Debbie Carter
907-474-5406
8/30/10

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service has published a new comprehensive gardening manual.

“Sustainable Gardening: The Alaska Master Gardener Manual” was adapted for Alaska from an Oregon State University publication, “Sustainable Gardening: The Oregon-Washington Master Gardener Handbook.”

The 490-page manual, which sells for $40, is a basic gardening text. It also offers information on soils and fertilizers, propagation, berry crops, pruning, composting, flowers, greenhouses and season extenders, lawns, plant diseases, pesticides and integrated pest management. The manual is a good resource for home gardeners and also will be used as one component in Extension’s master gardener training programs.
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UAF photo by Todd Paris
First-year experience coordinator Jamie Napolski gives instructions to her staff moments before opening the doors to hundreds of incoming freshman during Move-in Day on the Fairbanks campus.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks will welcome more than 750 new students starting this weekend at the kickoff of this year’s new student orientation activities. The four-day event, which runs Sunday, Aug. 29 through Wednesday, Sept. 1, will include workshops and activities for new students and their families, as well as opportunities for students to connect with the Fairbanks community.
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Photo courtesy of Jeremy Mathis
Jeremy Mathis, OARC director, stands in the ocean acidification laboratory at UAF.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has created a new research center dedicated to studying ocean acidification in Alaska.

Jeremy Mathis, assistant professor of chemical oceanography and an ocean acidification expert, will be the director of the center.

Ocean acidification is a term to describe increasing acidity in the world’s oceans. The ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. As the ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide, seawater becomes more acidic. Scientists estimate that the ocean is 25 percent more acidic today than it was 300 years ago. According to Mathis, ocean acidification is happening more rapidly, and more severely, in Alaska waters.

“The Ocean Acidification Research Center will provide a unique opportunity to collect an unprecedented dataset in a vulnerable region,” said Mathis.
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UAF photo by Michelle Renfrew
Class speaker Nicholas Wood addresses fellow graduates during the graduation ceremony of the 8th session of the UAF Community and Technical College Paramedic Academy.

Michelle Renfrew
907-455-2833
8/26/10

Thirteen students graduated from the 8th session of the UAF Community and Technical College Paramedic Academy, Friday, Aug 27, 2010 at 1 p.m. at the Noel Wien Library Auditorium, 1215 Cowles St.

The graduates come from Homer, Anchorage and Fairbanks and include employees of the University, Fairbanks and Ft. Wainwright Fire Departments. Speakers included the program’s medical director, Dr. William Wennen; program coordinator Chuck Kuhns; Community and Technical College interim director Michele Stalder and class speaker Nicholas Wood.
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Photos courtesy of Syun-Ichi Akasofu.The late U.S. Senator Ted Stevens with Syun-Ichi Akasofu, founder of the International Arctic Research Center.

Ned Rozell
8/25/2010
474-7468

When Syun-Ichi Akasofu first approached Ted Stevens, the Japanese-American leader of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute was desperate — he had responsibility for a rocket range that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was ready to close, and he needed money for improvements.

Akasofu traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet the powerhouse Alaska senator. When Akasofu reached Stevens’ office, the senator informed him that he needed to head to Capitol Hill. “Can I come with you?” Akasofu asked. “I don’t see why not,” Stevens said. On the brief train ride, Akasofu pled his case for funds that would allow improvements to the rocket range his institute and the university had no money for. Stevens listened to him and deemed Akasofu’s cause important enough to turn around. “Let’s go back to the office right now,” Stevens said. The men caught a train going the other way.
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Photo by John Mayfield, Jr.
UAF associate professor Javier Fochesatto and students Joseph Woznicki, Kyle Imhoff and Jilmarie Stephens laugh as they work with a sonic anemometer installed at Toolik Field Station north of Fairbanks.

Six undergraduates are gaining valuable experience conducting their own atmospheric science research in Alaska this summer through a new program led by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

The Research Experience for Undergraduates in Atmospheric Sciences program is funded through a National Science Foundation grant. It puts students into the field, working closely with UAF faculty members.
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Julie Estey
907-474-1144
8/25/10

The Alaska Center for Energy and Power will host its next community lecture Tuesday, Aug. 31 at 6 p.m. at the Blue Loon on the Parks Highway.

The lecture, “Biomass: A Sustainable Option for Alaska?” will focus on biomass technology projects and residential wood-burning in Alaska. Speakers will include Jesse Warwick and Michael Gnomes of Chena Power, Gwen Holdmann of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, and John Davies of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.uaf.edu/acep.

MEDIA CONTACT: Julie Estey, ACEP business director, at 907-474-1144 or [email protected].

ON THE WEB: www.uaf.edu/acep

AC/8-25-10/025psa-11

Aug. 17 was a good day for ducks at the Matanuska Experiment Farm, but it also proved a good day for people. With rain falling on the Valley for the 32nd day in a row, people defied the precipitation and ventured to the farm to celebrate Alaska Agriculture Appreciation Day.

More than 300 visitors arrived to chat with vendors, watch animals get milked and professors get dunked, win cakes in the cake walk and bob for fresh vegetables in tubs of ice cold water.

“It’s amazing how people pulled together for this,” said School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences associate professor Norm Harris. Nearly 50 exhibitors set up tents in the rain and displayed their goods and information, from tractors to cotton candy to rhubarb
recipes.

SNRAS dean and AFES director Carol Lewis said, “I think it’s great; I’m totally impressed.”

In the past, the farm had hosted a similar event but it had been six years since the last one; it seemed the community was ready for it at this time. The Alaskan Express Air Force Band belted out popular tunes and soulful oldies. There were vegetables, dairy products, plants, jewelry, food and pottery for sale, as well as free information and publications by the Natural Resource Conservation Service, Cooperative Extension Service, Alaska Wild Bird Rehabilitation Center, Mat-Su Borough Cultural Resource Department and other organizations.

A highlight of the day was the old-fashioned games run by Rachel Kenley, past Alaska FFA president. She organized a cake walk, vegetable bobbing, tug of war and a treasure hunt in the hay, much to  the delight of the children who participated and their parents and grandparents who watched the excitement.

MEF farm manager Jud Scott expressed appreciation to all the sponsors and exhibitors and said he is already looking forward to the 2011 Agriculture Appreciation Day at the farm.

“I think it turned out very well,” said SNRAS fiscal technician Gidget Wensel. “The public needs to be aware that agriculture exists. This is a good opportunity for them to meet agricultural entities.”

Ned Rozell

907-474-7468

8/17/10

Forester Tom Malone once guided me on a trek to see Alaska’s largest black spruce tree. It was a short adventure. The 71-foot tree is a two-minute walk from my office.

Ned Rozell photo The largest black spruce tree in Alaska lives on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. Forester Tom Malone stands beside the tree.

The Alaska champion black spruce tree stands on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The tree lives in a mixed forest next to large white spruce trees, mature birch and a few alders and willows. The tree leans uphill, and its trunk is 45 inches around. When I hugged it, I could barely clasp my hands together. The largest black spruce in Alaska is a lucky tree, because its neighbors to the north are gone, removed in the mid-1990s during the installation of a power line.

The Alaska champion black spruce stood exposed for a few years before a researcher visiting from Iceland, a land of many volcanoes but few trees, pointed it out to forest geneticist John Alden as they walked by in the spring of 2001. “He said, ‘That’s a black spruce,’” Alden said. “I said, no, it was too large. I didn’t think it could be a black spruce.” Alden, a longtime university forest geneticist, thought the tree was a type of white spruce that is darker green and has coarser bark than other white spruce. When the snow melted, Alden walked back to the tree and saw beneath it the telltale sign of black spruce — pudgy cones, about one inch long. White spruce cones are longer and pointier.

Alden nominated the black spruce in “The Big Tree Challenge,” a nationwide program that was run in Alaska by Tom Malone of the UAF Department of Forest Sciences. Malone used a laser-measuring device to confirm the tree’s height of 71 feet, which bested the old record of 65 feet, set by a tree that stands near where the Tolovana River empties into the Tanana River in Interior Alaska. Alaska’s largest black spruce stands up against national competition. The U.S. record is a 78-foot black spruce in Taylor County, Wisconsin, according to the National Register of Big Trees.

The tallest trees are not always the winners of The Big Tree Challenge; foresters score trees on height, circumference and the spread of a tree’s crown. The black spruce on the UAF campus is taller than the state record western paper birch, a 67-footer near Haines, and Alaska’s tallest balsam poplar, a 60-foot tree on the Kuskokwim River. Alaska’s current champion white spruce will soon give up its title, Malone said. The 112-foot tree in the floodplain of the Tok River is dying from an exposed root system.

Other Alaska state champions are a 126-foot quaking aspen off Cache Creek Road, west of Fairbanks; a 132-foot black cottonwood providing a lofty perch for eagles in Haines; a western hemlock standing 150 feet tall on Admiralty Island; and a Sitka spruce near Exchange Cove on Prince of Wales Island — perhaps the tallest tree in the state, at 185 feet.

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute,
University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research
community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute. This column
first appeared in 2003

The campus and Fairbanks communities gathered At UAF last weekend for the summer’s second freecycling event, the Really Free Market. Hundreds of locals flooded the Nenana parking lot, first with donations and later to shop for free items. This summer’s markets were the second season of what is becoming an annual tradition at UAF.

Slideshow by UAF photographer Todd Paris.