How will climate change affect health in Alaska? Dangerous travel conditions could cause more accidents, warmer temperatures could spread new diseases and the topsy-turvy weather could worsen mental health. Those are some conclusions from a new state report released Monday. Listen now
When the river takes the first houses, the village could start to scatter. And Newtok’s blend of the modern and traditional could erode away with the land.
At a lab in Kodiak, researchers are working to understand whether crabs can adapt to ocean acidification.
Last week, social media across Western Alaska lit up as residents posted photos and videos of open water where, normally, there's ice.
An early melt-out date can make for an especially bad wildfire season, but this year, it’s right on schedule for much of the state. Listen now
According to Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, approximately 400 gallons of an oily water mix had been recovered from the Port of Valdez as of Saturday night.
Ocean acidification threatens some of Alaska’s most lucrative crab fisheries. But there’s one ray of hope: it’s possible that crabs might be able to adapt to the changing oceans. The big question scientists are researching at Bob Foy’s lab in Kodiak is – will they have enough time?
One important factor is the depth of the lake. But there are other variables too.
This November in Utqiaġvik was the hottest on record, averaging 17.2°F. It was so warm that NOAA's quality control algorithms flagged the data. “When we look out on the ocean right now we see a few icebergs,” Thomas said. “Normally we would see white to the horizon in the past, and in this case we’re seeing dark water to the horizon.”
"It was pretty crazy how much water just kind of showed up," said Michelle St. Martin, whose field season was cut short by melting sea ice.
There are plenty of seals in Unalaska, but ringed seals -- who make their homes on the ice -- are rare.
Dead crowns in the canopy and rusty-colored branches are woven in with the otherwise healthy, green temperate rainforest. About a third of the trees around here were hit by the voracious sawfly. The larvae get mistaken for caterpillars. Adults are a kind of non-stinging wasp, a little smaller than a pinky finger.
While reproductive failure is common for some species like black-legged kittiwakes, it isn’t for murres. In some places less than one percent of the chicks survived.
Scientists are trying out crowdsourcing to comb through pictures looking for sea lions.
"These ridges that we’re standing on, there would have been more of them, and they would have been bigger," ice researcher Andy Mahoney said. "The features that we now see, they’re something of a shadow from the past." Listen now
Scientists found an enriched uranium particle over the Aleutian Islands and don’t know where it came from.
One ecologist wonders, for the yellow cedar forests and the people who care about them, what comes after climate change and environmental loss in Southeast Alaska?
Officials are still examining the substance in a lab to determine what it is, but DEC suspects it’s black tar or asphalt.
“It’s an area that I and some other colleagues have started thinking about: can you get methane forming in terrestrial environments? But it’s a very new area of science,” carbon scientist Katey Walter Anthony said.
Typically, cholera is associated with tropical destinations. But recently, the bacteria that can cause the disease was found in subsistence herring eggs in British Columbia. As Southeast Alaska tribes get ready to gather herring eggs, it’s left some people wondering about the future.
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