WERC

Mat Wooller (Alaska Stable Isotope Facilty), Jim Shobe (PhD graduate student) and Terry Smith (North Pole high school student intern) (l to r) test a new vibra-coring system through a hole in lake ice to sample long cores of sediment beneath a thaw lake near the UAF campus.

UAF photo by Todd Paris.

Sveta Berezoskaya and Romain Provost measure stream flow of a small creek near Barrow.

Credit: Anna Liljedahll

Drunken trees in a black spruce forest near Fairbanks, Alaska. As permafrost thaws, the ground subsides, and surface moisture conditions can become too wet for the trees to survive.

Credit: Miriam Jones

Thermokarst lakes in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Credit: Miriam Jones

The rhizones pictured above are used to extract microbe samples from the sediment core. The microbes being studied are responible for producing and oxidizing methane.

Credit: Mat Wooler

The wind near Barrow, Alaska has carved and packed this snow surface.

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

Douglasia ochotensis grows 30 miles south of Prudehoe Bay, Alaska. It is one of the first flowers to bloom in the Arctic sometime in June.

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

Joel Bailey and Peter Prokein install equipment that will send weather data back to the University of Alaska Fairbanks some 200 miles to the south.

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

Rainbow over a peatland in the Susitna Valley, just to the south of the Alaska Range.

Credit: Miriam Jones

The Alyeska oil pipeline seen from an altitude of 500 feet about 20 miles south of Prudhoe Bay. The pipeline acts as a snow fence which retains more snow than the surrounding tundra.

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

The polygonal fractures in this tundra near the Deadhorse airport are caused by repeated thawing and freezing.

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

Robert Gieck and Joel Homan take stream flow measurements with a hand held FlowTracker in late May 2007

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

Weather conditions in early April cultivate this rime ice on a precipitation gauge in Barrow. Rime forms when supercooled droplets collect and rapidly crystalize on a surface.

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

Thermally-grown ice becoming 'candled' as it decays on an Arctic lake south of Deadhorse on June 9, 2009.

Credit: Sveta Berezovskaya

Itkillik River surface water monitoring station, view from the bluff, near the northern foothills of the Brooks range

Credit: Emily Youcha

Massive ice wedge on near Cape Espenberg.

Credit: Miriam Jones

Permafrost degradation on the southern Seward Peninsula. The lake formed as a previously frozen ice wedge thawed.

Credit: Miriam Jones

Rainbow on the southern Seward Peninsula.

Credit: Miriam Jones

31

May

Arctic journey: Yoshikawa will describe 43-day spring trek by snow machine

Join WERC research faculty Dr. Kenji Yoshikawa for a lecture titled, “Snow Machine Trip from Alaska to the Atlantic: A Slideshow Journey.” (more…)

16

May

4500 years of Sea Otters: WERC faculty member prepares for second field season researching intertidal food webs

Here’s a concept: Food webs–those simple drawings of algae, fish, eagles, and bears that most of us first encounter in elementary school–describe a key component of ecosystem dynamics. The interactions of individuals in food webs define ecosystems, and when changes occur to one species, there are broader implications for the entire web.

WERC’s assistant research professor Dr. Nicole Misarti is researching this concept by studying one keystone predator species, the sea otter, and how it impacts sub-arctic island food webs. (more…)