Published Feb 27, 2024 by Christina McDermott, KDLG News

Dillingham’s 66th Annual Beaver Round-Up starts this week. Beaver Round-Up’s coordinator Charlene Lopez says the event’s team focused on cultural activities this year and that Alaska Native artists will teach classes. The community can also participate in new events like the Beaver Ice Dip, skate events and a Fear Factor challenge. KDLG’s Christina McDermott sat down with Lopez to learn more about this year’s Beaver Round-Up.

Christina McDermott: What can people expect from Beaver Round-Up this year?

Charlene Lopez: A lot of fun! We wanted to bring cultural activities back into Beaver Round-Up. The last couple years there wasn’t a whole lot. We feel it’s very important to showcase our culture [and] teach our younger generation what our culture is all about. So, we were able to build some things that will help with that, meaning we’re bringing in Alaska Native artists to teach qaspeq making, fur sewing, drum making and beaded earring making.

Published Feb 27, 2024 by Laura Paddison

Scientists have looked back in time to reconstruct the past life of Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” — nicknamed because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise. They have discovered it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, according to a new study that provides an alarming insight into future melting.

The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is the world’s widest and roughly the size of Florida. Scientists knew it had been losing ice at an accelerating rate since the 1970s, but because satellite data only goes back a few decades, they didn’t know exactly when significant melting began.

Now there is an answer to this question, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Martin Truffer, a physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said the research shows if a glacier is in a sensitive state, “a single event can knock it into a retreat from which it is difficult to recover.”

“Humans are changing the climate and this study shows that small continuous changes in climate can lead to step changes in glacier state,” said Truffer, who was not involved in the research.

Antarctica is sometimes called the “sleeping giant,” because scientists are still trying to understand how vulnerable this icy, isolated continent may be as humans heat up the atmosphere and oceans.

Published Feb 26, 2024 by Log In

Alaska authors Seth Kantner and Rosemary McGuire will read from their works at the University of Alaska Fairbanks at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

Kantner, of Kotzebue, is author of the award-winning bestselling novel “Ordinary Wolves” and four other books, as well as essays and newspaper columns. McGuire, of Fairbanks, is author of the award-winning memoir “Rough Crossing” and other works.

The duo will read from their writings in the BP Design Theater, on the fourth floor of the Usibelli Building on the UAF Troth Yeddha’ Campus in Fairbanks. Afterward, they’ll answer questions from the audience.

The reading is part of the Midnight Sun Visiting Writers Series, hosted by the UAF Department of English. The event is free and open to the public. Parking on campus is free after 5 p.m.

Published Feb 26, 2024 by Yereth Rosen

For the first time, the underwater calls made by the endangered beluga whales in Southcentral Alaska’s Cook Inlet have been recorded, identified and cataloged.

To accomplish that, University of Washington Ph.D. student Arial Brewer spent thousands of hours listening to the noises captured from audio devices planted on the seafloor. The result was a catalog of 18 distinct calls used by the belugas, which were a mixture of whistles and pulsed calls.

And, importantly for the belugas’ conservation, there is now evidence that those calls might be getting drowned out by noises from the commercial ships that ply the marine waters of Alaska’s most populous region, according to a study led by Brewer that details the findings.

Beyond the question of permitted takes, there is another way to reduce noise impacts to belugas and other whales: slower speed limits.

Brewer pointed to Washington’s Puget Sound as an example. There, in habitat for an endangered killer whale population, shippers are experimenting with slower vessel speeds. It is, for now, a voluntary program.

Additionally, a new state law that goes into effect next year creates a mandatory 1,000-yard vessel buffer there to protect the whales.

Noise disturbances have been at the center of concerns elsewhere in Alaska, including their potential effect on whales swimming in Arctic waters. There, climate change has reduced sea ice and expanded shipping opportunities.

A 2021 study by Canadian and U.S. scientists, including some from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Alaska Department of Fish and Game, found that belugas and bowhead whales in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas are swimming in the same places where ship traffic is expected to increase. “Without proactive vessel management and effective mitigation measures, acoustic disturbance of whales is expected to increase, and eventually expand to more months of the year, as ship traffic continues to increase in step with increases in the length of the open water season,” the study said.