Gulls love garbage; pikas love cold
A glaucous gull summering on Alaska’s North Slope.
Photo by Emily Weiser.
Garbage allows gulls to thrive in the oilfields of northern Alaska, and furry little pikas might be changing their body shapes in response to changes in climate, according to two graduate students
A shaky September in Yakutat Bay
A model Lawrence Martin made of the dynamic Yakutat area.
From the 1912 U.S. Geological Survey paper, “The earthquakes at Yakutat Bay, Alaska, in September, 1899.”
More than a century ago, eight prospectors were panning the glacial sands near Hubbard Glacier when the earth starting shaking and never seemed to stop. A few days later, they had survived a natura
Dangerous ice the focus of research project
UAF ecologist Knut Kielland checks out a mysterious hole in the ice of the Tanana River.
Photo by Ned Rozell
SAM CHARLEY SLOUGH — Winter travelers on the Tanana River can save a mile by taking the shortcut through this serpentine channel rather than following a lazy bend of the big river, but experi
Way back when, artist believed Alaska was a good deal
Frederick Whymper, in a photo taken by Bradley and Rolofson, San Francisco photographers. Copyright expired.
About 150 years ago, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward was taking some heat for his significant role in the purchase of Alaska. On the day the Russians received the $7.2 million check, a group
Birds blazing an electronic trail north during spring migration
Gary Chayalkun, a student from Chevak, releases a Tundra Swan that is probably on its way back to Alaska now.
Photo courtesy Craig Ely.
During the next month, while many of us are sleeping, Alaska’s population will increase by millions. The migrant birds are returning, and, thanks to tracking technology that gets better each
Underwater desert surrounds Aleutian volcano
A mature kelp forest offshore of an Aleutian Island that resembles the offshore environment of Kasatochi Island prior to its August 2008 eruption.
Photo by Shawn Harper.
Stephen Jewett has dived in ocean waters from one end of Alaska to the other, but he has never seen an underwater landscape as barren as one he saw last summer.
“Diving off Nome where they were doing offshore dredging (for gold) was close, but nothing compares to what we found around Kasatochi,” said Jewett, who dives as part of his job with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.
Small village may model future Alaska
A Russian Orthodox church in the village of Koliganek.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
KOLIGANEK — This village in southwest Alaska, so small it doesn’t have its own zip code, is of great interest to Kenji Yoshikawa. It once had permafrost, but he’s not finding it n
"Apun" is a celebration of snow
“Apun” book cover.
Image courtesy of University of Alaska Press.
Born in Florida and raised in New Mexico, Matthew Sturm somehow became an expert on snow. During the past 30 years, he has traveled thousands of miles on the substance, counted how many grains it takes to cover a football field to a depth of two feet (1 trillion), and has spent so much time lying on his side and squinting through a hand lens that he swears he has seen molecules of water moving through the snowpack.
Now, he has written and illustrated a children’s book on snow.
Bitter weather may have wiped out reindeer
Reindeer of St. Matthew Island in the 1960s, before they disappeared.
Photo by David Klein.
Six thousand reindeer once lived on a remote island in the Bering Sea that was briefly their paradise. In what has become a classic story of wildlife boom and bust, no reindeer live on St. Matthew Island now. Three scientists just looked back at the St. Matthew’s reindeer herd and found that an extreme winter probably pushed the stressed animals to their deaths.
