Comments (0) Feb 01 2012

Dangerous ice conditions in Davis Slough off the Tanana River in early December. Ice conditions like this make traveling along rural Alaska’s icy lakes and rivers hazardous. Photos courtesy Knut Kielland

Each winter as the temperatures in Alaska dip well below zero, the frozen rivers and lakes become highways and byways for many rural Alaskans. Just a short distance outside Fairbanks, one of Alaska’s largest cities, the lack of traditional roads and bridges reminds one just how rural and rugged a large part of Alaska is. With few traditional roads, many rural Alaskans navigate the seemingly frozen bodies of water on snowmobiles and dog sleds.  And all too often they come in contact with dangerous ice.

This is something ecologists Knut Kielland and his colleague Bill Schneider, an oral historian, know all too well. Kielland and Schneider, both avid dog mushers and researchers at University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF), have been criss-crossing the Alaska countryside along the Tanana River outside of Fairbanks for nearly 25 years. During that time the two have certainly run into their fair share of dangerous ice, but there were several unusual phenomena associated with dangerous ice that piqued their interest.

Knut Kielland came up with the idea to study the phenomena behind dangerous ice while dog mushing. Here he is guiding his team through overflow on the Anaktuvuk River on Alaska’s North Slope.

Degrading Ice

At 584-miles long, the Tanana River is a natural force that cuts through the landscape of central Alaska. During the winter the Tanana River exhibits a wide variety of dangerous ice conditions, ranging from overflow (water on top of the ice surface covered by dry snow) to shell ice (ice with air pockets underneath). “The most insidious ice condition is degrading ice,” Kielland said. “This condition refers to ice that forms normally during freeze-up and represents a safe travel surface in early winter. However, as the name implies, degrading ice exhibits dangerous thinning during mid-winter even at very cold (-30°C) air temperatures. The physical mechanisms behind this phenomenon and the distribution of such ice conditions are a major focus of our project.”

With support from the National Science Foundation, Kielland, Schneider and a multidisciplinary team of researchers set out to study and map the physical conditions behind winter dangerous ice conditions, as well as document local knowledge and observations across a 200-mile study area near the Tanana River. The data from the project will help scientists understand the forces behind dangerous ice, and give rural Alaskans tools that may improve public safety.

A Complex Issue Needs a Complex Approach

Kielland wanted to study dangerous ice from multiple angles, including human interactions with this natural force. To do that, Kielland paired teams of natural scientists with oral historians and ethnographers to take a holistic approach.

“In terms of the multidisciplinary approach, we’re talking about climatology, hydrology and the physics of snow and ice—that’s the natural science part. In terms of the social science, it’s both the science of going about how to collect oral histories and learning about how residents view and experience their environment, and more directly in terms of how they experience the changing winter conditions, particularly in regard to snow and ice conditions,” Kielland explained.

Sam Demientieff of Fairbanks inspects ice degradation in Moe Slough, February, 2010.

Community Involvement

Involving local communities in the study area has been a key part of the dangerous ice project.  Many of the villagers and townspeople have traveled the frozen rivers and lakes for decades and have valuable knowledge and insight that machines and computers simply can’t duplicate.

To gather data on how locals call upon years of experience and training to frame their descriptions and evaluate ice conditions, Kielland looked to his longtime friend and oral historian Bill Schneider to record interviews with locals. Having lived and worked in Alaska for decades, it was relatively easy to tap the wealth of knowledge about rural Alaska’s frozen highways.

Residents of Manley Hot Springs meet to discuss the ice conditions along the river trail between Manley and the village of Tanana. LPictured from left oto right: are, John Dart, Espen Jervsjö, and Frank Gurtler (Manley), and Charlie Wright (Tanana).

“Because we’ve lived here for a while, we have friends and acquaintances—and acquaintances of acquaintances—in a variety of communities. We were very fortunate that we could pretty much come into a community and establish a rapport with them,” Kielland said.

Ice Interviews

The team worked with communities in Fairbanks, Manley and the village of Tanana to gather their observations on the distribution and abundance of dangerous ice phenomena and how they impact  subsistence activities and travel throughout the winter. With help from Karen Brewster, a research associate for the Oral History Program at UAF, the team has hosted several workshops and interviews in the field with river travelers, the results of which are now being posted online.

Research associate Karen Brewster films interviews with Sam Demientieff (left) and Wally Carlo (right) on the Tanana River, March 2011.

“We  do semi-direct interview [s], take a lot of photographs and videotap[e]ing of areas and interviews,” Kielland said.  Interviews and photos from the dangerous ice project are made publicly available through the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Project Jukebox.

The combination of physical data and recorded oral histories has started to crack some of the mysteries of dangerous ice, shedding new light on the phenomena and how rural Alaskans deal with it.

Cracking the Ice

Some of the initial findings are a bit of a surprise to Kielland and his colleagues. Initially, he hypothesized that dangerous ice occurrences were tied to shallower (< 1 m) portions of the river more susceptible to melting from below due to ground water upwelling. However, that’s not always the case. The team has observed cases of dangerous ice in deeper waters (> 3 m).

Kielland has also documented very localized instances of dangerous ice where, “it’s almost like somebody sat down at the bottom [of the river or lake] with a laser and shot a hole in the ice. Hydrologists on the project are still working to understand the physics behind such localized events.

“We’re learning about the phenomena, about how wide- spread it is, and we’re learning about how people deal with it—though mostly they just want to stay far away from it,” Kielland said. “We don’t know much about how it has changed through time yet, but we hope our conversations with local residents can shed further light on that.”

Although winters in Alaska are getting warmer on the whole, dangerous ice phenomena aren’t necessarily a direct consequence of climate change.

“Winters in Alaska are getting warmer and climate predictions call for more snow. Both of those factors will probably exacerbate the situation, if anything, but we don’t consider this a direct consequence of warming. As I mentioned, we see the phenomenon even when it’s very cold out,” he said.

Lessons Learned

With the second year of the dangerous ice project now coming to a close, Kielland and Schneider hope to extend it for one more year to continue unraveling the mysteries behind dangerous ice.

The lessons learned from this project will not only tell us where dangerous ice is located and it’s potential causes, they will also help rural Alaskans avoid a wintertime problem that claims lives every year.

“We hope that at the end of the day, there will be an improved understanding from both our and their [rural Alaskans’] point of view about the nature of the phenomenon and how it’s distributed along the length of the Tanana that many of them travel,” Kielland said. For more information about the Dangerous Ice project (still under construction), visit: http://jukebox.uaf.edu/dangerice/start.htm. –Alicia Clarke

Comments (1) Dec 05 2011

A Polaris Ranger outfitted with tracks helps stretch fiber optics cable across the tundra near Toolik Station. All photos: Rorik Peterson

Many rural Alaskan towns remain without reliable communications infrastructure, particularly when it comes to the Internet. Rorik Peterson, a mechanical  engineer  from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, hopes to change that by stringing fiber optics cable across the Alaskan tundra.

Peterson, whose research includes modeling the seasonal freezing and thawing of soils, began a NSF-funded study during the 2011 spring that focuses on the durability of fiber optics cable in the harsh arctic climate. In April he and colleagues traveled to Toolik Station to set up their two-year experiment.

Routing cable from Toolik.

“It was a bit of a headache setting up our study at Toolik because of the many science groups that use the facility and study the ecosystems around the facility. But we worked together to find a time when we would not impact other science projects.  Seven station staff and I spent an entire day spooling out cable across several environments to see how the cable will fare over a couple of years. Not only is weather a consideration, animals are as well,” explains Peterson.

Fiber optics cables are currently operational between Anchorage and Fairbanks and along the Dalton Highway (the “Haul Road”) between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay, but burying cables is impractical given the remote setting of many Alaskan villages.

“We set our cable on top of the snow and tundra using a Polaris Ranger retrofitted with tracks. We had a 5km spool of cable trailered on the station pad that unspooled as we drove. We wanted to make a loop for easier testing, but it was challenging to do given that the cable, although somewhat flexible, is still pretty rigid and we didn’t want any kinks. We used a 1km section and made certain to drape cable across bedrock, a wet and swampy stream environment, and a bushy section of tundra.  In snowy sections, the cable will sink into the snow a bit as the days warm and the black cable melts into the snow and soil,” Peterson says. “The next step is a lot of sit and wait.”

FIber optics cable must be tough to serve Alaska's bush villages. Peterson spooled fiber optics cable across a number of harsh environments.

Peterson will revisit the site periodically to see whether animals disturb the cable. A real-time camera will take snapshots of the weather that Peterson will use in his assessment of how cold temperatures (often more than -40C) might affect the cable’s physical properties as well as data transmission.

“If the cables stand the test of time, a lot of Alaska’s interior may someday see significant improvement in their Internet communication. Communications companies will be able to easily characterize line performance and send teams out via helicopter for repairs when needed,” explains Peterson. “Now, even places like Barrow rely on satellites for communications. Most scientists that have worked out of there will tell you that it’s easier to make a DVD of their data and send it to colleagues via air rather than to try to upload or download data in real time. Fiber optics technology would change that.”—Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Nov 28 2011

2011 PolarTREC teacher, Susy Ellison, samples spruce trees for a dendrochronology study in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. All photos: Susy Ellison

Susy Ellison is the high school science teacher we all wish we’d had. With projects like designing and building an energy-efficient straw-bale classroom, installing solar panels on the school’s roof, and building a greenhouse (and growing things in it), Ellison is infusing her students with a strong sense of what she calls environmental literacy. Now in her 15^th year at Yampah Mountain High School in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Ellison spent the summer with two teams of Alaskan researchers as a PolarTREC teacher, so this year’s class will, no doubt, be in for some fun and interesting science activities.

Ellison’s love for Alaska goes back to graduate school when she spent time in Prudhoe Bay studying how arctic foxes interact with nesting shorebirds and small mammals. Her field experience served her well this year as she traveled to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for a six-day NSF-funded tree-ring study with Kevin Anchukaitis and Angie Allen (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory),  and to the Raven Bluff Site for two weeks with Jeff Rasic (UAF/NPS), William Hedman (BLM), and Ian Buvit (Central Washington University) for a NSF-supported study on early human settlement in arctic Alaska.

For the tree-ring study, field team members spent their time extracting straw-sized cores from standing white spruce trees in five sites spread over a few miles; Anchukaitis will compare annual growth rings from these cores with samples taken from fallen trees. By analyzing the thickness of annual rings, they will reconstruct North Slope climate and ultimately determine controls on the extent of arctic forest growth.

Traveling light - Ellison and Allen congratulate themselves on hauling all their gear in one trip.

“The tree-ring study was really interesting. Many scientists think that with climate warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees might just grow and grow and grow, but new research says this may not be true. You can keep feeding someone, but it’s not going to make them taller,” explains Ellison. “I was impressed with how pretty simple science can provide pretty big answers. There were only three of us and we were just out there. We travelled light and fast. It was fun!”

Following a 10-day break exploring the Kenai Peninsula, Ellison joined Jeff Rasic’s team for a rainy and cool two week archaeological excavation near Kivalina.  Despite the soggy weather, the group made the best of things and worked hard to maximize their field time. In addition to searching for artifacts in one-meter square pits started during the 2010 field season, Ellison participated in a soil survey and in reconnaissance flights wherein the group looked for new archaeological sites.

“We usually hear that the first people to North America came from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge and then headed south. The Raven site is about the same age, about 12,000 years old, as the Clovis culture sites farther south. At Raven we looked, in particular, for these fluted spear points so that they can be dated and compared to similar Clovis-age points. The idea is that people may have moved back and forth between Alaska and southern North America rather than unidirectionally,” says Ellison.

“The similarity in these projects is that we were looking at old stuff, attempting to get information that can be applied to the present and, perhaps, predict future changes in the Arctic,” Ellison says. “The scientists were so passionate about their studies and the field season in Alaska is so short – they had to get it done. Everyone worked really hard to complete the work required in the short time period.”

Ellison tries to stay dry while recording soil profile data.

Now that a new school year is underway, Ellison is thinking about ways to share her PolarTREC experiences with Yampah. So far, she’s considering having students look at tree rings to determine Colorado’s long-term fire history. She would also like to take a group backpacking in Utah to see some archaeological sites close to home while considering what clues they might leave behind for future archaeologists to find.

Ellison’s school is run by the Mountain Board of Cooperative Educational Services, and serves students from four public school districts.  The school serves as an alternative to students who have been unsuccessful in other area high schools for one reason or another.

“Teaching science at Yampah is very challenging,” Ellison says. “Our classes are ungraded, which means that in one class I have students from all grades with all levels of science proficiency. I teach life, physical, and earth science so I have a lot of information to distill. Then, I put my own spin on it. I like to have an environmental focus with very hands-on projects. My experiences with PolarTREC have given me so many new ideas for how to communicate climate change issues and science research  to all my students, regardless of their science background.”—Marcy Davis

PolarTREC (Polar Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and managed by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, or ARCUS. The program aims to give teachers professional development experiences conducting research in the polar regions with career scientists to boost the teachers’ content knowledge and to give them hands-on experience in scientific inquiry. ARCUS is accepting applications through the end of September from teachers and researchers interested in participating in the PolarTREC program during the 2012-2013 research season. Visit the ARCUS PolarTREC website for more information: http://www.polartrec.com/

Comments (0) Sep 23 2011

Christie Haupert is all smiles 20 steps from the Equinox marathon finish line. Her good friend, Chad, cheers her on from his borrowed bike. Photo: Dana Moudra-Truffer

Last weekend a group of Polar Field Services/CPS staff gathered to watch the Equinox marathon on a crisp and burnished fall Saturday in Fairbanks, Alaska. The Equinox begins and ends at the University of Alaska, and is famous for its brutal course. For the second year in a row, colleague Christie Haupert was among the entrants (Cody Johnson was on a river trip—more on that in another post).  When he saw her sprinting toward the finish line, Marin Kuizenga’s boy, Matteo, 6, said, “Wow, that’s someone who could teach me running.” True dat,‘Teo.

Here’s what Christie said about her run.

I finished in 3:58 (same time as last year).  I’m actually not too sure how I feel about the run. Despite the same finish time as last year, I had many more highs and lows this year during the race, a true testament to how the same 26.2 miles can never be the same. . . . The Equinox Marathon is a very special race for Fairbanksans. So many friends and neighbors not only support but partake. The entire event is spent running alongside friends and at every mile my name is called out in encouragement. The marathon is truly a special event—so many people doing it for so many different reasons. The energy is incredible and the Equinox Marathon (being one of the most grueling and challenging around) stands out above many.

I think the best story of the day wasn’t what I went through, but rather what my friend supporting me experienced. My friend Chad, who happens to work for the Toolik Field Station, agreed to meet me at pre-determined locations along the course to feed and water me. He was going to ride his bike. Our first meeting spot was to be four miles into the race…but when I went by (only a minute faster than I expected to be), Chad was nowhere to be seen. I worried he was late and this was going to set in motion a complete failure of my support. Four miles later, I found Chad waiting for me, only on a different bike. As he biked along for the next quarter mile he gave me the short version of his previous hour – charged by a moose, flat tire, traded bike, made it in time to meet me at mile 8. Chad was there for me the rest of the race and I really enjoyed looking forward to seeing him and getting the food and water I needed. Post race, over a celebratory beer, I learned that upon leaving the start, Chad encountered a cow moose on the trail, with two calves. The moose stood her ground, despite his attempt to charge her while making noise. He decided to take an alternate route and quickly noticed that his rear tire was going flat. The only way to meet me was to get another bike. He was running so late by that point, he had to put the bike in the van he had driven [from Toolik] and drive the bike to the 8-mile spot. Resourceful!

Congratulations to our super girl for finishing first in her division.

Christie Haupert, spring 2011. Photo: Kip Rithner

Comments (0) Sep 22 2011

Katey Walter Anthony (UAF) smiles after a good day of field work. Photo: Valera Fedoseev

In terms of carbon footprint, though one hears a lot about carbon dioxide, it’s methane that wears the size 12 clodhopper. Methane is more effective at trapping heat in earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide and also contributes to the degradation of the ozone layer. When permafrost thaws, release of methane into the atmosphere from anaerobic decomposition contributes to climate warming, which subsequently causes more permafrost thaw – thus acting as an important feedback loop in global climate. Katey Walter Anthony (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) and an international team of colleagues are studying permafrost and thermokarst lakes to better understand how thawing permafrost and the subsequent release of methane is contributing to climate warming. Since 2008 Anthony and colleagues have worked on the interdisciplinary study in Cherskii and Yakutsk, Russia, all over Alaska, in western Canada, Greenland and Sweden describing the distribution of permafrost and the process of landscape evolution and gas escape as permafrost thaws.

“We have a pan-Arctic focus with the goal of understanding carbon release from permafrost. Not only are we describing the extent of thermokarst in Siberia, Alaska, western Canada and other regions of the Arctic, we’re looking at how thermokarst lakes develop and release methane in particular,” says Anthony.

Permafrost, soil at or below the freezing point of water for at least two years, is common at high latitudes. As the climate warms, however, permafrost thaws and forms an irregular landscape called thermokarst (the pitted nature of the surface resembles those developed in karst areas of limestone). In surface depressions, lakes form where massive ground ice melted. Permafrost contains vast reserves of carbon stored within a frozen framework that is released when permafrost thaws.

Anthony and colleagues are interested in yedoma, a specific type of permafrost that is particularly high in carbon and supersaturated with ice, about 50-90% by volume. Formed in unglaciated continental areas during the last ice age, yedoma is most prevalent in northeastern Siberia where it may be tens of meters thick. Thawing yedoma yields a significant source of atmospheric methane.

“Thermokarst lakes formed from the thawing of yedoma are very efficient at releasing carbon, in the form of methane, into the atmosphere,” Anthony explains. “As the ice melts, water and 46,000 year-old methane, CH₄, are released. We are trying to quantify how much carbon is released as well as the variability in different regions.”

When headed to the field, Anthony and her co-investigator, Guido Grosse, first identify likely areas of permafrost exposures using satellite imagery. Ideal locations are usually along rivers where cut banks have excavated steep exposures that may be up to 50 m tall.

Researchers survey permafrost-laden soils at the Arctic Coast north of Cherskii, Northeast Siberia. Soils rich in ground ice also have high organic matter content. When this permafrost thaws, formerly frozen carbon becomes available which produce carbon dioxide and methane. Photo: G. Grosse

“These are the best places to work because we can see 60,000 years of history all at once. You can see the whole layered cake of ice and frozen soil in cross section! We can tease out a lot of information about past permafrost and climate,” Anthony says. “We have to be very careful when we sample to find a fresh cut that has not thawed in the recent past. The first part is just moving dirt with shovels and scrapers so we have to be very careful. We have to work quickly because the permafrost can thaw very quickly. We sample and describe different units with a focus on the amount of ice and carbon in representative layers. We can scale up. Studying broad exposures has some big advantages over permafrost coring, where our interpretation of an area is otherwise limited to what we find in 4cm diameter cores.”

Anthony does much of her methane field work during winter. And, while she says it’s no fun to wake up in -30 degree temperatures at field camps, winter work is easier in some ways. Lake ice provides an opportunity to map methane bubbles on thermokarst lakes. Coring permafrost requires the use of a permafrost drill, a gas-powered auger with a core barrel and drill bit at the end. Anthony says permafrost coring is often most easily accomplished in winter conditions when the permafrost is frozen solid. Samples can be quickly acquired from a snowmobile and there’s less chance of the core casing freezing up during the coring since it’s already cold.

Anthony and then graduate adviser, Terry Chapin (UAF), engage in a tug of war to separate a tube containing lake sediments from the core head. Photo: M. Chapin

Anthony’s team also prefers coring thermokarst lake sediments in the winter because they can use lake ice as a stable platform for field work. Sediments from the bottom of a lake can tell Anthony how old the lake is–some lakes developed at the end of the last ice age nearly 12,000 years ago, while others developed much later and have been expanding since.

Sometimes lake coring in summer is necessary. “Summer lake coring requires a huge amount of work. It’s very dirty. There are lots of mosquitoes. I have spent hours hammering a core barrel into the lake bed from a raft just to have nothing come up. It’s much easier in the winter when we can do it from the ice covering the lake. Then it requires much less gear and it’s stable,” says Anthony.

Methane bubbles rising from the lake bottom are trapped by winter ice. Photo: K. Walter Anthony

Anthony also maps lake methane bubbles during winter. Methane formed by microbes from thawing permafrost is released from lake bottoms in the form of bubbles all year long. In summer, bubbles rise to the top of the lake and burst, releasing almost pure methane into the atmosphere, but in the winter, lake ice forms a lid that traps methane bubbles.

“We use shovels to remove any fresh snow from the lake ice surface. What we find is really neat–the ice looks black and had beautiful white bubbles stacked on top of each other in place to place–much like the stars scattered across the night sky,” Anthony explains. “We map the distribution of the bubbles which get trapped, forming tall columns of methane. We can tell where the gas is coming from, how it clusters. We get a good spatial data set.”

Anthony and Dragos Vas (UAF) check the volume of gas collected in under-ice bubble traps on a thermokarst lake in Fairbanks. Photo: M. Grimes

Back in the lab Anthony sub-samples permafrost and lake cores for radiocarbon dates, a method that helps her and colleagues understand the history of permafrost formation across northern Siberia and Alaska.

In 2011, Anthony’s team, along with students and post doctoral candidates from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, returned to Seward Peninsula and interior Alaska field sites to recover time-lapse cameras, temperature data loggers, and bubble traps, which record the rate of gas release. The team also worked in Cherskii, Russia. During that expedition, Anthony worked with three students and a postdoc who have sub-projects studying permafrost and peat along the Kolyma River.—Marcy Davis

Katey Walter Anthony’s research is funded, in part, by NSF, NASA, and the Department of Energy

Comments (0) Sep 08 2011

The Healy and the St-Laurent work side-by-side in this USGS photo from 2009. Click on the picture for a better view of the ship's decks.

Earlier this month, Barrow, Alaska-based CPS and UMIAQ staff helped some 35 researchers, media members, NOAA, U.S. Geological Survey, Coast Guard (USCG), Navy, and other federal-agency personnel, as they embarked the USCG Cutter Healy for the fourth annual Extended Continental Shelf Survey. A joint effort between the US and Canada, the survey focuses on mapping the sea floor off the coasts of Alaska and Canada. Data collected during these cruises may help policy makers from each country verify where they have natural resource rights in the Canada Basin under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which spells out how countries define their marine boundaries. (For more on the UNCLOS, visit http://www.flipseekllc.com/mmsextendshelf.html)

As the northernmost settlement in Alaska, Barrow seems a good place to set sail for a cruise in the Arctic Ocean. Since the small, remote village lacks a deep-water port —and has no roads in and out of town for that matter—embarking a large vessel here presents some logistical challenges which were overcome with advance planning and much coordination. Passengers and cargo arrived by air on 13 August, and the Healy anchored off coast two days later, right on schedule. Everyone assembled in the North Slope Bureau’s large search-and-rescue helicopter hanger for pre-flight activities before transferring to the ship. With rare, fair weather in Barrow, cruise participants flew to the Healy and the cruise got under way on 16 August.

Chief scientist Larry Mayer weighs his bag prior to flying to the Healy.

Wearing an orange "mustang suit" for protection against the elements, this researcher prepares to approach the helicopter that will ferry him to the USCGC Healy. Photos: Faustine Bernadac unless otherwise noted.

“The transfer could not have been this successful without the North Slope Bureau Search and Rescue allowing us to stage out of their helicopter hanger,” wrote CPS Barrow staffer Faustine Bernadac who coordinated CPS/UMIAQ support, “So I personally would like to thank them again for their great help.”

We’ve heard that the cruise is going well. The first few days, the Healy worked alone off the coast of Barrow, mapping an area called the Barrow Margin. According to a post by Capt. Andy Armstrong of the NOAA-University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center (CCOM), weather did impact some of the measurements—but in unexpected ways. Calm seas and blue skies combined to create two distinct water layers—warm, fresher water lying atop the colder, saltier water below, affecting the sonar signal. Experts had to correct the data for this distortion. A day or so later,
things got back to polar-normal when wind-tossed seas stirred the waters again. (Visit the CCOM website to keep up with Armstrong’s reports from the Healy.)

This work completed, the Healy steamed toward a northern rendezvous point to meet the Canadian Coast Guard’s St-Laurent, mapping enroute. The St-Laurent pulled alongside the Healy as planned on 23 August, and, after a day of science and planning meetings, the international team set out to begin studying the main aim of the cruise, a line stretching from the Chukchi Cap north to the Lomonosov Ridge (see the cruise track, below). Personnel aboard the two vessels will work together for about a month
before parting ways around 23 September. The Healy will break ice for the St-Laurent as needed, while collecting ocean-bottom (or bathymetric) data, primarily using a multi-beam echo sounder. The St. Laurent will conduct seismic profiles to establish sub-bottom characteristics.

In addition to the Extended Continental Shelf survey, USGS and University of Florida scientists aboard the Healy are collecting water samples for a study of Arctic Ocean acidification.  The team is also updating a website. Follow along—and submit questions, if you like—at http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/ocean-acidification/arcticcruise2011/ –Kip Rithner

Comments (1) Aug 31 2011

Drawings and renderings by The Glosten Associates

Assembly of Alaska’s new research vessel, the R/V Sikuliaq (see-KOO-lee-auk), is in full swing. The ship, owned by the National Science Foundation, will be operated by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, as part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System. The Sikuliaq is under construction at Marinette Marine Corporation’s shipyard in Marinette, Wisconsin. Following a summer 2012 launch, the vessel will undergo a series of sea trials before transport through the St. Lawrence Seaway, through the Panama Canal, and north to Seward, Alaska, which will become the vessel’s home port. Science operations are scheduled to begin in 2014 and will focus on the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Arctic Ocean.

The R/V Sikuliaq's hull model at Marinette Marine Corporation's shipyard. All photos http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/arrv/

An initial design collaboration (between UAF, Seattle’s The Glosten Associates, naval architects, Guido Perla and Associates, and the Marinette Corporation) identified science needs in context of engineering constraints. Next, the Marinette Corporation created full-scale mock-ups of the hull, bridge, main laboratories, the ADA-compliant stateroom, and aft science control room. The models allowed for troubleshooting unforeseen design and engineering issues and resulted in a six-foot addition to the ship’s mid-section in order to accommodate technical equipment and add deck space.

A life-size mock-up of the science lab.

Ship fabrication is modular. Sections are built separately and pieced together in the shipyard.

On April 11, 2011, Marinette hosted the Sikuliaq’s keel-laying ceremony. The keel is a large steel beam around which the hull of the ship is constructed. Traditionally, when the keel is placed in the construction cradle, a ceremony is held to commemorate the start of construction and to recognize a ship sponsor.

Photos from the R/V Sikuliaq keel-laying ceremony http://www.youtube.com/user/ARRVUAF

More than 80 people attended the Sikuliaq keel-laying ceremony, including UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers, Marinette Marine Corporation CEO Richard McCreary, Congressman Reid Ribble of Wisconsin, State Senator Dave Hansen, and David Conover, NSF Ocean Sciences Division Director. Fanfare centered on recognition of the Sikuliaq’s co-sponsors, UAF School of Fisheries dean emeritus, Vera Alexander, and professor emeritus, Robert Elsner. Ship sponsors are chosen based on their willingness to support the ship, metaphorically speaking. In the Sikuliaq’s case, Alexander and Elsner both had careers in arctic research and have been active in planning for an Alaska-based research vessel since the 1970s.

Following a number of speeches, Alexander and Elsner participated in the traditional welding ceremony wherein ship sponsors initial a steel plate that will later be affixed to the keel. For permanence, their initials are welded into the steel plate. A reception was held following the ceremony.

Stay tuned…

–Marcy Davis

Sikuliaq site: http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/arrv/

Comments (0) Aug 22 2011

Impacts could have profound implications on atmospheric carbon and climate

The Anaktuvuk River Fire is the dark shape in the right-center of this NASA-MODIS image of the North Slope of Alaska, acquired June 14, 2008. The burned area is bordered by the Nanushuk River on the west and the Itkillik River on the east. Credit: Courtesy of Jim Laundre, MBL

In a study published in Nature, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Gauis Shaver and his colleagues, including lead author Michelle Mack of the University of Florida, describe the dramatic impacts of a massive Arctic wildfire on carbon releases to the atmosphere. The 2007 blaze on the North Slope of the Alaska’s Brooks Mountain Range released 20 times more carbon to the atmosphere than what is annually lost from undisturbed tundra.

As wildfires increase in frequency and size along Alaska’s North Slope, the team contends the disturbances may release large amounts of the greenhouse gas CO₂ to the atmosphere and accelerate the transformation of the frozen, treeless tundra of today into a different kind of ecosystem less capable of storing carbon. Together, the impacts could have profound implications on atmospheric carbon and climate.

Arctic tundra landscapes store huge amounts of carbon in cool, wet soils that are insulated by a layer of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost. Fire has been almost nonexistent in Alaska’s North Slope for thousands of years and the effect of fires on the carbon balance of tundra ecosystems is largely unknown. However, with warming temperatures over the past half-century, the climate in the region is in transition, spurring more thunderstorms, lightning, and wildfires.

In 2007 the Anaktuvuk River fire ravaged a 40-by-10 mile swath of tundra about 24 miles north of Toolik Field Station, where Shaver is the principal investigator of the NSF’s Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research project. The blaze was the largest ever recorded in the region.

While the Anaktuvuk River fire scorched only upper soil layers that are about 50 years old, it caused the release of more than two million metric tons of CO₂ to the atmosphere. This amount is similar in magnitude to the annual carbon sink for the entire Arctic tundra biome averaged over the last quarter of the twentieth century. According to Shaver and his colleagues, an Arctic regularly disturbed by fire could mean massive releases of CO₂ into the atmosphere, a decrease in carbon stocks on land, and a rapid impact on climate.

Shaver has been studying the Arctic tundra since the mid-1970s, and he knows how to look for gradual shifts in a landscape that is changing, but very slowly. Large disturbances such as fire—which leave the land open to rapid re-growth—have been rare. As the tundra rebounds from the Anaktuvuk River fire, Shaver and his colleagues are watching closely to see if the fire will nudge a major transformation of the North Slope groundcover that is already slowly underway.

MBL Ecosystems Center scientist Chris Neill inspects burned tussocks at the Anaktuvuk River fire site, July 2008. Credit: Jason Orfanon, MBL Logan Science Journalism Program

More shrubs are expected to appear in the Arctic landscape as the climate warms, a trend that may be accelerated by the advent of fires. “Satellites tell us there has clearly been a greening of the Arctic over the past 30 years,” Shaver says. Many observations point to a warmer landscape that will be dominated by shrubs, rather than the grasses and mosses of today. Some scientists forecast that large parts of the Arctic tundra will eventually become forest. “A key question is whether the conditions on these burn sites are more favorable for the establishment of new seeds, new species,” Shaver says.

Moreover, the burn, because it is darker, absorbs more solar radiation than undisturbed land. “You have much higher rates of permafrost thawing, and depth of thaw, on the burn,” Shaver says. All of these immediate consequences of the Anaktuvuk River fire reinforce the effects of a warming climate on the Arctic tundra. And the scientists don’t yet know if the land can recover the carbon and energy balance of its pre-burn state, or if they are looking at a “new normal,” Shaver says.

This research was supported by the NSF Division of Environmental Biology, the Division of Biological Infrastructure, and Office of Polar Programs, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and the Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service and Arctic Field Office.

Source: Marine Biological Laboratory

Comments (0) Aug 06 2011

At Toolik Field Station

Ever wrestled a bear? Started a fire with two sticks?

Learn how to avoid these situations by attending an Arctic Field Training (AFT) course at Toolik Field Station sponsored by CH2M HILL Polar Services (CPS). We offer two course levels this summer, so come learn new skills or freshen up on your old ones.

Two-hour courses cover the following topics:

• Bear safety
• Threats to life
• Hypothermia and heat exhaustion
• Dressing for the field
• Staying found

Full day courses cover the following topics:

• All topics covered in the two-hour session (see above) and:
• What’s in a survival bag
• Water treatment
• Starting a fire
• Helicopter safety
• Making better decisions

Two-hour course schedule:

• Monday, June 20 7:30 to 9:30 pm
• Tuesday, June 21 1 to 3 pm
• Monday, July 11 7:30 to 9:30 pm
• Tuesday, July 12 1 to 3 pm
• Wednesday, August 3 1 to 3 pm
• Wednesday, August 3 7:30 to 9:30 pm

Full day course schedule (With 1-hour lunch break):

• Monday, June 20 8 am to 5 pm
• Tuesday, August 2 8 am to 5 pm

Interested? At Toolik Field Station, contact the Helo Coordinator; or email karla at  polarfield.com for more information.

Comments (0) Jun 08 2011