.m. The university later became aware that two sports events at the high school were affected by the noise. The university is reaching out to event organizers and other affected parties to apologize for the noise levels.

While additional testing at the plant will take place over the next several weeks, officials do not anticipate needing to vent as much steam, since the plant will be providing all of the heat and power to campus during those tests. They also have a plan to mitigate noise. UAF will keep the public and campus community informed of upcoming tests and any potential effects on the surrounding area.

A new review of glacier research data paints a picture of a future planet with a lot less ice and a lot more water. Glaciers worldwide are projected to lose anywhere from 18% to 36% of their mass by 2100, resulting in almost 10 inches of sea level rise.

The review is the most comprehensive global comparison of glacier simulations ever compiled.

“The clear message is that there’s mass loss—substantial mass loss—all over the world,” said lead author Regine Hock, from the University Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

The anticipated loss of ice varies by region, but the pattern is evident.

“We have more than 200 computer simulations, and they all say the same thing. Even though there are some differences, that’s really consistent,” Hock said.

This is the only comprehensive and systematic endeavor to date to compare global-scale glacier models and their projections. The paper is part of GlacierMIP, an international project to compare glacier research to understand glacier changes and their contributions to global sea level rise.

Hock’s study compared 214 glacier simulations from six research groups around the world and “all of them paint the same picture,” Hock said.

These groups tied their own studies to over 25 climate models using a range of climate scenarios. These scenarios are based on several different trajectories for greenhouse gas concentrations and atmospheric conditions adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, called the representative concentration pathways, referred to by scientists as RCP. Currently, the planet is moving toward the higher estimates of greenhouse gas concentrations.

Hock and former Geophysical Institute postdoctoral researcher Andrew Bliss, along with other authors, examined the data and results from these studies to work toward a coordinated method for understanding ice loss.

They examined the mass changes for over 200,000 glaciers worldwide, totaling an area equal to the size of Texas. The study does not include the vast ice sheets in Greenland or Antarctica, whose behavior is different from mountain and land-based glaciers and which require unique modeling methods.

The results indicate that the smaller glaciers could play a much larger role in sea level rise than researchers had previously thought. Most research has focused on ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, due to their size and prominence, but the effect of smaller glaciers is significant.

“We confirm that they are really substantial contributors to sea level rise,” Hock said.

For example, Alaska’s 25,000 glaciers will lose between 30% and 50% of their mass by the end of this century. Once they do, Alaska will be the largest global regional sea level contributor in Northern Hemisphere, apart from Greenland.

“Globally, there’s almost 10 inches of sea level rise by 2100 only from the smaller glaciers, whereas everybody thinks it’s only Antarctica and Greenland,” Hock said. “But these relatively small glaciers in the world have an enormous impact.”

The paper was published in the Journal of Glaciology and can be accessed here.