Anthropologist Tobias Holzlehner interviews a man in Uelen, Russia, to understand how residents use borderlands as resources to drive socioeconomic change. All photos: Tobias Holzlehner

Cities, towns and villages located near the dividing lines of nations are a complex web of people, politics, cultures, commodities and lives. This unique combination makes the borderlands of the Russian Far East a treasure trove of information for one anthropologist.

Tobias Holzlehner, an anthropologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, has a keen interest in studying how the people use borderlands as a resource to drive socioeconomic transformation in increasingly globalized economies.

One of his latest projects, Informal Networks and Space at the Margins of the Russian State, is focused on two borderland regions in eastern Russia. The National Science Foundation provides funding for this research.

“The study of borderlands is a topic that evolved maybe 15 or 20 years ago. It’s really closely connected to our attempt to understand an increasingly globalized world where the migration of people or flow of commodities is frequently associated with our borders,” Holzlehner said.

Chukotka and Primore: two different Russian borderlands

Much of Holzlehner’s research focuses on the Chukotka Autonomous Region and Pimorsky Krai, less formally known as Primore. Both regions were severely affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and experienced mass migrations as people left to seek work in larger Russian cities.

Chukotka is a more remote Arctic region in the far northeast corner of Russia. At a local level, many of the 50,000 people who inhabit this region are subsistence hunters and fishermen. Gold mining and oil exploration on the continental shelf also contribute to the national economy.

Primore, to the south, shares its western border with China and is home to roughly two million people. The region has a long maritime history and is still a major shipping port for eastern Russia.

Collapse of the Soviet Union gives rise to research opportunities

Holzlehner first began studying the people, economies and politics of the Russian Far East in 1996, after completing his master’s in anthropology at Germany’s University of Tübingen. His research coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Holzlehner spent three consecutive field seasons studying the people and the politics of archaeology in the 1990s. He began a doctorate program that led to hours of research in open-air markets in regions bordering China. There he observed inter-ethnic interactions and informal and unsanctioned trade in borderlands. He then did postdoctorate research in Chukotka studying the impacts of forced relocations following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“I really tried to combine my year-long exchanges in Chukotka and maritime Primore into one project,” he said. “The obvious thing was that both regions were in borderlands and so I proposed this project to the National Science Foundation doing a comparative study with a focus on how people use borderland regions through time as a resource.”

Breaking barriers

Residents working on a new cabin in Pinakul, a former village site in the Chukotka region.

Collecting data on how people earn a living, move money across borders, and other sensitive subjects requires a great deal of trust between Holzlehner and the people he interviews.

He built this trust through years living and working in these two Russian borderlands. Workers and their families know and respect Holzlehner and are often eager to tell their stories.

“When I first did my field work [in the open air markets], it took me at least a month to make contacts. Day after day, I bought carrots from one of my favorite traders. He finally asked me why I bought all these carrots and we started talking,” Holzlehner recalled with a laugh. “It takes time for people to accept and trust you, especially when you’re working in these gray areas.”

Borderlands as a resource

Sportivnaya market in Vladivostok, a large city in Primorsky Krai, Russia.

During his two- or three-month trips to Chukotka and Primore, Holzlehner interviews subjects and records observations on how people use the regions as a resource.

For example, in Primore, small-scale cross-border traders regularly travel from Russia to China and import most of the commodities for large open-air markets. The shuttle trader system provides various possibilities for the participants who show skillful use of insider knowledge and personal relationships.

In Chukotka, extraordinary resilience, as well as novel strategies of coping with loss and industrial collapse, created new forms of communities, where the re-use and re-settlement of previously abandoned village sites play a paramount role.

Tangible data

Users can delve into Holzlehner’s data via Google Earth to get a better understanding of commodity flow patters and resident migration.

Much like a journalist, Holzlehner starts an interview with a handful of questions and then lets the conversations flow naturally. He’s often surprised at how much information people are willing to share.To protect their privacy, the exact locations and identities of his interview subjects are often changed in published literature.

In addition to collecting interview data on people’s trades and livelihoods, Holzlehner snaps numerous pictures in an effort to help others visualize the flow of commodities and migrating people.

“On my web page, you can download these files and explore certain aspects of the borderlands in a very visual way,” he said. He is using Google Earth as a platform to serve geo-located images and data files to do this.

What’s next?

During his 2012 field season, the project’s inaugural year, Holzlehner spent three months in Primore collecting data. This summer, he’ll return to Chukotka from June to August.

“[With this project] I would like to bring more light in to the shadow of borderland economies because I think these areas have been really underestimated. There are complex and very well functioning mechanisms that regulate the unorthodox aspects of the economy.”

To learn more about Tobias Holzlehner and his research, visit: https://sites.google.com/a/alaska.edu/far-eastern-borderlands/. –Alicia Clarke

Comments (0) May 22 2013

Bear guard Brower Frantz surveys polar bear tracks on the way to Point Barrow. Photo: Molly Rettig

Polar Field Services could not accomplish the work we do without the help of our outstanding colleagues. We benefit greatly from the personal knowledge and experience of many of our native colleagues who grew up in the Arctic. Among them is Bower Frantz,  a bear guard and supervisor for UMIAQ.LLC, a Barrow-based company that provides field logistics to researchers and other groups.

Frantz is tasked with keeping researchers safe as they drill, slice, probe and travel on sea ice off the coast of Barrow. His work also gives him a front row seat to scientific research and the changing climate.

Frantz was recently featured in Alaska Business Monthly where he offered his long-term perspective on the changing climate, among other things:

One obvious change is that shore-fast ice is getting thinner and breaking up earlier in the year (as well as freezing up later). Through the 1980s, the ice used to be solid from November through June or July. Locals could go whaling and travel between coastal communities without worrying about falling in a crack or floating away on a broken slab of ice. Now there’s a large gash in the ice shelf in front of town, only a few hundred feet from shore.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen open water so early in the year, in mid-March. That was definitely an eye-opener,” Frantz said.

Last week, a whaling crew was nearly stranded when an opening (called a lead) formed between them and the shore. They managed to cross the big crack, plus 10 smaller ones, on snowmachines to get back to safety, and the ice was evacuated for the day. These events could become more common as the ice becomes less stable.

Frantz says sea ice research can add detail to the history and trends that locals are already seeing. And he enjoys being a part of it: snowmachining on the beach, tundra and ocean, setting up camps and supporting groups on the ice.

To read the full article on Frantz, click here.

Comments (0) May 19 2013

Building the ‘Solar Chalet’ at Toolik Field Station

The building site for the Solar Chalet. All photos: Tracy Dahl

Recently, PFS renewable energy expert Tracy Dahl spent a few days at Toolik Field Station, Alaska. He and associate “Solar” Joe Yarkin worked at a nearby field site where Jeff Welker (University of Alaska, Anchorage) will mount a new NSF-funded research project. Below, Tracy takes us through the process of building a solar array durable enough to withstand extreme temperatures and the elements, demonstrating yet again that polar research (and research support) is not for delicate flowers.

Step one: Find the ground. Not only did almost three feet of snow have to be removed from a 15’ x 25’ space—it had to be removed from the site entirely. We shoveled it onto a sled and drug it 300-feet away.

Then we shoveled it off again. Repeat, repeat, repeat, ad nauseum. Everything had to be snowmobiled into the site. Here Joe shows off our tools, while postholing for the 10,000th time that day.

Keeping it clean: Joe finishes covering tools for the day.

We hauled 16 batteries in by sled.

Each battery is 305 Amp hours and weighs approximately 100 lbs.

We hauled many many loads.

This load contained the power electronics enclosure and some of the 24 solar panels.

Once we situated all of the gear, materials, and components on site, began constructing the power system.

We had to erect a platform on spongy tundra that can hold a couple of tons of weight.

Cribbing is stout, inexpensive and creates a well dispersed footer.

The structure begins to take shape.

Once we completed the platform, we built an A-frame for the solar arrays, which face east and west. A second array will face south.

The solar array system will harvest solar power 20 hours a day in the high arctic summer.

The complete (and very strong) structure with one of the two polycarbonate skylights in place. The structure’s strength is achieved with the A-frame design, PV panels, and the diagonal cross bracing.

Everything was made as small as physically possible to minimize snow drifting in the research area, while still getting the job done.

Tight quarters.

We built in rain protection for the equipment in the summer, while allowing snow to scour through in the winter.

This shot shows the polycarbonate “double bubble.”

Like everything else in the system, the batteries were a precision fit, with no extra room to spare.

This represents 30kWh of energy storage, enough for 24 hours of autonomy (no power generation).

We also installed a back-up generator and power electronics enclosure. If necessary, this generator can completely recharge the batteries in about four hours. The backup generator is a shared asset with the Shaver/Bret-Harte AON project, which uses it in the winter.

With the multi-faceted PV arrays, we do not expect to run the backup generator much—if at all—during the Welker EAGER summer project.

—Tracy Dahl

Comments (0) May 15 2013

Gordon Hamilton and his colleagues focused their efforts to locate a downed WWII plane in southeast Greenland. The landscape of Koge Bugt, Greenland, the study area, is pictured here. Photo: Gordon Hamilton

The vast ice sheet of Greenland has long served as a teacher, time capsule, and research station for everything from early cultures to climate change to World War II history.

Yep, you read that right. World War II. As surprising as it may sound, there are a number of lost U.S. World War II planes encased in Greenland’s ice sheet.

University of Maine professor of glaciology Gordon Hamilton normally travels to Greenland to study the glaciers, their outflow patterns, how they interact with climate and how they may impact sea-level change in the future. But over the past several years, he’s joined a unique partnership to locate the wreckage of a plane and repatriate the remains of its lost service men.

This month Hamilton talks to Field Notes about how he’s bringing his knowledge of glaciers and their flow patterns to support efforts by the U.S. government to uncover plane wreckage in southeast Greenland.

Field Notes (FN): Where did the idea to search for lost World War II planes in Greenland come from?

Gordon Hamilton (GH): I became involved in 2008. I got a call from one of the various offices in Washington D.C. that go back through old records and try to repatriate as many of the remains as they can find. I guess most are in Southeast Asia, but one in particular, which was a U.S. Coast Guard aircraft, bubbled up to the top of the list.

FN: What types of plane were you looking for?

GH: It’s called a Grumman J2F4 Duck and it was an amphibious type of aircraft that would be able to land on water or regular runways. This particular aircraft crashed toward the end of the war [in 1942]. It was actually a rescue aircraft. Another aircraft had crash-landed on the ice sheet and everybody survived. So they sent in this Duck aircraft to pick the survivors up. In doing so, it probably became the first aircraft to successfully land and take-off from the ice sheet. It had picked up most of the survivors and had gone back for one more group. And as it was picking up that last group it crash-landed and everybody on board was killed.

A scientist conducts a radar survey from a helicopter in search of the downed Grumman J2F4 Duck buried in ice. Photo: Gordon Hamilton

FN: Why were U.S. pilots flying aircraft over Greenland during the war?

GH: There’s a lot of aircraft in Greenland. These aircraft didn’t have very long-range capabilities. They were manufactured in the Unites States and were flown across the U.S. to Labrador (Canada) where they would refuel. They would hop across the Labrador Sea to west Greenland and refuel there. Then they would fly across the ice sheet and, weather permitting, they would try and land in Iceland or Scotland and then fly down to wherever the battles were being fought on continental Europe.

The long journey involved lots of stops for fuel, but always the most challenging part was crossing the ice cap. You have to gain a lot of elevation—you have to go up to about 12,000 feet to clear the ice cap—and it’s very cold. You also have this flat, white feature on the surface, which to a lot of pilots looks like clouds—you can’t easily tell the horizon. So a lot of planes simply flew into the ice sheet without realizing it, and there are a lot of instances when the weather was bad.

FN: What parts of Greenland are included in the study area?

GH: It’s in southeast Greenland in a place called Koge Bugt.

FN: How did you search for the Duck and what types of technology were used?

GH: Well it started off super low tech. When the Coast Guard first got in touch with me they wanted to know basic things, like how much snow falls in that part of Greenland, would it bury the aircraft, and if I was given an approximate location of where the wreckage was last seen in the late 1940s, could I predict where it would be now based on my understanding of ice flow and so on. A lot of the early work was just done through interpretation of maps and satellite images.

The same group that contacted me also contacted the NASA IceBridge airborne survey team. They asked what part of Greenland they were flying over and if they would deviate slightly from their course and run their radars over the potential wreckage location. They did that a few times but nothing really showed up in the radar record to say, OK this is a big chunk of buried metal wreckage.

So there were a lot of these ad hoc investigations for a few years. But nothing really conclusively said, OK here’s the wreckage. This sort of thing went on for a while and then we said the one way to figure it out would be to go there and measure the flow speed and carry out a dense grid of radar survey lines. Then it would be very straightforward to say if the wreckage was here, after 60 years it would most likely be at this given location. We went up there for the survey last August.

FN: Was the Duck wreckage successfully located?

GH: We did find this one! We turned over the location to the U.S. Coast Guard. My understanding is that they are going to go back this summer and start excavating the wreckage and hopefully repatriate the remains.

FN: What other organizations took part in this effort?

The helicopter and hanging radar antenna cast a shadow on the icy study area below. Photo: Gordon Hamilton

GH: For the ground survey I managed to get some of my colleagues at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory involved. These people have done a lot of radar work in Antarctica, so I knew they had the expertise to pick out a buried, sub-surface target. [The project also included the Coast Guard and NASA IceBridge Project.]

Although this repatriation effort does not have a web site, you can learn more about World War II aircraft by visiting the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force’s World War II Gallery. For more information about Gordon Hamilton and his research, visit his University of Maine web page. –Alicia Clarke

Comments (0) May 09 2013

Petrich and colleagues take measurements of sea ice properties in Fram Strait as part of a ColdTech expedition on board KV Svalbard in 2012. Photo: Arnaud Le Breton, Det Norske Veritas

Most mornings Chris Petrich’s biggest hurdle is staying off of the ski lift, which he passes on his way to work in the small town of Narvik in Northern Norway.  But this German-born scientist (admirably) resists the temptation and continues to work at the Northern Research Institute (NORUT) Narvik, where he investigates the melting and breakup of Arctic ice.  At NORUT, Petrich is the project manager of ColdTech, an initiative to develop sustainable Cold Climate technology.  ColdTech is a multi-institutional research team led by NORUT Narvik, and funded by the NORDSATSING program of the Norwegian Research Council and eleven industry partners.

A future with less ice

Petrich’s current research focuses on sea ice surrounding Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic north of Norway and in the Barents Sea, where oil exploration and vessel traffic can be significantly affected by sea ice.  In addition, he studies the transition in ice conditions along the Northern Sea Route—the Arctic passage for sea traffic.  The ability to predict how much ice will be where in the future will affect many industries and initiatives.

Sea ice characterizations in Fram Strait, the gateway to the Arctic between Svalbard and Greenland. This work was part of a ColdTech expedition on board KV Svalbard in 2012. Photo: Denise Sudom, National Research Council Canada

Alaskan training grounds

Arriving with experience in Antarctic sea ice, Petrich broadened his expertise during his time as a researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF). There he studied the breakup of landfast ice in the Chukchi Sea together with UAF researcher Hajo Eicken, whose sea ice monitoring network, SIZONet, is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.  The UAF group observes the ice via their own land-based radar, and up close in person by foot and boat.  Based on this decade-long record of observations, Petrich developed a forecast of landfast ice breakup, distinguishing between the thermal and mechanical breakup of landfast ice.  Solar radiation is the driving force behind thermal breakup of the ice.  Mechanical breakup usually occurs as a result of large ice movement and/or ocean currents.

Looking beneath the ice surface

The key to understanding which process is dominant lies in the absence or presence of grounded pressure ridges.  These ridges are large chunks of ice that become grounded, not unlike a ship on a sand bar, and essentially form a protective barrier between the near-shore landfast ice and the open ocean.  When these ridges form, the landfast ice is mostly protected from the outside forces that would cause mechanical breakup and will breakup slowly with melting from solar radiation.

If the ridges are absent, the ice is more vulnerable to the outside forces responsible for mechanical breakup.  During the ten-year study, every year grounded ridges were present, the ice breakup occurred later than when they were absent.

Culture based on ice

Understanding the timing and mechanics of ice breakup is critical for members of the local community of Barrow, who rely upon the ocean for food, as well as for maintaining their native cultural heritage.  Native Alaskans fish and launch boats from the ice while it is still intact during the spring.  Once the ice clears in summer, they are able to set the boats out directly from land, but must be on the lookout for drifting ice.

Knowing how and when the ice breaks up is not just important for planning, but for safety as well, since maneuvering boats and gear over melting ice can be very dangerous.  Locals who rely upon the ice use data from the UAF SIZONet research team for information on ice breakup and movement, and in the modern digital age, this is possible like never before.

Petrich says, “There are people with their [smartphones] actually accessing real time data while they’re on the ice to get warning signs…if there’s a [floe] coming that might be very big and might impact onto the landfast ice and kick off a chunk.”

As the researchers provide information, the locals offer their own expertise, which Petrich says greatly enhances the effort.

“We use suggestions made by local experts, people who’ve been out hunting on the water for years…to tell us where to put our instruments…because sometimes you have very interesting phenomena, such as wind blowing from one direction, but ice actually drifting the opposite direction,” says Petrich. “And we follow their advice.  We have a very close relationship there.”

Norwegian applications

This work on forecasting the breakup of landfast ice, and distinguishing between thermal and mechanical breakup, was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2012.  The implications for this study continue to pay off for Petrich in his new role in Norway.

Armed with a better understanding of the importance of grounded pressure ridges in ice mechanics, Petrich’s group at NORUT studies the impact of pressure ridges on structures in the ice, and on vessels traveling through icy seas.  And as the local ice expert, Petrich is often asked to consult on unexpected projects. “I find myself involved in any project related to frozen material.  Or thawing material.  Once you know sea ice, anything else in the melting-freezing category is easy.  Sea ice is quite a complex material.  So in that sense I can put my sea ice background to good use here for industry, environmental, and offshore work.”

Results are still forthcoming, as Petrich’s role in this work is quite new.  But from the breadth of his research, and excitement in his voice, Petrich is clearly a contender to become Norway’s new king of ice.  —Bobby Reece

Comments (0) Apr 30 2013