Published Dec 1, 2023 by Arctic Business Journal

The Sept. 26 Railbelt Decarbonization Pathways project update session covered ACEP’s Railbelt Decarbonization Study, its scenarios for moderate and aggressive electrification and the potential of electric vehicles, heat pumps and rooftop solar in an electrified future.

Published Dec 1, 2023 by Arctic Business Journal

Alexis Francisco joined ACEP in 2022 as a summer undergraduate intern when she was a senior at UAF, studying electrical engineering with a concentration in power and control. With a B.S. in electrical engineering, she now serves ACEP as a full-time research professional.

As a power engineer, Francisco primarily works on power system modeling on the Railbelt Decarbonization project, constructing power system models and performing steady state and dynamic stability analysis in PSS/E and PowerFactory software. PSS/E, short for power system simulator for engineering, is used to study power system transmission networks, and PowerFactory is a power system analysis software.

Both steady state and dynamic stability examine different aspects of the system’s behavior under “contingency,” or unexpected events that impact the grid’s stable operations. When a contingency occurs due to a generator failure or a tree falling on a power line, steady state analyzes the state of the system pre- and post-event to determine whether the system can handle these events and still deliver power to consumers. Dynamic stability, on the other hand, analyzes the system’s response to the event during the event, accounting for the dynamic behavior of machines and inverter-based resources.

As Francisco and her team are finishing up the decarbonization project, she is gearing towards working more on the synthetic microgrid project, which aims to generate models of rural Alaska communities, using available data and power systems software.

Published Dec 1, 2023

After 43 years of dedicated service to the University of Alaska Southeast, Dr. Priscilla Schulte announced plans to retire after the 2023 fall semester. Schulte has served as the Ketchikan Campus Director since 2013.

Dr. Priscilla Schulte joined the faculty of Ketchikan Community College in 1980 as Instructor of Anthropology/Sociology and was promoted to Professor of Anthropology/Sociology in 1994. She continued her teaching assignment after the transition to the University of Alaska Southeast, also serving as Assistant Director of Instruction. In recent years she took on a variety of interim leadership roles, including Interim Ketchikan Campus Director in 1999-2000 and again in 2012-2013, and as Interim Provost from 2015-2016.

Dr. Priscilla Schulte retires at the end of the Fall 2023 semester at the university, on December 31. Of her time serving the University of Alaska Southeast, Priscilla had these words to say: "It has been very rewarding to work with students throughout these years. I have had students return after working for many years and start a new career and others have gone on to get graduate certificates and degrees. UAS changes lives and I'm glad that I have been part of these experiences."

Published Dec 1, 2023 by chrisco2

For Native American Heritage Month, NOAA Fisheries celebrates the Indigenous scientists who help make our work in marine mammal conservation possible. The Tribal Government of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island conducts high-level science and management of their marine resources. They work independently and in partnership with NOAA through a formal co-management agreement authorized by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. 

St. Paul is a small community of about 400 people located in the Pribilof Islands, 300 miles from mainland Alaska in the Bering Sea. Unangan—which means “The People of the Sea”— live on St. Paul, and neighboring St. George. Russian fur traders captured their ancestors from the Aleutian Islands and relocated them to the Pribilof Islands in the 1700s. They were enslaved there for the commercial fur harvest of laaqudan (the Unangam tunuu word for northern fur seals, pronounced “lah-koo-thawn”). Their deep cultural connection to and subsistence reliance upon laaqudan and other marine mammals, such as qawan (Steller sea lions, “ka-wahn”), has persisted for millennia and remains strong to this day. 

Another of the Tribe’s conservation projects aims to improve our understanding of how disturbance (by people or natural events such as storms) affects laaqudan. Hanna Hellen (Tlingit), Environmental Program Manager, leads the project as part of her master’s degree through the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Tamamta fellowship program. The work is highly collaborative with NOAA Fisheries, as it uses the same Very High Frequency radio technology that we have used for nearly 10 years to monitor laaqudan for other studies. VHF radios send data about the duration of visits to shore by tagged laaqudan to nearby receiver stations. Tribal and NOAA Fisheries staff work together each fall to apply VHF tags to lactating female laaqudan on both St. Paul and St. George Islands. 

Today we would like to highlight the contributions of these four Indigenous scientists. Below, ECO team members share their own stories about growing up and how their work in environmental science is grounded in their local and Traditional Knowledge. 

Published Dec 1, 2023 by Chris Bieri

In the recent history of the Governor’s Cup, there may be no more greatly anticipated series than the one taking place this weekend in Anchorage between the University of Alaska Anchorage and University of Alaska Fairbanks.

While both hockey programs have gone through struggles at points over the past decade, the Seawolves (6-9-1) and Nanooks (6-5-1) are each playing a highly competitive brand of hockey at present. UAF narrowly missed qualifying for the national tournament last season, and UAA already has wins under its belt against a pair of ranked Big Ten teams this season.

The most recent Pairwise rankings have UAF at No. 26 and UAA at No. 41. The Nanooks won the first two games of the Cup in early November, taking 6-1 and 5-4 victories in Fairbanks.

Although the Nanooks have dominated the series since UAA was fully reinstated before last season, Largen expects the Avis Alaska Sports Complex to be packed and noisy for the weekend series. For UAF to continue its success against the Seawolves, Largen said the team needs to continue to play hard-nosed, tight-checking hockey and play well on special teams. Although both teams are now Division I independents, the series is still incredibly important, he said.

But ultimately, it’s a series against a rival with the Governor’s Cup on the line.

“It’s kind of the one trophy you get to put in your locker room every year, and it’s bragging rights within the state,” he said. “It helps with recruiting if you’re winning against a rival, especially a team as good as Fairbanks is. It’s a big moment for both our programs.”

The puck drops at the Avis Alaska Sports Complex at 7:07 p.m. Friday and 6:07 p.m. Saturday. After the weekend, two more games are remaining in the series: one played in January in Fairbanks and a final matchup in February in Anchorage.

Published Dec 1, 2023 by Gavin Struve

The Nanooks got off to a slow start and never really found a rhythm offensively in a 70-43 loss at Seattle Pacific on Thursday evening.

After starting its season 0-8 on the road, the University of Alaska Fairbanks women’s basketball team won both games at its home tournament, the Mt. McKinley Bank North Star Invitational. That put the ‘Nooks at 2-8 overall entering their first conference game.

Seattle Pacific was the only GNAC team with a worse overall record than the ‘Nooks, entering Thursday’s game at 1-5. That was no longer the case after the loss to the SPU Falcons, who have now beaten the Nanooks 12-straight times.

Both the UAF men’s and women’s basketball teams played at Seattle Pacific on Thursday and will visit MSU-Billings on Saturday. The Nanook women play the Yellowjackets at noon.

Published Nov 30, 2023 by Patrick Gilchrist

Not everyone’s definition of retirement is the same. For some, it means restful days chock full of hobbies like painting or baking. For others, it might mean travel, or perhaps a fun, part-time gig.

But for a certain Fairbanks man, “retirement” means continuing to help save lives.

Nearly three decades ago, Scott Raygor joined up to fight fires in the Golden Heart City, rising to earn the title of fire chief, a role he’s claimed for about a year and a half.

With all that experience under his belt, Raygor found that the time for change had arrived. He’s set to wave goodbye to the city department, retire (or so he calls it), and then take over as deputy fire chief at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Published Nov 30, 2023 by Jack Barnwell

Fairbankans could see a vivid light show Thursday and Friday nights as three separate solar blasts bombard the Earth’s atmosphere.

Don Hampton, chief scientist for the Poker Flats Rocket Range, said Wednesday that a strong geomagnetic storm (called a G3 event) could be possible because of the three blasts, called coronal mass ejections.

“A G3 storm means it could be a great aurora since they are a burst of faster and more dense solar winds,” Hampton said.

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, is a large blast of highly magnetized plasma from the sun’s corona. The corona is the outmost layer of the sun’s atmosphere. CMEs typically take two or three days to reach Earth after the sun ejects the plasma.

A NASA space weather model predicts the most recent CME, released Tuesday, could catch up and merge with two others ejected just ahead of it, forming a “cannibal CME.” According to NASA, cannibal CMEs are rare but more common as the sun reaches its 11-solar cycle peak, anticipated to happen between January and October 2024.

Aurora watchers can expect to see the same range of colors, perhaps even some entering into the red spectrum.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute forecast predicts the aurora could be seen overhead as far south as Minneapolis and Milwaukee and possibly low on the horizon in Boise, Idaho, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Annapolis, Maryland.

Published Nov 30, 2023 by Gavin Struve

The UAF men’s basketball team is nearly a month into its 2023-24 season, which started with scrimmages in late October and began in earnest with the Alaska/Hawaii Challenge on Nov. 10 and Nov. 11.

UAF has dropped to 1-5 overall, with the worst winning percentage in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC), after winning its first game of the season. But three of the four teams the ‘Nooks have lost to are at least .500 against Division II competition, and four of those defeats on the road.

UAF still has one of the nation’s lowest 3-point rates

New offensive options have emerged

Nanooks still rebounding well, struggling with turnovers

The ‘Nooks will have a tough task ahead against their in-state rival

Published Nov 30, 2023

As an instructor for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, I have stood before a group of Alaskans every Tuesday night this November. During the most recent class session of Ned Rozell’s Alaska I asked 17 people what changes they have noticed in this giant peninsula during their time here.

These are long-haul Alaskans: Class members have combined for 747 years of living in the state. The average number of years each of them has lived here is 44!

Last week, a few were talking about changes they could feel as they walked into the Geophysical Institute’s Elvey Building.

The air temperature outside that door was 20 degrees F. The average for Fairbanks for the first 28 days of November 2023 was 15.7 degrees F, much warmer than the long-term November average of 4.1 degrees.

The paucity of stinging air and nostalgia for cars bumping along on wheels squared by 50 below was a common theme.

Sue McHenry remembered when she chose Halloween costumes for her kids that fit over snowsuits, “because it was 25 below.”

Ken Russell visited Kaktovik, a community in northern Alaska, in the early 1990s and saw sea ice hugging the shore in late summer. “But by a decade ago there was no ice to be seen,” he said. “It was 300 miles offshore.”

The dwindling extent and thickness of ice that forms on the ocean off the northern and western coasts of Alaska has been a major reason northern Alaska has warmed at five times the global average since the early 1970s. A dark ocean does not reflect the sun’s energy like blue/white sea ice. It absorbs heat that would have been reflected to space.

........

I had hesitated to talk about climate change because I had figured it might bum people out, but my audience didn’t get too worked up.

Mike Potter — the class leader with 81 years in the state — summed up the mood when asked what he thought about the many changes he has seen.

“I’m the type of person who accepts what’s there,” he said.