Published Jul 20, 2023 by Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon

The forces of climate change that are reducing ice cover and opening up the Arctic to more activity are making Alaska more important, said Kusnezov, who was in the midst of his first tour of the state.

To that end, the department plans to revitalize the Arctic Domain Awareness Center that has been based at the University of Alaska Anchorage, he said in a brief interview in Anchorage before he caught a flight to Fairbanks.

The center was established in 2014 as one of the department’s “centers of excellence” to research threats and challenges to the homeland, but its activity has been reduced. It is now considered to be in “emeritus” status, he said. Homeland Security is now planning to solicit proposals for increased activity, with an announcement expected this fall, he said.

Published Jul 20, 2023 by Selena Moore

“Romeo and Juliet” is arguably Shakespeare’s most well known play. There are numerous film adaptations, it’s the inspiration for many other works of art, and the play is a staple of high school English classes. Even my elementary school age daughters are familiar with the story line of the star crossed lovers — thanks to the comedy “Gnomeo and Juliet.”

Having seen the Romeo and Juliet movies, heard the songs, and having regularly taught it to my freshman students, I was excited to attend the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater’s production at Jack Townshend Point for my first viewing of a live production of the play.

It felt a bit magical to walk through the sunny birch forest on the University of Alaska toward the theater and find oneself suddenly transported to another world. FST’s newly built, multilevel stage was set up with vines, stairs and a balcony, effectively transporting the audience to a villa in medieval Verona.

The new stage also includes two rolling, columned platforms which were moved throughout the play to signal changes of scene from the street, to House of Capulet, and finally the crypt where the lovers end their lives.

Published Jul 19, 2023 by Kate Allen

Climate change is redrawing the boundaries of where plants, animals, and other organisms can survive - with costly consequences

From the early 1980s onwards, the northern latitudes had been getting greener. But the picture was fuzzy. The pixels from the satellite were eight kilometres wide: enough to show greening, but not what was getting greener.

“That was really a black box, because we couldn’t see into those pixels,” says Ken Tape, an Arctic ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “How exactly is the vegetation changing?”

At the time, Tape was a technician in the lab of Matthew Sturm, a geophysicist at the university. Sturm had caught wind of a cache of old photographs gathering dust in a government office in Anchorage. They were about to be thrown out, but Sturm arranged for a few to be sent to his office first.

“He opened them up and said, ‘Here’s my FedEx number — send me the whole thing,’” Tape recalls.

“That was a really smart decision on his part.”

The cache consisted of over 5,000 super-high-resolution photographs of the northern Alaskan landscape. The U.S. Navy had taken them from a low-flying plane just after the Second World War. They were looking for oil and other resources, but the photographs turned out to be a scientific gold mine: they were historical evidence of Arctic landscape 50 years earlier.

Over the next two summers, Tape set out across Alaska to revisit hundreds of the scenes in the photographs. Holding a camera while flying in a helicopter — occasionally with the door open — he recaptured the original angles as closely as possible. The work was first published in a 2001 Nature article.

“It was the first real glimpse into these greening pixels, and suddenly the light bulb kind of went on for lot of us,” says Tape.

Published Jul 19, 2023 by Julia O'Malley

In April, Peter Westley, an associate professor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, gave a presentation about the state of salmon at Kenai Peninsula College, detailing the wide range of challenges for king salmon, from parasites in the warming Yukon River to competition from hatchery fish.

On the last slide, he named a final factor: hubris.

“I’m guilty of being arrogant and thinking that things are going to be just fine,” he said.

He was trained to believe that salmon are resilient and that if they are well managed in a healthy habitat, they will do well.

Alaska has pristine habitat for the fish and decades of careful management. Yet the fish are declining.

“It makes me worry,” he said, “and makes me question whether we as Alaskans are truly willing to accept what’s coming for us.”

Published Jul 19, 2023

More than $206 million for salmon recovery and marine habitat restoration are included in the draft Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies funding bill for fiscal year 2024 that was passed by the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee on July 13.

Sen. Patty Murray, who chairs the appropriations committee, said the funds, which are via the U.S. Department of Commerce, are a top priority for her. Murray (D-Wash.) has long made clear that she believes the federal government must play a role in funding salmon recovery efforts, particularly as part of its obligation to sovereign tribes.

The senator has stressed the importance of the fisheries-related legislation to Washington state’s economy, which includes $104 million for NOAA’s Climate Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes. The University of Washington (UW) co-leads the institutes, along with Oregon State University (OSU) and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). The institutes investigate climate change, ocean acidification, fisheries assessments and tsunami forecasting.

The draft legislation also includes $80 million for NOAA’s National Sea Grant College program at UW; $42.5 million for NOAA’s Integrated Ocean Observing System, based at UW; $16.3 million for NOAA’s Climate Adaptation Partnership Program; and $2 million for NOAA to prevent and mitigate impacts of invasive European green crab.

Published Jul 19, 2023 by Michelle Wilber

Climate change typically means warmer weather, but grid operators also are experiencing more extreme cold spells. These colder temperatures are a common hesitancy for wider adoption of electrification — whether that be electric vehicles (EVs), drones or other field operations equipment.

Despite the colder temperatures, interest in EVs is increasing rapidly in Alaska. Because EVs interact directly with electrical generation systems — distributed and community — and have the potential to act as dispatchable loads or storage to support electric grid stability, the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is investigating research questions pertinent to EVs in Alaska.

As early as 2009, a research team at the UAF Transportation Center began studying EVs in Alaska. Although the technology was in a very different state at that time (vehicles were either self-built or conversions), the research team’s Feasibility Study of Electric Cars in Cold Regions report noted: “Electric vehicles can be a viable option for certain users in the subarctic and arctic communities.”