For millennia, Indigenous people living in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon territory have relied on Chinook salmon. The large, fatty fish provide essential nutrients for Arctic living and have influenced traditions and languages across generations. But over the past three decades, many communities have been unable to fish Chinook amid a sharp salmon population decline. The […]
Warming soil unleashes metals deadly to fish and food chains In Alaska’s Brooks Range, rivers once clear enough to drink now run orange and hazy with toxic metals. As warming thaws formerly frozen ground, it sets off a chemical chain reaction that is poisoning fish and wreaking havoc on ecosystems. As the planet warms, a […]
NORTH SLOPE, Alaska — “Chick chick whirrr, chick whirrr.” Although it was a recorded birdsong that chattered through each of the poplar stands we entered, I still occasionally caught myself believing we were hearing the real thing — the call of the gray-headed chickadee, last heard in Alaska in 2018. Tom Glass, a postdoctoral researcher […]
A proposed earthquake early warning system could have provided several communities an alert of 10 seconds or more ahead of strong shaking from the magnitude 7.3 quake that occurred south of Sand Point near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula in mid-July. That analysis is provided by Alex Fozkos of the Alaska Earthquake Center’s systems team at the […]