Wildfire hits close to home for scientist
The Stuart Creek wildfire plume as seen from Scott Rupp’s yard on a midsummer day.
Photo by Scott Rupp.
While pounding nails on a roof extension for his shed this summer, Scott Rupp heard a roar that almost scared him off the roof. Three planes with bellies full of fire retardant swooped low, then banked over the mountain behind his home.
“I looked up and saw this big smoke cloud,” said the part-time farmer and leader of an organization devoted to studying climate change. “That was my first sense that this was something that was going to personally affect me.”
Alaska Science Forum: Wildfire hits close to home for scientist
By nrozell [at] gi [dot] alaska [dot] edu (Ned Rozell)
While pounding nails on a roof extension for his shed this summer, Scott Rupp heard a roar that almost scared him off the roof. Three planes with bellies full of fire retardant swooped low, then banked over the mountain behind his home.
ASF awarded huge NASA contract
NASA announced on Friday, September 27 that it selected the University of Alaska Fairbanks to develop and operate the Synthetic Aperture Radar Distributed Active Archive Center for NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System. The DAAC is managed by the Alaska Satellite Facility at the Geophysical Institute at UAF.
Alaska Science Forum: 90-mile aqueduct still etched in Interior hills
By nrozell [at] gi [dot] alaska [dot] edu (Ned Rozell)
Like a bright yellow contour line painted above the Steese Highway, the Davidson Ditch now reveals itself by the flagging autumn birches and poplars that clog its path.
90-mile aqueduct still etched in Interior hills
A water pipeline near U.S. Creek that makes up part of the Davidson Ditch, a 90-mile aqueduct from the upper Chatanika River to near Fairbanks. Workers finished the project in the late 1920s. It lasted until the late 1960s, when a flood damaged the containment dam.
Photo by Craig McCaa, Bureau of Land Management.
Like a bright yellow contour line painted above the Steese Highway, the Davidson Ditch now reveals itself by the flagging autumn birches and poplars that clog its path.
The 90-mile system of canal, pipeline and tunnel becomes harder to see with each passing day, but the engineering triumph once helped prevent Fairbanks from ghosting out. The 1920s-era aqueduct provided the water needed to float dredges the size of apartment complexes and power hydraulic giants that firehosed water at Tanana River valley hillsides, stripping them to bedrock.
Billions of bodies on the move
With Tricia Blake of the Alaska Songbird Institute looking on, a first-grade student in Fairbanks watches the flight of a dark-eyed junco recently captured and its leg banded at the Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge in Fairbanks.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
CREAMER’S FIELD, FAIRBANKS — “As this bird takes off, think about how they have to fly thousands and thousands of miles,” Tricia Blake said to 21 first-graders sitting on wooden benches surrounded by birch and balsam poplar trees.
The biologist and educator then placed a ruby-crowned kinglet in the flat palm of a six-year old boy. The thumb-size songbird was probably born in northern Alaska this spring. During the past hour of its brief life (which will last about 4 years), it had a tiny metal band clamped around its ankle.
Alaska Science Forum: Winds and ice stop Northwest Passage journey
By nrozell [at] gi [dot] alaska [dot] edu (Ned Rozell)
Beavers and jet skis surprised four adventurers on their recent attempt to row through the Northwest Passage. Vancouver, British Columbia residents Kevin Vallely, Paul Gleeson, Frank Wolf and Denis Barnett are now back home after the team stopped short of its goal of gliding through the northern waterway on muscle power.
Earth, Wind & Fire: First Friday Art Show October 4
Come enjoy artwork created by University of Alaska Fairbanks faculty, staff, students and community members centered around the theme, Earth, Wind & Fire.
Warming ocean thawing Antarctic glacier, researchers say
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 18, 2013
CONTACT: Diana Campbell, 907-474-5229, dlcampbell [at] alaska [dot] edu
PDF DownloadAlaska Science Forum: Billions of bodies on the move
By nrozell [at] gi [dot] alaska [dot] edu (Ned Rozell)
CREAMER’S FIELD, FAIRBANKS — “As this bird takes off, think about how they have to fly thousands and thousands of miles,” Tricia Blake said to 21 first-graders sitting on wooden benches surrounded by birch and balsam poplar trees.
