During these late winter days, researchers who are studying the rusty discoloration of northern Alaska streams are prepping for summer field trips. Jon O’Donnell of the National Park Service is one of a team of scientists who will float rivers and streams in Kobuk Valley National Park and Noatak National Preserve in 2024. He and […]
Moments after bashing some drywall with a hammer to expose my home’s water pipes to warmer air, I logged in to see another Special Weather Statement. A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks wrote: “After a brief ‘warm-up’ from the bitterly cold temperatures recently, another prolonged cold-snap will return to the Interior. “Valley […]
For years, scientists have wondered why North America’s highest mountain is not a volcano. All the ingredients for volcanic activity lurk deep beneath Denali, which sits above where one planetary plate grinds past another. Recently, while looking for something else, researchers found a reservoir of what might be magma, 7 miles beneath the muskeg of […]
The female woolly mammoth was 20 years old when she stumbled amid the grasslands. She fell in a cloud of dust, then gasped her last breath of cool air. It was a late-summer day, 14,000 years ago. Over her lifetime, this creature had wandered from Canada’s Yukon territory into Alaska, where she died at […]