Alaska Science Forum: Bird havens on a trans-continental journey
Right about now, songbirds in Brazil are shifting on their perches, feeling mysterious impulses that will soon make them leap off their branches and head toward Alaska.
Butterflies and ravens as poetic inspiration
Stories about ravens and chickadees and wolves result in more responses in my inbox than others. The past few weeks — after one story...
Butterflies in the middle of winter
Rod Boyce of Two Rivers, Alaska, reports that he has noticed — at a time when the outside air’s temperature has not been above...
Alaska’s small glaciers on the way out
Glaciers worldwide are withering. Half of them will disappear by the end of this century, and much of the lost ice will vanish from...
Report of frog’s death greatly exaggerated
Things didn't look good for the five frozen wood frogs. The palm-sized amphibians were hibernating in a box outside Brian Barnes' Fairbanks home a few...
Ancient moose antlers hint of early arrival
When a great deal of Earth’s water was locked up within mountains of ice, our ancestors scampered across a dry corridor from what is...
Adopt a woolly mammoth and win!
A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist wants to find out when the last woolly mammoth fell to the grass in Alaska. He is asking for help from an unusual source: people like you.
If a lake drains in northern Alaska . . .
“Lakes seem, on the scale of years or of human life spans, permanent features of landscapes, but they are geologically transitory, usually born of...
Alaska Science Forum: A field guide to old coffee cans
The year is 1905. You are a prospector in Alaska relaxing in your cabin after a chilly day of working the tailings pile. Craving a cup of joe, you pull a tin of coffee off the shelf. Though you can’t imagine it, that distinctive red can, the one you will later use for your precious supply of nails, will long outlive you. And it will give an archaeologist a good idea of when you made your Alaska home.
Alaska Science Forum: Awaiting river breakup on the Yukon
We had so much snow this year — knee deep on top of the river,” he said. “When that melted off, it laid on top of the ice and helped soften it up.”
