A new series of ethnobotany films produced by filmmaker Sarah Betcher explores traditional Alaskan indigenous uses of wild plants for food, medicine and construction materials. The “Ties to Alaska’s Wild Plants” project was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Betcher and principle investigator Steffi Ickert-Bond, the Herbarium curator at the University […]
Last Friday, an email popped up in all the mailboxes of people with the Geophysical Institute: Someone saw what might have been a wolf on the trails north of the UAF campus. “Please be cautious if skiing in the area.” A few people responded, saying they had seen one or two coyotes roaming the 1,000-plus […]
Recent research on the ice worm has shone some light on the tiny creature that appears when the sun sets on warmish glaciers. Few people have seen ice worms, but they are not mythical. Wispy and less than one inch long, ice worms live on glaciers, wriggling to the surface at night and sometimes lingering […]
ST. MATTHEW ISLAND —I’m resting on a mattress of tundra plants that are growing more than 200 miles from the nearest Alaska village. While I have snuck away here to my own private ridgetop, eight other people, all scientists, are somewhere on this 30-mile-long wedge of tundra, rocky beaches, lakes and bird cliffs in the […]