Snow-starved Alaska not the normal state By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]T[/fusion_dropcap] During the first 21 days of November 2014, no recordable snow fell in Anchorage, Juneau or Fairbanks. Over an unusual swath of the state, the ground was frozen, dusty and brown. Even extreme parts of Alaska were in a snow drought. "No manual observation site [...]
Alaska forests in transition By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]I[/fusion_dropcap]n almost every patch of boreal forest in Interior Alaska that Glenn Juday has studied since the 1980s, at least one quarter (and as many as one-half) of the aspen, white spruce and birch trees are dead. “These are mature forest stands that were established 120 to 200 [...]
Resurrecting Leviathan: Reconstructing Sperm Whale Catches in the North Pacific By Phillip J. Clapham and Yulia V. Ivashchenko [fusion_dropcap]T[/fusion_dropcap]o anyone who has ever seen one, the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) is among the more bizarre-looking animals on our planet. With its wrinkled skin, giant head, and large teeth arrayed in an oddly underslung jaw, it [...]
The Wooly Mammoth Mystery of St. Paul Island By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]O[/fusion_dropcap]ne foggy day on St. Paul Island, a woolly mammoth stepped onto a trapdoor of greenery. It plunged thirty feet to the floor of a cave. There was no exit. A few thousand years later, a scientist who descended by ladder found the mammoth's [...]
NOAA selects Alaska’s Kachemak Bay as focus for habitat initiative Designation part of watershed effort to rebuild fisheries, improve coastal habitat [fusion_dropcap]N[/fusion_dropcap]OAA is designating Kachemak Bay, Alaska, as its next Habitat Focus Area. Kachemak Bay, located in southern Cook Inlet, is valuable for its recreational, subsistence, and commercial fishing, marine transportation, tourism, and threatened and [...]
Alaska is Ground Zero for Global Warming Studies By Elizabeth Weise - USA Today [fusion_dropcap]T[/fusion_dropcap]o the untrained eye, Bonanza Creek forest is breathtaking, a vibrant place alive with butterflies and birds, with evidence of moose and bear at every turn. But look through forest ecologist Glenn Juday's eyes, and you see a dying landscape. Since [...]
Fat the only fuel for migrating Alaska salmon By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]A[/fusion_dropcap]s you read this, salmon are darting through the deep blue ocean off Alaska, eating everything they can catch. Some of those brilliant silver fish are packing on fat to power them 1,500 miles up the Yukon, past Eagle and well into Canada. They [...]
Removing the mystery from Alaska's washboard roads By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]W[/fusion_dropcap]hile driving Alaska's graveled highways, countless people have no doubt wondered about how an unpaved road surface turns into a bouncing bed of corduroy. Keith Mather, who was studying nuclear physics in Australia in the early 1960s, had the same question. He wrote a paper [...]
Do Alaska's melting glaciers make for bad oysters? By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]T[/fusion_dropcap]he rate of melting of Alaska's glaciers into the Gulf of Alaska has nearly doubled since 1995. In July 2004, passengers on a small cruise ship in Prince William Sound came down with stomach flu after eating local oysters. Some scientists think there's a [...]
Methane gas escaping from ocean floor may be one cause of global warming By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]I[/fusion_dropcap]f the world continues to get warmer, vast amounts of methane gas trapped under the sea could belch up and worsen climate change, according to a study. "We may have less time than we think to do something (about [...]