For more than two decades, Alaska has led the way in using ecosystem information to inform resource management decisions. In 2020, contributions from research partners and local communities together with NOAA scientists helped fill some data gaps. Each year, NOAA Fisheries scientists compile information from a variety of sources to produce and update annual indicators […]
SOLOMONS, MD (November 11, 2020)–Arctic researchers Jacqueline Grebmeier and Lee Cooper have been visiting the Bering and Chukchi seas off Alaska for nearly 30 years, collecting information about the biological diversity of the watery world under the sea ice to understand how marine ecosystems are responding to environmental changes. This year, a late-season research cruise […]
The impacts of predator loss and climate change are combining to devastate living reefs that have defined Alaskan kelp forests for centuries, according to new research published in Science. “We discovered that massive limestone reefs built by algae underpin the Aleutian Islands’ kelp forest ecosystem,” said Douglas Rasher, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for […]
Three new research tools will help scientists and the public better understand the effects of climate change on freshwater fish. A stream classification tool, a searchable database of research papers, and a salmon life cycle model, funded by agencies and public dollars, will all be accessible online. “Freshwater aquatic ecosystem data are relatively scarce […]
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and North Pacific Gyre Oscillation are not as effective at helping us predict regional environmental and ecological change as in the past. A new study shows that two important indicators for understanding and predicting the effects of climate variability on eastern North Pacific marine ecosystems are less reliable than they were historically. […]
University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists are developing a new method to predict ecosystem change in Interior Alaska, and their techniques could prove useful elsewhere in the world. The study uses real-time water data, rather than simulations, to predict ecosystem “tipping points.” “We’re pretty good, as ecosystem ecologists, at using stream chemistry to tell us […]
University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists presented their work at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco this week. Here are some research highlights from the world’s largest Earth and space science meeting. A decades-old research project on Alaska’s North Slope indicates that deciduous shrubs shift more carbon from the soil to the atmosphere […]
Sea ice in the Bering Sea shrank to its lowest levels in recorded history in 2018, profoundly affecting northwest Alaska residents who depend on marine resources for food, cash and culture, according to a new peer-reviewed study. “This is an extreme event with immediate and long-lasting repercussions. It’s indicative of very rapid change in the […]
To learn more about one of the largest environmental changes of our lifetimes, Brittany Jones studies clam breath. Jones is a student earning her Ph.D. at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She is an expert on creatures that live in the muck covering the underwater continental shelf off western Alaska. There, sea ice waxes […]