Finding a midwinter night's roost
A black-capped chickadee.
Photo by Donna Dewhurst, US Fish and Wildlife Service.
During the darkest days of Alaska’s winter, black-capped chickadees stuff themselves with enough seeds and frozen insects to survive18-hour nights. Where the chickadees spend those long night
Mummified forest tells tale of a changing north
Ellesmere Island National Park in Canada. Ohio State University researchers and their colleagues have discovered the remains of a mummified forest that lived on the island 2 to 8 million years ago, when the Arctic was cooling.
Photos by Joel Barker, courtesy of Ohio State University
Two summers ago, Joel Barker was measuring gases wafting from the tundra on Ellesmere Island in Canada’s far north. One day he took a break from his duties to check out a report from a warden
Alaska glaciers help drive rise in sea level
Very small glaciers, like these in the Alaska Range, may disappear by the year 2100 as part of a 40 percent loss in Alaska glacier volume.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
Geophysical Institute researcher Regine Hock and her colleague Valentina Radic have calculated that the rate of sea-level rise due to the meltwater from glaciers in Alaska and elsewhere will increa
Notes from AGU's 2010 Fall Meeting
Alaska’s boreal forest hasn’t been as productive in warmer, dryer weather.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
My notebook is full from my visit to the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco, which convened for a week in December 2010. Here’s some Alaska-related news:
Alaska's all-time cold record turns 40
Creek off the Dalton Highway in northern Alaska, site of Alaska’s all-time low temperature.
Photo by Ed Plumb, National Weather Service, who was born in California on the day of Alaska’s all-time low.
At the northern fringe of the boreal forest, in a valley silent except for the occasional rumble of a truck on the Dalton Highway, an Alaska milestone came and went on January 23, 2011.
Graduate student has career night in Chatanika
From left, the University of Colorado’s Kevin France, Kim Winges of California, and Colorado’s Jim Davis and Brennan Gantner note the progress of a NASA sounding rocket that had just launched from Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
POKER FLAT RESEARCH RANGE, NORTH OF FAIRBANKS — “Ten, nine, eight . . .”
As a woman’s voice echoed over loudspeakers on a breezy hill above the Chatanika
Rock redwoods in Sutton, stone bird tracks in Denali
The twin stems of a 55-million year old fossil tree resting in the soil near Sutton, Alaska.
Photo by Chris Williams.
A few years ago, Chris Williams found a big tree on the grounds of an abandoned coal mine in Sutton, Alaska. It was six feet in diameter, stood more than 110 feet above the surrounding swamplands,
Ravens roosting in Dumpster Central
Ravens sleeping in town on a midwinter Fairbanks evening.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
The ubiquitous Fairbanks raven is now even more so. Nighttime roosts — once documented as mysterious clumps of spruce trees where ravens slept far from people —can now mean a perch on t
Archaeologist creates a field guide to coffee cans
Bureau of Land Management archaeologist Steve Lanford with a Hills Bros. coffee can.
BLM photo by Craig McCaa.
The year is 1905. You are a prospector in Alaska relaxing in your cabin after a chilly day of working the tailings pile. Craving a cup of joe, you pull a tin of coffee off the shelf. Though you can
Rediscovering the "tastefully rotten"
A Chukotkan family sitting down to enjoy a meat sampler (aged walrus, aged seal, whale skin fat) with fermented seal oil (in a cup to the left of the tray) being used as dipping sauce.
Photo by Sveta Yamin-Pasternak
While processing backyard chickens last summer, Sveta Yamin-Pasternak thought how nice it would be to bury those fresh carcasses in the ground and let microorganisms preserve her food the easy way.
