To the delight of the local mosquitoes, Nicholas Hasson steps through a tangle of prickly spruce branches while wearing a backpack that holds a scientific instrument. Hasson is walking as straight a line as he can through a Fairbanks subdivision built in the boreal forest. Hasson studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He […]
I just so happened to be stretched out on good ol’ Mother Earth the other night when an earthquake happened. On a Memorial Day overnight canoe trip, a friend and I had dragged our boats onto the gravel of a little island on the Chena River. After mosquitoes chased us into our tents and we’d […]
9th Circuit Overturns Decision That Walruses Don’t Require Endangered Species Act Protection SAN FRANCISCO— The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the Trump administration’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service improperly denied Endangered Species Act protections to the Pacific walrus. The Wildlife Service found in 2011 that the Pacific walrus warranted protection because […]
Some of the weather conditions that led to the destructive McKinley and Swan Lake fires in 2019 could be a mainstay of Southcentral Alaska summers in the future, according to a recent article by a team of scientists with the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. Twenty-three researchers — 13 of them core members of […]
On a fine June day about 100 years ago, in a green mountain valley where the Aleutians stick to the rest of Alaska, the world fell apart. Earthquakes swayed the alders and spruce. A mountain shook, groaned, and collapsed in on itself, its former summit swallowing rock and dust until it became a giant, steaming […]
Wolves with adequate social distancing from humans tend to avoid nasty viruses, scientists have found. In a study of more than 2,000 gray wolves from near Mexico to northern Canada, researchers found that the farther wolves were from people, the fewer viruses and parasites they encountered. In the study, scientists used blood samples taken over […]
NASA’s annual maintenance visits to Poker Flat Research Range have resumed after a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with big projects this year including removal of a little-used launcher and the transfer of one radar to another facility. One crew has finished its work and departed. That crew focused on the launch facility’s […]
In Alaska’s infinite waters swims a handsome, silvery fish. Until recently, we knew little about the Bering cisco, which exists only around Alaska and Siberia. Then a scientist combined his unique life experiences with modern tools to help color in the fish’s life history. Randy Brown is a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Fish and […]
High on the broken pyramid of Iliamna Volcano, rotten rock held in place by volcano-warmed ice sometimes loses its grip. Several times over the years, rock-and-ice avalanches have blasted down Iliamna at 150 miles per hour. Left behind on the mountain’s face is a dirty, five-mile scar, in the same place as the last one. […]