Keith Echelmeyer paddles on a two-month wilderness trip through the Brooks Range and Alaska’s North Slope.

Photo by Chris Larsen.

Keith Echelmeyer has died at age 56. The glaciologist, pilot, mountaineer and fighter for life passed away last Saturday, with his incomparable wife Susan Campbell by his side and chickadees at the

Craig George, left, and Leslie Pierce look for bowhead whales north of Barrow.

OFF POINT BARROW — “We’re a long ways offshore,” Craig George says. “The water beneath us is about 180 feet deep.”
       

Dean Orbison of Sitka with the 130 floating toys he and his family have found on Southeast Alaska beaches. The toys include green frogs, yellow ducks that have faded to a cream color, blue turtles, and red beavers that have faded to white.

Photo courtesy of Dean Orbison.

Twenty-eight years after scientists spilled hundreds of plastic disks on ice in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska to determine ocean currents, another one came home to roost at the Geophysical Insti

A beetle, species unknown, in a Fairbanks backyard. Photo by Ned Rozell.

 

In these days of endless sunshine and air that doesn’t hurt to breathe, life is rich in the north, from the multitude of baby birds hatching at this instant to the month-old orange moose calv

A section of the Tanana River that is “boiling with fish” in the fall. Biologists recently identified this area as the spawning grounds for many whitefish.

Photo by Randy Brown.

Aaron Dupuis lost his fish. Last year, the graduate student installed radio tags on a few dozen whitefish in a maze of lakes near Minto, Alaska. Using a radio receiver, he followed some fish up the

A polar bear near Barrow.

Photo by Ned Rozell.

An ancient jawbone has led scientists to believe that polar bears survived a period thousands of years ago that was warmer than today.

Ringed seals are master divers that can stay submerged in icy waters for longer than 30 minutes.

Photo by Craig George.

In the cold waters off northern Alaska, ringed seals dive for cod and shrimp. Sometimes the seals stay beneath the ice for longer than 30 minutes, which is about six times longer than the best huma

A fire scar in the making near Venetie, Alaska on June 24, 2004.

Image courtesy U.S. Geological Survey and Geographic Information Network of Alaska.

The blackened scars that Alaska fires leave on the landscape may result in more lightning, more rain in some areas just downwind of the scars, and less rain farther away, according to two scientist

A paper birch in springtime featuring beads of bitter resin on the twig.

Ned Rozell photo.

Could ancient mammoth hunters have warmed the planet? A trio of scientists presents the idea in a new study.
           
The far nor

A willow rose, formed by an insect.

Photo by Tommi Nyman, University of Eastern Finland

From the more-you-look-the-more-you-see file, I present the willow rose.

The willow rose is lovely, green and unexpected, its whirled petals gracing the top of Alaska willows lik