We can’t see them, but there are more microbes — tiny fungi, bacteria, worms and other living things — in a teaspoon of soil than there are people on Earth. Hungry as you and me, those microbes gobble up bits of plant and animal material. And just like you and me, soil microbes release greenhouse […]
Poking holes in the sea floor that used to be part of the Bering Land Bridge, researchers have found that large swaths of it were floodplains pocked with bogs and ponds that may have restricted passage of animals like the woolly rhino and short-faced bear. Those two species and a few others never seemed to […]
Mount Churchill stands in a white corner of the Alaska map, deceptive in its cold, windblown silence. At least twice in the last few thousand years, the peak’s ice-covered caldera has spewed ash that reached as far as Ireland and piled up to force northern animals out of the territory. The Alaska Highway and other […]
When I was drinking coffee with a cab-driving-author friend of the same vintage last week, he said of my occupation: “It’s the best job in Alaska.” After a few seconds of pondering, I nodded. It has been 11,000 days since Oct. 25, 1994. That’s when I wrote my first story, a Halloween-themed piece on little […]