Published Mar 25, 2024 by Rod Boyce

Camping on an Arctic Ocean ice floe can be risky. Choosing a safe spot is critical in a setting where the surface can crack open.

That essential job — finding a good spot for the U.S. military’s biennial Operation Ice Camp — falls to people at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

Research professor Andy Mahoney and research professional Joshua Jones assisted with ice floe selection for the five-week exercise, which began Feb. 20. After a week spent searching for a camp location, Mahoney stayed for the first two weeks. Jones was back on site for the second half of the on-ice activities.

“Josh and I were heavily involved in the process of selecting the ice floe where camp was set up,” Mahoney said. “We went out on all the ‘ice pioneering’ flights to observe the ice and make thickness surveys after landing.”

“Back in Deadhorse, we also took part in all ice-related discussions with the camp leadership,” he said.

The Navy describes Operation Ice Camp, formerly known as ICEX, as a biannual operation to assess operational readiness in the Arctic and to “increase experience in the region, advance understanding of the Arctic environment and continue to develop relationships with other services, allies, and partner organizations.”

Either Mahoney or Jones was always on the ice to help assess ice conditions as they evolved.

Published Mar 24, 2024 by Annie Berman

Teacher salaries in Alaska are not competitive when compared to much of the Lower 48, according to new research from the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Alaska teachers are paid below the national average once their salaries adjusted for the high cost of living in Alaska, said Matthew Berman, a professor of economics at UAA and one of two authors of the study published last month.

The topic of public school funding and teacher pay has been a main focus in the Alaska Legislature this session and of local school boards statewide. Last week, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed an education package that overwhelmingly passed in the Legislature and would have provided the largest nominal schools funding increase in Alaska’s history. The governor said he vetoed the bill because it did not include some of his priorities, including teacher bonuses and provisions for charter schools. A vote to override the veto failed 39-20, just one vote short of the 40-legislator threshold.

The study was published at a moment when Alaska school districts are profoundly struggling to find and keep qualified teachers.

Many education advocates, superintendents and school board members say flat state education funding and a lack of a defined benefit retirement system have made it difficult to offer higher wages and better benefits that could keep teachers.

Berman and Dayna DeFeo, director of the university’s Center for Alaska Education Policy Research, noted in the study that this is a not a new problem: When cost of living differences are taken into account, Alaska teacher salaries have been, on average, below the the national average for decades.

Published Mar 24, 2024 by Ned Rozell

In the far north, where night will soon be in short supply, nocturnal animals like flying squirrels and owls need to go about their business in daylight.

Mad increases in daylight cue chemical changes in the brain that enable animals to ditch their circadian rhythms, Kielland said. Moose, for example, can strip willows for two hours then lie down for a few hours, repeating that cycle all day and all night. Though owls, bats and flying squirrels are more active in the dimmest part of the day, they are not living the life in Alaska that they are in Washington state.

During studies in the early 2000s, biologist Jack Whitman found that boreal owls outside McGrath and Fairbanks fed mostly red-backed voles to their nestlings, sometimes switching to meadow voles when they were available and grasses and sedges were short. Owls fed their young other birds, mammals and insects too, but voles were by far the number one prey of Aegolius funereus.

Published Mar 23, 2024 by alaskabusiness

UAF’s Toolik Field Station has partnered with the new Polar Research Infrastructure Network (PolarIN) to boost international collaboration in Arctic science.

The project, coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, will increase international access to sixty-four field stations, vessels, and other polar research facilities across Europe, the Americas, and Antarctica. Researchers from the US will be able to apply for in-person or remote access to complete research at partnering PolarIN sites.

Toolik Field Station, operated and managed by the UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology, is located in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range, 370 miles from Fairbanks and just off the Dalton Highway.

“This new network will enhance Toolik Field Station’s profile to international researchers and provide opportunities for US researchers to branch out to polar research infrastructures in other nations,” says Syndonia Bret-Harte, a UAF professor and the station’s science co-director.

By facilitating cross-border access to polar regions, PolarIN will promote interdisciplinary research to address the rapid changes happening in the Arctic and Antarctic. Changes in these two regions are globally critical for understanding future climate.