Climber-turned-scientist ponders Alaska Range formation
Climber and geologist Jeff Benowitz pictured in the Alaska Range.
Photo courtesy Jeff Benowitz.
About 15 years ago, a distinguished geology professor named David Hopkins noticed that one of his brightest students wasn’t captivated by the course Hopkins was teaching. After class, he call
Summer's over for northern sea ice
Yellow lines on this mosaic of satellite images show possible sailing routes through the Northwest Passage in early September 2010.
Image courtesy of the Canadian Ice Service, copyright MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. 2010.
On or within a few days of September 15, sea ice experts will make the call declaring that sea ice floating on northern oceans is covering its least amount of ocean surface in 2010. The great north
Augustine Volcano as tsunami generator
Augustine Volcano, in a photo taken from Diamond Ridge near Homer.
Photo courtesy of Dennis Anderson, Night Trax Photography.
On Oct. 6, 1883, this entry was in the Alaska Commercial Company logbook at an English Bay trading post, located about 50 miles northeast of Augustine volcano:
“This mornin
Autumn waters north of Barrow heavy with whales
Three bowhead whales feeding north of Barrow on large concentrations of krill.
NOAA photo by Craig George.
Attracted by some of the smallest creatures in Alaska, dozens of the state’s largest gathered last week off Point Barrow.
Bowhead whales in groups of almost 100 were group
Pondering the future of Alaska landscapes
Trumpeter swans, a species that may find the Alaska of the future offers more of the ice-free days they need to hatch and raise their young.
Photo by Donna Dewhurst, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
At the end of this century, more graceful white bodies of migrating trumpeter swans will glide over Alaska. Alpine slopes will be quieter, with less piercing whistles from the Alaska marmot. Caribo
The missing polar bears of St. Matthew Island
A drawing of polar bears on St. Matthew Island that appeared in Harper’s Weekly Journal of Civilization in 1875.
“We landed on St. Matthew Island early on a cold gray August morning, and judge our astonishment at finding hundreds of large polar bears . . . lazily sleeping in grassy hollows, or digging u
Alaska landscape loses a body, gains a spirit
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
Learning from whales and whalers on top of the world
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.”
Mummy ground squirrel tells of a different Alaska
A ground squirrel.
Photo courtesy of Ben Gaglioti.
One fall day in Interior Alaska, a lion stalked a ground squirrel that stood exposed on a hillside like a foot-long sandwich. The squirrel saw bending blades of grass, squeaked an alarm call, and then dived into its hole. It curled up in a grassy nest. A few months later, for reasons unknown, its heart stopped during hibernation.
Twenty thousand years later, Ben Gaglioti is teasing apart the mummified ground squirrel’s cache in an attempt to better reconstruct what Alaska was like during the days of the mammoth, bison, wild horse and camel.
Return from the earthquake zone in Haiti
In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a multistory building with a concrete roof collapsed during the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January 2010.
Photo by Rich Koehler.
After a few chaotic, free-form weeks in Haiti, an Alaska geologist reported that he and a team of others didn’t find the rips in the ground they were looking for following the early January e
