Standing in the 29-degree air outside a building on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, Josephine Galipon held a pinkie-size vial that may have contained tiny organisms locked in a coma for thousands of years. Galipon, a researcher with Keio University in Japan, needed to work outside a heated room so as not to disturb […]
High summer is here in middle Alaska. North of Fairbanks, in bright sunshine, alder flycatchers are perched in spruce tops, just arriving from Bolivia and Peru. A few steps away, accompanied by the smell of sulfur, dozens of carrion flies buzz on and above a moose carcass. Permafrost expert Tom Douglas has led me […]
A scientist has an idea for reducing global carbon-dioxide emissions — fight Alaska forest fires more aggressively. Carly Phillips, an ecologist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks there is a unique Alaska opportunity to keep carbon in the soil, and in tissues of living trees and other plants. “Alaska stores nearly one half […]
The evidence is in: Snowshoe hares near Wiseman eat lots of dirt. “I have thousands and thousands of photos of hares eating soil in this one little spot,” said Donna DiFolco, a biologist and cartographer with the National Park Service. DiFolco has studied hares in the eastern portion of Gates of the Arctic National Park […]