Greenup hits, so does pollen
Chena Ridge in Fairbanks on May 18, 2011. Jim Anderson watched this hillside each year for the “faint but distinct green flush” that marked greenup.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
Greenup — the great, silent collective explosion of freed tree buds that had been frozen all winter like a clenched fist — happened yesterday in interior Alaska. I know this because it’s a phenomenon that’s easy to notice here in Fairbanks, which is locked up in black-and-white for much of the year. And because Rick Thoman just told me.
Climate change and the people of the Mesa
The Mesa site on Alaska's North Slope.
Photo courtesy Mike Kunz.
People tend to think of climate change as a recent phenomenon, but Alaska was once the setting for an environmental shift so dramatic it forced people to evacuate the entire North Slope, according to Michael Kunz, an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management.
