UAF photo Brian Barnes, a zoophysiologist and director at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology, has been elected a 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
University of Alaska Fairbanks zoophysiologist Brian Barnes has been named a 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.
Barnes was recognized for distinguished contributions to leadership in arctic science and research in hibernation and cryobiology: the study of the effects of low temperatures on living things. Barnes is the director of the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology and the science director at Toolik Field Station.
An internationally recognized expert in hibernation, Barnes’ research focuses on physiological ecology and thermoregulation of hibernating mammals – especially black bears and arctic ground squirrels.
Barnes divides his research time between laboratory work on the UAF campus and fieldwork at Toolik Field Station, an international research facility located on Alaska’s North Slope. As director of IAB, Barnes supports the life sciences research of about 50 faculty members and 100 associated postdoctoral fellows, researchers and staff members.
Barnes is among 539 new fellows chosen nationwide for 2011. He will receive a certificate and a blue and gold rosette—representing science and engineering—at the AAAS annual meeting in Vancouver Feb. 18. He joins the ranks of more than a dozen Alaskans chosen as fellows over the years.
The tradition of AAAS Fellows, who are chosen by their peers, began in 1874. Members can be considered if nominated by the steering groups of the association’s 24 sections, by any three fellows who are current AAAS members or by the AAAS chief executive officer.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Brian Barnes at 907-474-7648 or [email protected].
The Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has received $1.4 million to support rural Southwestern Alaska Yup’ik communities in their suicide and substance abuse prevention efforts.
The award will supplement a CANHR research program exploring how Alaska Native people are using ancestral knowledge and cultural traditions to promote well-being in young people and their families.
“It’s been working for thousands of years,” said Ray Oney, acting city manager for the City of Alakanuk, referring to traditional Yup’ik ways. “People would come together and work it out. We’re using that method in keeping our community members in tune with one another.”
Alakanuk, a Yup’ik community on the Yukon River, was one of two villages that collaborated with CANHR to design their own prevention program, grounded in the idea that communities can solve their own problems using their indigenous heritage. This approach was developed as part of CANHR research funded by the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities. It has become a model for other community prevention efforts.
Alakanuk has recently celebrated four years since the last suicide, Oney said. “It’s time to go out and teach other villages.”
The award will not directly support research, but will instead be used to hire additional rural project staff, to develop a training center to bring the project to new communities and to sustain and expand prevention project activities over the next three years, according to Stacy Rasmus, the project’s co-principal investigator and an assistant research professor at UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology.
The program is based on the qasgiq, or the men’s house, which was a place for Yup’ik people to gather for educational, spiritual and entertainment purposes, said Billy Charles, the prevention trial research coordinator and co-investigator for the CANHR project. Using the concept of qasgiq, people come together, discuss an issue and decide which traditional activities, such as ice safety, seal hunting or berry picking, to use to teach Yup’ik values.
“It’s better than sitting and listening to a lecture,” Charles said. “What a person gets out of a story becomes their own.”
The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation received the funding from the state of Alaska and passed the funds through to UAF for the three-year project.
“The state has become another resource for these local efforts,” Rasmus said. “It’s about reviving culture and tradition in the ways that used to keep families and children safe and healthy.”
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Billy Charles, prevention trial research coordinator, 907-949-6222 or [email protected]; Stacy Rasmus, assistant research professor, 907-474-7352 or [email protected]; Jim Allen, CANHR associate director, 474-6132 or [email protected]
UAF photo by Marie Gilbert Ben Abbott, graduate student, records gas flux measurements from a landscape where permafrost has thawed and the ground has collapsed - called a thermokarst - just north of the Institute of Arctic Biology Toolik Field Station on the North Slope. Abbott is part of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature.
Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, authors write. However, the effect of thawing permafrost on climate will be 2.5 times greater because emissions include methane, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The survey, led by University of Florida researcher Edward Schuur and University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student Benjamin Abbott, asked climate experts what percentage of the surface permafrost is likely to thaw, how much carbon will be released and how much of that carbon will be methane. The authors estimate that the amount of carbon released by 2100 will be 1.7 to 5.2 times larger than reported in recent modeling studies, which used a similar warming scenario.
“The larger estimate is due to the inclusion of processes missing from current models and new estimates of the amount of organic carbon stored deep in frozen soils,” Abbott said. “There’s more organic carbon in northern soils than there is in all living things combined; it’s kind of mind boggling.”
Northern soils hold around 1,700 gigatons of organic carbon, around four times more than all the carbon ever emitted by modern human activity and twice as much as is now in the atmosphere, according to the latest estimate. When permafrost thaws, organic material in the soil decomposes and releases gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.
“In most ecosystems organic matter is concentrated only in the top meter of soils, but when arctic soils freeze and thaw the carbon can work its way many meters down, said Abbott, who studies how carbon is released from collapsed landscapes called thermokarsts – a process not accounted for in current models. Until recently that deep carbon was not included in soil inventories and it still is not accounted for in most climate models.
“We know about a lot of processes that will affect the fate of arctic carbon, but we don’t yet know how to incorporate them into climate models,” Abbott said. “We’re hoping to identify some of those processes and help the models catch up.”
UAF photo by Marie Gilbert Ben Abbott, graduate student, right, and Jay Jones, professor of biology, both of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks collect soil cores and gas flux measurements from a landscape north of the IAB Toolik Field Station on the North Slope where permafrost has thawed and the ground has collapsed - called a thermokarst. Abbott and Jones are part of a National Science Foundation funded thermokarst project #08-0341.
Most large-scale models assume that permafrost warming depends on how much the air above the permafrost is warming. Missing from the models, say the authors, are processes such as the effects of abrupt thawing that can melt an ice wedge, result in collapsed ground and accelerate additional thawing.
“This survey is part of the scientific process, what we think is going to happen in the future, and how we come up with testable hypotheses for future research,” Schuur said. “Our survey outlines the additional risk to society caused by thawing of the frozen North and the need to reduce fossil fuel use and deforestation.”
By integrating data from previous models with expert predictions the authors hope to provide a frame of reference for scientists studying all aspects of climate change.
“Permafrost carbon release is not going to overshadow fossil fuel emissions as the main driver of climate change” said Schuur, “but it is an important amplifier of climate change.”
Schuur, Abbott and the 41 survey participants, which include several other UAF researchers, are members of the Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon Research Coordination Network. http://www.biology.ufl.edu/permafrostcarbon/
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Benjamin Abbott, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 907-474-6777, [email protected]. Edward “Ted” Schuur, Department of Biology, University of Florida, 352-392-7913, [email protected]
Video courtesy of Sarah E. Godsey, post-doc, Pennsylvania State University. Idaho State University, Michael N. Gooseff, associate professor, Pennsylvania State University, and Antoni Lewkowicz, professor, University of Ottawa. Hourly images of the headwall of a thaw slump on Alaska’s North Slope on the shore of Horn Lake. The images show permafrost thaw and subsequent headwall collapse over several days in summer 2010. The area burned during the large Anaktuvuk River fire in 2007 and the thaw slump appeared following the fire. Video was produced with funding from the National Science Foundation, ARCSS/TK grant #08-0341.
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Posted by Marmian Grimes On November - 30 - 2011ADD COMMENTS
UAF IAB photo by Richard Flanders Toolik Field Station, operated by the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, shown on the shore of Toolik Lake, foreground, Brooks Range in background, North Slope, Alaska.
The National Science Foundation awarded $16.3 million to the University of Alaska Fairbanks in support of the Toolik Field Station, a major site for national and international research in the North American Arctic since 1975.
“With this award Toolik Field Station is now considered a major NSF facility,” said Marion Syndonia “Donie” Bret-Harte, principal investigator for the award and a scientist at UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology, which operates the station.
The five-year cooperative agreement, the third from NSF since 2000, will enable the station to increase and improve the provision of housing, utilities, meals, communications, modern lab space, vehicles and common-use science equipment to the hundreds of scientists and students who work at the station each year.
“This is more than a supplies and logistics award,” said Bret-Harte. “By supporting our efforts to improve Toolik’s GIS and baseline environmental monitoring services, the NSF award is a significant step toward Toolik becoming an international flagship environmental observatory.”
The station is currently host to NSF’s Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research and Arctic Observatory Network programs and is a member of the International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic. The station has also been selected as the arctic site for the National Ecological Observatory Network program.
“Much of what is known about terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, adaptations of plants and animals to the Arctic and the effects of climate change come from long-term, process-based ecological research conducted at Toolik,” said Bret-Harte. “This award will help us grow that legacy.”
The station and its population of visiting scientists have grown substantially since 1975, when just a handful of researchers braved Alaska’s Dalton Highway to reach the facility and few stayed over winter. In 2010, TFS hosted 569 project participants from 68 different universities and research institutions working on 61 funded research projects.
“This award demonstrates the confidence that NSF has in UAF and IAB’s ability to foster and support national and international science, education and outreach” said Brian Barnes, IAB director, TFS science director and co-principal investigator.
Toolik Field Station is located on the southeast shore of Toolik Lake, in the northern foothills of Alaska’s Brooks Range. It is 370 miles north of Fairbanks and 189 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Its location allows researchers access to three major physiographic provinces of Alaska: the Brooks Range, the arctic foothills, and the arctic coastal plain.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Marion Syndonia “Donie” Bret-Harte, principal investigator, at 907-474-5434, [email protected]. Brian Barnes, IAB director, at 907-474-7649, [email protected].
The University of Alaska Fairbanks is hosting the 79th annual meeting of the Mycological Society of America Aug. 2-5.
The society’s annual meeting is dedicated to advancing the study of fungi of all kinds – mushrooms, molds, truffles, yeasts, lichens, plant pathogens and medically important fungi.
The yearly gathering is an opportunity for scientists, students and individuals with a professional interest in fungi to present research, meet potential collaborators and enjoy an arctic fungi landscape.
Media representatives will be admitted free of charge on presentation of their press credentials.
The MSA annual meeting website, including program schedule, is available online at: msa.alaska.edu.
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Posted by Pat Cruse On August - 3 - 2011ADD COMMENTS
In 2007, the largest recorded tundra fire in the Arctic released approximately as much carbon into the atmosphere as the tundra has stored in the previous 50 years.
A study of the Anaktuvuk River fire on Alaska’s North Slope revealed how rapidly a single tundra fire can offset or reverse a half-century worth of soil-stored carbon. The study’s results are published in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature.
Tundra soils store huge amounts of carbon in the form of organic material. That carbon is hundreds to thousands of years old. The upper layers of the soil insulate the permanently frozen ground, called permafrost, below, and restrict fires to aboveground plants and plant litter. As arctic summers get warmer and dryer, so do the soils, which are highly flammable when dry. That allows the fires to burn more deeply into the ground. If those upper layers burn in a fire, that not only releases carbon into the atmosphere, is also speeds the thawing of the permafrost below. The once-frozen organic material in the permafrost can begin to decompose, releasing gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which in turn can amplify climate change.
“Fire has been largely absent from tundra for the past 11,000 or so years, but the frequency of tundra fires is increasing, probably as a response to climate warming,” said co-author Syndonia “Donie” Bret-Harte, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology. “If the frequency of these fires remains at long intervals, 80 to 150 years, then the tundra has time to recover. If these fires occur more frequently, say every 10 years or so, then the landscape cannot recover.”
The Anaktuvuk River fire burned 401 square miles, an area roughly the size of Cape Cod and visible from space, and released more than 2.3 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Radiocarbon dating of the soils revealed that the maximum age of the carbon released in the fire was 50 years.
“The amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from this fire is equivalent to the amount of carbon stored by the global tundra biome,” said lead author Michelle Mack, a biologist from the University of Florida. “This was a boreal forest-sized fire.”
The Anaktuvuk River fire was started by a lightning strike in July 2007.
“Normally we would expect the fire to go out in the moist soil, but this summer was so dry that the fire didn’t go out and strong winds in September caused it to burn a very large area,” said Bret-Harte. The wall of smoke from the fire was visible 15 miles south at the Toolik Field Station, where the scientists were working.
In addition to the direct release of carbon into the atmosphere, tundra fires are important because of the potential effects on global climate change. “These fires could be a radical and very rapid positive feedback to atmospheric carbon dioxide,” said Mack.
According to the authors, their observations from the Anaktuvuk River fire support the idea that tundra fires have the potential to decrease terrestrial carbon stocks while releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, both of which stand to have a strong effect on global climate.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Syndonia “Donie” Bret-Harte, UAF, at 907-474-5434 or [email protected]. Michelle Mack, University of Florida, 352-846-2510,[email protected], Skype: michellecailinmack
NOTE TO EDITORS: Syndonia “Donie” Bret-Harte and Michelle Mack will both be at the Institute of Arctic Biology Toolik Field Station through early August. Email is the best means of contact.
Syndonia is pronounced [sin-DOE-nee-uh]. Donie is pronounced [DOE-nee]
Hibernation is an essential survival strategy for some animals and scientists have long thought it could also hold promise for human survival. But how hibernation works is largely unknown. Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have successfully induced hibernation at will, showing how the process is initiated. Their research is published in the July 26 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
A hibernating animal has a reduced heart rate and blood flow similar to a person in cardiac arrest, yet the hibernator doesn’t suffer the brain damage that can occur in people.
“Understanding the neuroprotective qualities of hibernating animals may lead to development of a drug or therapy to save people’s lives after a stroke or heart attack,” said Kelly Drew, senior author and UAF professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the Institute of Arctic Biology.
Hibernating animals survive by severely reducing their metabolism, a condition called torpor, in which oxygen consumption can fall to as low as one percent of resting metabolic rate and core body temperature to near or below freezing temperatures.
Arctic ground squirrels, like all animals and people, produce a molecule called adenosine that slows nerve cell activity.
“When a squirrel begins to hibernate and when you feel drowsy it’s because adenosine molecules have attached themselves to receptors in your brain,” said Tulasi Jinka, lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in Drew’s lab.
The receptors can be regulated by a simple cup of coffee. A caffeine molecule is similar enough in structure to adenosine that it binds to the receptors and effectively stops or reverses the onset of drowsiness. Jinka and Drew wanted to know what substances trip the squirrels’ switch to start to hibernate.
“We devised an experiment in which non-hibernating arctic ground squirrels were given a substance that stimulated adenosine receptors in their brains. We expected the substance to induce hibernation,” Drew said. “We also gave a substance similar to caffeine to arouse hibernating ground squirrels.”
The non-hibernating squirrels were tested three times during one year. They were tested during the summer when they were not hibernating, again early in their hibernation season and a third time midway through the hibernation season. If animals were hibernating before the test, Jinka woke them up to see if the substance would cause them to go back into hibernation. To ensure that his expectations did not influence the results he delivered a placebo in the same manner as the drug and did not know which solution contained the active substance when he conducted the experiments.
Torpor was induced in all six of the squirrels awoken during mid-hibernation season, but in only two of the six from the early hibernation season group and in none during the summer season. The caffeine-like substance reversed torpor in all of the hibernating squirrels.
“We show for the first time that activation of the adenosine receptors is sufficient to induce torpor in arctic ground squirrels during their hibernation season,” Jinka said, who conducted this experiment while he was a graduate student.
What Jinka and Drew don’t yet know is how season causes the receptors to become increasingly sensitive to adenosine as the time of hibernation progresses.
Jinka and Drew are expanding their adenosine research to rats, which more closely resemble the physiology of humans.
“Rats allow us to move toward being able to apply this research to humans,” Jinka said.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Tulasi Jinka, postdoctoral fellow, 907-474-1129, [email protected]. Kelly Drew, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, 907-474-7190, [email protected].
NOTE TO EDITORS: The lead author’s first name in his native Telugu language is Tulasiram. He has anglicized it to Tulasi, but in India Tulasi is a women’s name. Please note that email is the best method to contact Jinka.
Posted by Pat Cruse On July - 26 - 2011ADD COMMENTS
A scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a colleague at Emory University are seeking to persuade the National Science Foundation to reevaluate its decision to cancel a program that has placed 10,000 science graduate students in more than 6,000 K-12 public schools across the country.
In an editorial in the July 15 issue of the journal Science, UAF biology professor Richard Boone and Emory University professor Pat Marsteller advocate for developing an enhanced version of NSF’s Graduate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Fellows in K-12 Education, or GK-12, program.
The program gives five-year grants that typically support eight to 10 graduate students a year. UAF received a five-year GK-12 grant in 2010 to place 10 graduate students per year in classrooms in the Fairbanks North Star Borough and the remote Southeast Islands School District in Thorne Bay.
“Young, dynamic scientists are spending 10 hours a week bringing their own research into the classroom and engaging K-12 students in original scientific investigations,” said Boone who is the principal investigator for UAF’s GK-12 program. “This program is a highly effective and captivating way to improve science education for K-12 students and their teachers, and it benefits graduate students by improving their teaching skills.”
Boone notes that no other program explicitly provides what the GK-12 program does. He and Marsteller suggest developing a “GK-12 enhanced” program that has an explicit interdisciplinary focus for graduate students, promotes connections with other federal agencies such as NASA and the National Institutes of Health, and tracks effects on K-12 students’ learning as well as benefits for the graduate students.
“It’s important to get elementary students and their teachers excited and knowledgeable about science now because by the time students are undergraduates it can be too late,” Boone said. “Compared to their peers, the GK-12 fellows are more engaged in research and better able to explain STEM concepts to nontechnical audiences.”
Boone also notes that an external, independent review of the program in 2010 found “substantial and credible evidence” that the program was achieving its goals. Boone and Marsteller contend that the program has been a powerful force for improving education in the United States and that it’s time to take the program to the next level.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Richard Boone, UAF professor, 907-474-7682, [email protected].
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Posted by Pat Cruse On July - 16 - 2011ADD COMMENTS
Until now, scientists were uncertain about how much and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored. In the July 14 issue of Science Express, scientists report that, between 1990 and 2007, the world’s forests stored about 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year.
Their results suggest that forests account for nearly all of the world’s land-based carbon uptake. Boreal forests are estimated to be responsible for 22 percent of the carbon stored in the forests. A warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.
“Our results imply that clearly, forests play a critical role in Earth’s terrestrial carbon balance, and exert considerable control over the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” said A. David McGuire, co-author and professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and co-leader of the USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
The report includes comprehensive estimates of carbon for the world’s forests based on recent inventory data. The scientists included information on changes in carbon pools from dead wood, harvested wood products, living plants and plant litter, and soils to estimate changes in carbon across countries, regions and continents that represent boreal, temperate and tropical forests.
The authors note that understanding the present and future role of forests in the sequestration and emission of carbon is essential for informed discussions on limiting greenhouse gases.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: A. David McGuire, professor of landscape ecology, Institute of Arctic Biology, USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, 907-474-6242, [email protected].
Other authors include scientists from the USDA Forest Service in Newtown Square, Penn.; Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing; State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing; Woods Hole Research Center; University of Helsinki; Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Victoria; School of Geography, University of Leeds; International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria; Global Carbon project, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia; Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) CEA-UVSQ-CNRS, Gif sur Yvette, France; Duke University; Princeton University; U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
MEG/07-14-11/009-12
Posted by Marmian Grimes On July - 15 - 2011ADD COMMENTS
Six students from the Rural Alaska Honors Institute will be living the life of an arctic field scientist at the Institute of Arctic Biology Toolik Field Station on the North Slope next week as part of a special research course hosted by scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the National Science Foundation’s Arctic Systems Science thermokarst project.
“We want to expose high schools students to different types of ongoing biology and wildlife research and to inspire them to pursue careers in science,” said Kimberley Maher, a UAF research assistant and a coordinator of the arctic field trip. “RAHI has a great reputation for working with high school students and Toolik Field Station is a perfect venue.”
The students, selected because of their interest in science and willingness to camp for a week without a shower, will have the opportunity to hear, see, feel and smell what it’s like to do research in the field.
“I understand things best when I’m outside, actively learning – not sitting in a chair,” Maher said, who is also an outreach coordinator for the thermokarst project.
The six students, who recently completed RAHI’s six-week program at UAF, are from the Alaska communities of Noatak, Kwethluk, Palmer, Sand Point, and Unalakleet.
With rubber boots and head nets donned and an ample supply of bug dope applied, the students will spend a day exploring tundra landscapes that have collapsed and formed slumps and huge open holes, called thermokarsts, as the result of thawing permafrost. They will learn how scientists determine the age of thermokarsts, how to drill deep soil cores into permafrost, how to identify and describe the plants affected by the slumping soils and what these activities tell scientists about a changing arctic landscape.
Another day will be spent along the Kuparuk River helping scientists collect and sort aquatic insects called macroinvertebrates. They will learn about watershed and witness how the river and the surrounding tundra interact.
The students will meet with an undergraduate student from North Carolina who works as a research assistant at Toolik Field Station and learn about what she does and how she got her arctic science job. They will also attend the weekly science lecture at Toolik Field Station where they can mingle with scientists and students from around the world.
“I am delighted for this special opportunity for RAHI students, after six weeks of learning in the classroom, to now get out into the field and experience real live research,” said Denise Wartes, RAHI program manager.
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Kimberley Maher, UAF research assistant, 907-474-7603, [email protected]. Denise Wartes, Rural Alaska Honors Institute program manager, 907-474-6866, [email protected].
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
National Science Foundation, Award #0806394. Collaborative Research: Spatial and Temporal Influences of Thermokarst Failures on Surface Processes in Arctic Landscapes.http://thermokarst.psu.edu/ Breck Bowden, principal investigator, [email protected], 802-656-2513. Recent work has documented that thermokarst failures are abundant and appear to have become more numerous around Toolik Lake on the eastern North Slope and in the western Noatak River basin in Alaska. A widespread and long-term increase in the incidence of thermokarst failures may have important impacts on the structure and function of arctic headwater landscapes. This research will use a systems approach to address hypotheses about how thermokarst failures influence the structure and function of the arctic landscape.
The Rural Alaska Honors Institute, 907-474-5876, http://www.uaf.edu/rahi/. The University of Alaska Fairbank’s Rural Alaska Honors Institute is a six-week, summer, college preparatory bridge program for Alaska Native and rural high school juniors and seniors with a cumulative grade point average of 3.0. Conceived by the University of Alaska and the Alaska Federation of Natives after a series of meetings because of their mutual concern about the retention rate of Alaska Native and rural students, RAHI was one of their solutions to assist them in obtaining higher education.
Institute of Arctic Biology Toolik Field Station. toolik.alaska.edu. 907-474-7412. IAB’s Toolik Field Station, located in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska on the southeast shore of Toolik Lake, is a world-renowned arctic climate change research station. This location affords access to three major physiographic provinces including the Brooks Range, the Arctic Foothills and the Arctic Coastal Plain. The Station also serves as a base camp for researchers working along the ecological transect from tundra to taiga to boreal forest along the Dalton Highway, from Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks, Alaska.
NOTE TO EDITORS: Kimberley Maher and the RAHI students will be traveling from Fairbanks to Toolik Field Station, North Slope, Alaska on Sunday, July 17, 2011 and will be unavailable. Maher will have limited email access from July 18-21.
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Posted by Sharon Burke On July - 15 - 2011ADD COMMENTS
