| UA News for March 18, 2024 |
| In today's news: the annual Kachemak Bay Science Conference kicks off this week at UAA's Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer; the UA Museum of the North is hosting an annual open house March 23 sponsored by the Alaska 529 education savings program; increasing rain events across the Arctic are impacting wildlife and landscapes, but the tools to study it are limited and increased collaboration with Indigenous people is necessary to increase understanding of the impacts; a UAF researcher was one of four women to win a 3,000 mile rowing race across the Atlantic ocean; concerns over his history working with Chinese and Russian agencies and researchers is delaying the confirmation of Mike Sfraga as U.S. Arctic Ambassador; a master weaver is helping to teach upcoming weaving teachers in an apprenticeship program designed to maintain knowledge of the craft; and UAA men's basketball have a second shot at nationals after gaining an at-large entry to the NCAA tournament.
Email mmusick@alaska.edu to suggest people to add to this daily news summary. |
| | | Kachemak Science Conference In Homer This Week | Published Mar 18, 2024 The annual Kachemak Bay Science Conference presented by The University of Alaska-Anchorage’s Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies begins this week; this year’s conference title is “Cultivating Knowledge for Healthy Ecosystems & Communities.” The four-day event began on Sunday, Mar. 17 at 4:00 PM at Kachemak Bay Campus, but it is free to attend and those wishing to join are invited to participate. This year’s conference will be an in-person event for the first time since 2018. It will feature presentations by scientists who will provide new information about Kachemak Bay and its surrounding coasts and waters to help inform each other and the public about the state of our ecosystem. Other evening events include a teacher-focused session, a luncheon discussion on invasive species (reservation is required), a community conversation on change with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Study’s Katie Gavenus, and a final evening celebration on March 19 with catered food provided by the Tickled Pear, a poster session and expo booths. The celebration will also host dancers from Port Graham and Nanwalek.
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| Fairbanks Daily News-Miner | |
| Museum to host annual open house March 23 | Published Mar 18, 2024 by Staff report The University of Alaska Museum of the North will host its annual open house from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 23.
Visitors can meet staff and researchers while touring the labs and galleries. Hands-on activities will be available for children and families.
Admission is free all day, thanks to support from Alaska 529, UA’s education savings program. For more information, call 907-474-7505 or visit the museum online.
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| | Rain comes to the Arctic, with a cascade of troubling changes | Published Mar 16, 2024 by Ed Struzik, Yale E360 Rain used to be rare in most parts of the Arctic: The polar regions were, and still are, usually too cold and dry for clouds to form and absorb moisture. When precipitation did occur, it most often came as snow.
Twenty years ago, annual precipitation in the Arctic ranged from about 10 inches in southern areas to as few as 2 inches or less in the far north. But as Arctic temperatures continue to warm three times faster than the planet as a whole, melting sea ice and more open water will, according to a recent study, bring up to 60 percent more precipitation in coming decades, with more rain falling than snow in many places.
Rick Thoman, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says that rainfall at any time of year has increased 17 percent in the state over the past half century, triggering floods that have closed roads and landslides that, in one case, sent 180 million tons of rock into a narrow fjord, generating a tsunami that reached 633 feet high — one of the highest tsunamis ever recorded worldwide.
But winter rain events are also on the rise. Where Fairbanks used to see rain on snow about two or three times a decade, Thoman says, it now occurs at least once in most winters.
To better understand how rain-on-snow events are affecting the Arctic, Serreze says, researchers need to better understand how often and where these events occur, and what impact they have on the land- and seascape. “Satellite data and weather models can reveal some of these events, but these tools are imperfect,” he says. “To validate what is happening at the surface and the impacts of these events on reindeer, caribou, and musk oxen requires people on the ground. And we don’t have enough people on the ground.” Researchers need to work with Indigenous peoples “who are directly dealing with the effects of rain on snow,” he noted.
| | | Readership | 420,841 | Social Amplification | 2,247 |
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| | An Alaska marine scientist and her all-woman team spent 38 days rowing across the Atlantic | Published Mar 16, 2024 by Ned Rozell Imagine being as seasick as you will ever be while surfing waves that look like mountains. You can’t sleep during nights that make you wonder when your boat will crumple like an aluminum can. The nearest help is on a continent you can’t see, and beneath your running shoes are 3 miles of deep blue sea.
Helder, a marine scientist currently working on several projects at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, recently was one-fourth of an all-woman team they named Salty Science that won the women’s division of World’s Toughest Row, from the Canary Islands offshore of northwest Africa to Antigua, just north of South America.
With each woman clipped into the open boat with a tether they had worn for more than a month, team members rowed into Antigua on Jan. 20.
That’s more than 3,000 miles of ocean crossed in 38 days by four women from the far corners of North America.
Helder lives in Fairbanks, where she squeezed a borrowed rowing machine into her cabin and pulled many strokes to the bewilderment of her dog. Her partners in the event were Chantale Bégin from Tampa, Florida, and Isabelle Côté and Lauren Shea from British Columbia. All four are marine biologists who had worked on projects together.
“We had a funky academic thing going on,” Helder said during a recent presentation about her trip at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She is currently working with scientists at UAF’s Institute of Northern Engineering on a coast of Alaska mapping project.
None of the four members of the Salty Science team had any rowing experience, Helder said. But they had enthusiasm.
| | | Readership | 929,328 | Social Amplification | 0 |
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| | Why the U.S. still has no Arctic ambassador, a year after this Alaskan was nominated for the job | Published Mar 15, 2024 by Alaska Public Media Michael Sfraga, an Arctic policy expert from Fairbanks, is President Biden’s nominee to be the nation’s first Arctic ambassador. But a year after he was named, he remains unconfirmed.
The reason for the hold-up became clear at a hearing last week: Republicans say he’s too close to America’s adversaries.
“Mr. Sfraga traveled extensively to Russia and China, and negotiated multiple MOUs (memoranda of understanding) with Chinese institutions tied to the government defense and intelligence services, and appeared on a panel — appeared on a panel! — with Russians who were sanctioned by the United States government,” said the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Sen. James Risch of Idaho, to explain why he’s placing a hold on Sfraga’s confirmation.
Sfraga didn’t respond to interview requests this week. At the hearing, he fended off accusations about his engagements with Russia, and his roughly 200 conference presentations and publications.
“It’s hard to ignore half of the Arctic, which is Russia, and in the North, it is a big neighborhood, but a small community, and you must engage,” Sfraga said. “And indeed, at one of those conferences, President Putin did provide a keynote address, but I had no interaction with President Putin at all.”
A White House official says Sfraga never served on a panel with Russians who were under U.S. sanctions at the time.
Sfraga is one of five State Department nominees that Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee are blocking. He’s been affiliated with UAF for many years and is the chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.
| | | Readership | 194,448 | Social Amplification | 10 |
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| | Apprenticeship program ‘weaves’ generations together through art | Published Mar 15, 2024 by Meredith Redick A Ketchikan-raised master weaver is helping to create a pipeline of weaving teachers through a first-of-its-kind apprenticeship program.
In a back room at the University of Alaska – Southeast in Sitka, four women around a table are splitting yellow cedar bark with small paring knives. It’s painstaking work – and it’s easy to make mistakes. One woman finds a thinning, almost transparent section in her strip of bark, and she turns to the woman next to her, Holly Churchill, for guidance.
Holly Churchill has been weaving for over 40 years. She comes from generations of master weavers. She’s the daughter of renowned Haida weaver Delores Churchill, whose mother was also a master weaver.
Churchill says that without programs like these that intentionally train new teachers, the craft of weaving could be lost in just a few years.
“A lot of our teachers are aging out, you know,” Churchill says as she uncoils a new strip of bark. “My mom is 95. This year, I’m going to be 70. There are other teachers that are, you know, 75, something like that, and although they haven’t made the decision to retire, it’s important that you mentor people to replace you.”
| | | Readership | 12,808 | Social Amplification | 0 |
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| | UAA men’s basketball aims to make the most of its first NCAA tournament appearance in years | Published Mar 14, 2024 by Josh Reed This weekend, the University of Alaska Anchorage men’s basketball team will be taking part in an NCAA tournament for the first time in 12 years when they hit the court for the Division II Western Regional Championship tournament.
The Seawolves plan to make the most of an opportunity they weren’t sure they’d have after coming up short in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference championship game last Saturday, losing to Central Washington in the finals.
Given his previous experience on the selection committee, Osborne knew his team stood a strong chance of advancing once he began studying their record and those of the other teams in contention for the at-large bid.
“We saw our names pop up and everyone was filled with excitement,” Williams said. “I feel like Coach knew but he didn’t want to tell us yet. It was awesome just to see our name go up there.”
UAA will face No. 2 seed Cal State San Bernardino in the opening round on Friday at 1:30 p.m. Alaska time. It will mark the second meeting between the two teams this season and the first since mid-December, when the Coyotes narrowly defeated the Seawolves 70-64 on the second day of the Hoops in Hawaii Classic.
| | | Readership | 929,328 | Social Amplification | 0 |
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