Nash will talk about research publications developed by the Alaska Center for Energy and Power that address solar and geothermal energy, biomass, microgrids, small-scale nuclear plants, biogas, ground-source heat pumps and more. Presentations on individual publications will begin at 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on June 20-21 and June 26-27. All will be offered in the BP Design Theater on the fourth floor of the Engineering Learning and Innovation Facility.

Topics June 20 will include Nome energy storage and geothermal exploration, small-scale nuclear power, and biomass.  On June 21, topics will include: river surface debris and its impact on river energy conservation devices; direct use options for hot springs in Adak, Akutan and Atka; and microgrids. On June 26, Nash will talk about wood pellets in rural Alaska, solar thermal energy and “A Solar Design Manual for Alaska.” Topics June 27 will include publications on biogas, diesel fuel additives for diesel generators and ground-source heat pumps for cold climates.

Several publications include case studies about the energy technologies. For more information, contact Nash at UAF Cooperative Extension Service, 907-474-6366 or alnashjr@alaska.edu.

The bus arrived in Alaska on Monday, June 18, floating first to Juneau by boat and then taking the state ferry to Haines. It will be parked in a variety of locations in Fairbanks on Friday, June 22.

The cable television network C-SPAN broadcasts congressional proceedings and public affairs programs. The bus contains a television studio, touchscreen tablets and a station for people to take self-portraits. Visitors can take quizzes to test their knowledge of the political process. The station is also recording public affairs programs during its visit. The programs will be broadcasted in July. For more information, call 474-7505 or visit www.uaf.edu/museum.

The event will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the garden. From 10 a.m. to noon, the public is invited to enjoy the garden, educational booths, kids’ activities, harp music and birthday cake to celebrate the 167^th birthday of Charles Georgeson. The garden’s namesake was an agronomist who founded experiment stations in Alaska and stayed to conduct research.

From noon to 2 p.m., kids of all ages are invited to romp in the mud pit in the Babula Children’s Garden. The garden hosted Mud Day for several years but the event has been on hiatus for the past two years. Towels and clean clothes to wear afterward are recommended. Participants will be able to rinse with water.

Educational booths will include information on beekeeping, herbs and peonies, and a potter will demonstrate clay pottery making. Activities will include face painting, origami, dragonfly crafts and other games. The Boreal Charter School, the Fairbanks Children’s Museum and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are leading kids’ activities.

Admission is free, but cans of food for the Fairbanks Community Food Bank are requested as a Georgeson birthday gift. The event is sponsored by the Georgeson Botanical Garden Society, the Georgeson Botanical Garden and the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural Resources and Extension.

The garden is located at the farthest west edge of the Fairbanks campus at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm, 117 W. Tanana Drive. For more information, contact Mathew Carrick at 907-474-7222 or email gbgsociety@gmail.com.

Cruise the Chena River on the Riverboat Discovery and reunite with fellow alumni during the Nanook Rendezvous weekend!

The cruise will take place Friday, July 20, 2018, from 1:30-5 p.m. Tickets are $55. Participants will meet at 1975 Discovery Drive.

Register for the Riverboat Discovery and other UAF Rendezvous events here.

• On Monday, June 18, the Down Memory Lane interview series will include a discussion with Charles Deehr, UAF professor of physics, 1958-1988. Veteran journalist Robert Hannon will conduct the interview, which will be at 7 p.m. at the Elvey Building auditorium.
• On Tuesday, June 19, the Health Living lecture series will feature physical therapist Cheryl Sackett and athletic trainer Heidi Watkins discussing “Head Over Heels for Balance.” Their lecture will be at 7 p.m. at the Murie Building auditorium.
• On Wednesday, June 20, the Discover Alaska lecture series will present Ken Tape, an ecologist at the UAF Institute of Northern Engineering, and “Tundra be Dammed: Beaver Colonization of the Arctic.” The lecture will be at 7 p.m. at the Murie Building auditorium.
• On Thursday, June 21, the Music in the Garden concert series will host the Rock Bottom Stompers, featuring soulful, stompable tunes and sweet, lonesome harmonies. Music begins at 7 p.m. at the Georgeson Botanical Garden.

For more information, visit www.uaf.edu/summer/events/ or call 907-474-7021.

Of the five species of salmon that swim Alaska waters, the pink is by far the most plentiful. Some scientists think the fish is an overabundant predator that outcompetes other salmon and some seabirds.

In the late 1990s, Japanese researchers noticed an intriguing pattern while studying in the Bering Sea just north of the Aleutian Islands. During every odd-numbered year, populations of tiny ocean creatures called copepods were very low. The year after, their numbers were high.

Pink salmon eat copepods. And, the Japanese scientists noted, pink salmon are most abundant in odd calendar years. The Japanese scientists postulated that pinks, which have exploded in numbers since the early 1990s, had gobbled up many of the copepods.

About a decade ago, biologists Alan Springer and Gus van Vliet noticed a similar pattern among tufted puffins in a well-studied colony on Buldir Island in the Aleutians. The puffins were laying eggs earlier in even-numbered years and later in odd years. They too wondered if pink salmon might be responsible, by leaving less food for the puffins.

Though they are the smallest of the salmon, pinks are the dominant species in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. Pink salmon born in hatcheries, where professionals harvest eggs from wild salmon and rear them in captivity before releasing them in the ocean, have doubled in numbers since 1990.

Russians have pink salmon hatcheries that increase numbers in the North Pacific and Bering Sea. Alaskans run hatcheries in Valdez and other places in Prince William Sound. Hatchery managers release more than half a billion pink salmon smolts into Prince William Sound each year, some to be caught by fishermen. Canned and frozen Alaska pink salmon are sold all over the world, with a strong market in China.

Pinks are different from kings, chums and other salmon species. Their life is just two years long, from the time they are eggs until they die after spawning. While other Alaska salmon spend at least two winters in either the Bering Sea or North Pacific, pinks spend only one year in the saltwater surrounding Alaska before returning to freshwater sources to spawn. They remain small until the last few months before they spawn, when they eat like crazy and their body mass increases by 500 percent.

In that time of pinks’ greatest growth — from about March to July in the spawning year — they may be eating so many shrimp, fish, squid and krill that they are not leaving enough for other species. Their ferocity and eating efficiency could even be affecting birds half a world away, off the coast of Australia and New Zealand.

Short-tailed shearwaters are dusky, gull-like birds that live in the Bering Sea and North Pacific in the Alaska summer and return to nest on islands off Australia during the Alaska winter. During odd-numbered years, the birds arrive south of the equator with less body mass and tend to nest in fewer numbers. Springer, van Vliet and several of their Australian colleagues wrote about this 9,000-mile connection in a recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Springer, a research professor emeritus with UAF’s Institute of Marine Science, has pondered the impacts of pink salmon for quite a while. He pointed out that 100 million pinks returned to spawn in Prince William Sound in 2013: 30 percent were wild fish and 70 percent were born in hatcheries.

“There is an obvious strategy in using the oceans as unattended feedlots, but we know that the feed troughs will not be perpetually full, and despite the nutritious protein and fatty acids of free-range salmon, it is time to consider additional issues as well,” Springer wrote in a 2014 paper.

Possible solutions to the excess pink problem are relaxing catch limits for commercial fishermen and reduced hatchery releases of pink salmon each year, but Springer knows both of those are a hard sell.

“We all love salmon,” he said. “It keeps a lot of people healthy, happy and entertained, and it keeps a lot of people employed and many rich, so what’s the problem with even more?”

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

UAF Summer Visual Art Academy students photograph a spider near the entrance to the Duckering Building on Wednesday, June 6.

Alaska salmon fishermen have a significantly higher rate of health problems than the general population, according to a new study conducted by the University of Washington School of Public Health in partnership with Alaska Sea Grant. The health issues include noise-induced hearing loss, upper extremity disorders and fatigue possibly associated with sleep apnea.

The study began in early 2015 when Torie Baker, Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory agent in Cordova, and members of Cordova District Fishermen United invited 600 salmon gillnet permit holders to answer health questions before and during the fishing season. Dr. Debra Cherry, a physician and injury prevention and treatment researcher with the University of Washington Department of Epidemiology, led the effort.

The research is one of the first of its kind in the United States, according to the study’s authors. The peer-reviewed study was published in April 2018 in the Journal of Agromedicine.

Evidence of noise-induced hearing loss in the study is striking. About 80 percent of physical exam participants had hearing loss, compared to the 15 percent norm for Americans. In addition to engine noise while fishing, most fishermen reported exposure to noise during off-season activities, such as snowmachining, hunting and construction jobs.

Researchers also found evidence of rotator cuff problems in 40 percent of physical exam participants compared to the norm of 8-14 percent. The potentially high prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea, captured via standardized survey questions, is also concerning, say the authors. Less sleep combined with poor quality sleep may exacerbate fatigue during the fishing season.

Worldwide, fishermen are exposed to noise, ultraviolet radiation from the sun, long and irregular work hours and physical strain. Prior studies show that fishermen have a higher prevalence of hearing loss, actinic keratosis (a precancerous skin condition), leukemia, fatigue and musculoskeletal injuries. Because poor health in fishermen can result in urgent medical evacuation, countries such as Italy and Poland require fitness-for-duty exams.

The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health funded the Cordova, Alaska, research through the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center. While injuries and fatalities in the U.S. fishing industry have dropped significantly between 1990 and 2009, NIOSH saw a need to evaluate chronic health risks.

Sixty-six Cordova-area fishermen participated in the preseason online survey, and 38 responded to the midseason survey. Some were outfitted with Fitbits to track activity and sleep habits before and during the fishing season, and 25 fishermen had a complete physical exam including medical history, a hearing screening and a 3-minute step test to assess fitness during the fishing season.

Most participants were white males, at an average age of 49 with 27 years of fishing experience. Only three percent smoked tobacco. Some 70 percent of the participants were overweight or obese. During the off-season, more than half reported vigorous weekly exercise and six to eight hours of sleep. During the fishing season most worked longer hours and had less sleep and less aerobic exercise compared to off-season.

At the conclusion of the study, researchers sent a letter to each participant with their individual survey, exam and FitBit results, recommendations for follow-up and a summary of study findings. In Cordova, Cherry presented study findings at two community meetings in fall 2015.

The outcomes of the fishermen’s health study continue to spur interest among locals, said Baker, who is a faculty member at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and a partner in the study. Responding to that interest, she provided free hearing screenings this past April at the Cordova Community Health Fair.

“Partnering with our public health nurse from Juneau, we provided hearing screenings for 62 people in just four hours. We were very surprised at this response. It was an excellent opportunity to assist folks with tracking an often missed or lower priority health condition,” said Baker.

The Cordova health study researchers say they are eager to increase the study size to further explore their results, and to alert health care providers in other fishing ports as to fishermen’s specific health needs and challenges.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Dr. Debra Cherry, 206-744-9398, cherryd@uw.edu

Large portions of Yukon Drive, which runs from the Butrovich Building to Wood Center, will be closed through early August. Campus shuttles will continue to run via alternate routes.

Visitors to the University of Alaska Museum of the North and other West Ridge buildings are encouraged to access campus via Thompson Drive and take Tanana Loop up the hill. Allow extra time to reach your destination and follow posted signs.

Download a basic map of road closures at http://bit.ly/yukondrive2018.

Uma Bhatt always knew she wanted to help people. As a kid, she thought she might become a social worker or a doctor.

While growing up in Pittsburgh, she did particularly well in math and science but had an interest in learning Russian as well. Her father thought she should study engineering.

“You have expensive taste. You like nice things,” she remembered him saying. “So at least get the engineering degree so you can support yourself. Then, if you can make a career out of the Russian, fine.”

At the University of Pittsburgh, Bhatt met David Newman in the honors program while studying engineering.

“The two of us were very intellectually compatible, so we started off having rather deep conversations about all kinds of things,” Newman said. A month after their wedding, the two 23-year-olds packed their bags to serve in the Peace Corps in Kenya. The hail storms, beautiful hills and vibrant rainbows completely captured her.

“We lived at 9,500 feet in the western highlands of Kenya, and every day the sunset was amazing,” recalled Bhatt. “Every night, David and I would run to the edge of the hill with our camera and the students would always laugh at us.”

There was a terrible drought in East Africa from 1983 to 1985, their years of service. In Kenya, families had to pay for their children to attend high school. Many of her students only had enough money to pay for a couple weeks of school at a time; seeing their struggles to go to school in a time of such dire food shortages motivated Bhatt.

Bhatt decided she wanted to pursue a graduate degree in meteorology and seasonal weather forecasting after her Peace Corps assignment. Her hope was that governments could use her research to better predict droughts so agriculture could be managed to avoid food shortages.

“We know that if we have information beforehand that it will be dry, our students in Kenya said, they would plant wheat instead of corn,” Bhatt said. “So seasonal forecasts can help farmers make decisions to have better economic outcomes.”

While in the Peace Corps, she taught mathematics in the secondary school and completed projects such as building a water tank with the children and local community members. Those two years in Africa gave Bhatt not only a career direction but also a greater understanding that people are the same everywhere. One day, a young student told her a story about a fight she’d had with her brother.

“Just the way the whole thing transpired, that could have been in any country,” she said.

The path led to Alaska

After their return to the states, Bhatt attended the University of Wisconsin and earned a master’s degree studying tropical rainfall and large-scale atmospheric circulation, then a doctorate studying how the ocean and atmosphere interact. Newman pursued graduate studies in physics.

The couple had always been drawn to Alaska. Newman had completed a three-month backpacking trip in the Brooks Range before they met.

“If we didn’t join the Peace Corps, my father was going to give us his pickup truck and we were going to move to Alaska and be teachers,” Bhatt said.

When two faculty positions that were a good fit opened up at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, they leapt at the chance. Bhatt stepped off the plane on a June day in 1998 and immediately felt at home.

Bhatt’s research has everyday applications — atmospheric science studies things that affect air quality and lead to wildfires, as well as methods to better predict the weather.

For example, when state and federal fire managers want to know in March what kind of summer it will be so they can make plans, Bhatt and her colleagues can run simulations to help answer questions about how dry it will be.

Bhatt’s work doesn’t revolve around “ah-ha!” discoveries. Instead she likens it to an interlaced GIF. In the early days of the internet, a pixelated picture of something would appear on a computer screen, then slowly a higher and higher resolution image would emerge.

“That’s actually what happens in climate science,” Bhatt said.

Climate variability is her specialty, so Bhatt uses models as she studies the mechanisms behind complex climate system behavior. One current project in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta involves collaborating with an anthropologist and studying snow data and precipitation.

“We started out just by going once a year and showing (villagers) what we found from satellites of what’s happening to the tundra. Then we got lots of ideas from the elders,” she said. Bhatt returns yearly to report and gain new insights, joining forces with the locals.

“It’s listening to people and it’s understanding,” she said.

Return to Africa

Bhatt and Newman have gone back to Kenya twice to visit their former Peace Corps site.

“Our students have done amazingly well,” Bhatt said. Many earned master’s degrees and went back home to farm, using newer technology such as solar panels and machines that capture gases from decaying vegetation.

“They used their education to make farms more modern and more efficient; they were not afraid of using new technology,” she said. “It was all natural to them.”

While driving around their old community, Bhatt and Newman chanced upon some of their students, now 20 years older, who were delighted to see them and insisted they come home to meet their children and share dinner —  Kenyan hospitality that was impossible to refuse.

Bhatt’s outlook on relationships and people may be reflected in her recent email signature, a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

Help represent UAF in the 2018 Golden Days Grande Parade Saturday, July 21.

UAF’s parade entry includes a large UAF float pulled by a University Fire Department fire truck and accompanied by representatives from the Geophysical Institute, Cooperative Extension and 4-H, and dozens of UAF supporters. This year’s theme is Call Me Gold Fashioned. Employees, students and alumni are welcome to walk in the parade. If you would like to ride on the float, please let us know as space is limited.

Participants should read through the parade guidelines and sign up in advance to register and get a gold T-shirt. A roster and UAF liability waiver is required for all participants. Participants accompanying anyone under 18 must also have a parental consent form.

Parade participants should arrive between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. Judging is at 8:45 a.m., and we’d like to have some participants join us on the float at that time. Participants must be in the north Carlson Center parking lot no later than 9:30 a.m. to get positioned before the parade begins at 10 a.m. There will be no parking at the Carlson Center for participants. Participants should park at Ryan Middle School and take the free shuttle to the parade line-up. There will be a shuttle at the end of the parade (728 Gaffney Road) to transport participants back to Ryan Middle School.

You can see the parade route here.

Questions about Golden Days 2017? Email uaf-univ-relations@alaska.edu or call 474-6281.

Thursday, June 21, Mathew Mund will present in Akasofu 401 on the unique challenges midlevel managers face. He will discuss lasting leadership, labor law, policy and higher education, navigating institutional change, career development, effective midlevel leadership, academic discourse, campus activism and creating community.

Tuesday, July 10, Heidi Shepard will present in the ELIF BP Design Theater, Room 401, on StrengthsFinder (now known as CliftonStrengths). This assessment program helps people realize their natural talents; participants will gain a clear understanding of their top strengths and how they can implement them in their everyday lives.

Both sessions will be from noon-1 p.m. Bring your lunch and stop by!

The sessions will also be available via livestream and recording at media.uaf.edu. A video conference link will be distributed to rural campus directors.

These sessions are sponsored by Staff Council. For more information email qdpeterson@alaska.edu.

Read more.

— Teaching Tip by Jennifer Moss, an instructional designer and adjunct faculty at UAF with over 20 years of experience in academics and higher education

The Department of Social Work and the Fairbanks Wellness Coalition are co-sponsoring the Resilience Film Festival June 21-22. The films will be shown in the Murie Building auditorium.

• Thursday, June 21, 6-8 p.m.: “Paper Tigers” follows a year in the life of an alternative high school that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, becoming a promising model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affect families.
• Friday, June 22, 6-8 p.m.: “Resilience – The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope” chronicles the birth of a new movement among pediatricians, therapists, educators and communities who are using cutting-edge brain science to disrupt cycles of violence, addiction and disease.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite by donation. Proceeds will go to help support local efforts to address childhood trauma and resilience.

For more information, contact Retchenda George Bettisworth at 474-7025 or rbgeorgebettisworth@alaska.edu.

The UAF Meritorious Service Awards Committee will be accepting nominations through June 30, 2018, for the 2019 awards.

The UAF Meritorious Service Award is a high honor given for outstanding service. Nominees should be individuals who have demonstrated significant public, academic, volunteer or philanthropic service to UAF, one of its community campuses or to an Alaska community.

A new University of Alaska Fairbanks study has found evidence that the diet of Cook Inlet beluga whales has changed significantly during the past half-century, a shift that may offer clues about why the population has been struggling.

The study, which was published today in the journal Endangered Species Research, used isotope analysis to identify the food sources for Cook Inlet belugas since the 1950s. Mark Nelson, who graduated from UAF in December with a master’s degree in marine biology and also works for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, wrote the paper as his thesis.

By studying isotope signatures from beluga skulls and growth layers in teeth, the research team found that the marine mammals seem to have shifted to more freshwater-influenced feeding as their range gradually contracted. The study presents the first evidence for a long-term change in the feeding ecology of Cook Inlet belugas.

Those findings are notable because they coincide with a mysterious decline in Cook Inlet beluga numbers. The marine mammals have struggled since the 1990s, when their population dropped roughly in half. Despite greatly reduced subsistence harvests and federal protections, they haven’t recovered. Cook Inlet belugas were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2008, and have a current population of about 340 animals.

Evidence of a dietary change isn’t necessarily linked to the decline, but it provides researchers with more data as they look for answers. The findings have spurred a follow-up study funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Georgia Aquarium and John G. Shedd Aquarium.

“Not only have belugas declined in numbers, and not only have they contracted their range, from this research we’re also able to show there’s also a major change in feeding ecology,” Nelson said. “There’s been a change in where they’re feeding and what they’re feeding on.”

The study analyzed samples of 20 beluga skulls at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, along with analysis of tooth growth layers from 26 belugas provided by the museum and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The results indicated a shift toward more freshwater feeding, although specific food sources weren’t identified.

“Carbon and nitrogen isotopes indicated a change in feeding ecology,” said Matthew Wooller, director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and a co-author of the study. “The addition of strontium isotope analysis helped refine the study by connecting the belugas’ food sources to locations in Cook Inlet.” Those specific locations included eight freshwater rivers, Turnagain Arm and Kachemak Bay.

Wooller said instrumentation in UAF’s new Engineering Learning and Innovation Facility allows the full isotope analysis to be conducted in Fairbanks, rather than sending samples to a facility in the Lower 48. He hopes strontium isotopes, a less frequently used tool in wildlife studies, will become more commonly applied in Alaska with the establishment of a local facility to conduct these types of analyses.

Other collaborators and co-authors on the study included Lori Quakenbush and Brian Taras of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and Barbara Mahoney of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Endangered Species Research article is available at http://bit.ly/2t5D3QC.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Mark Nelson, 907-459-7259, mark.nelson@alaska.gov; Matthew Wooller, mjwooller@alaska.edu

On Monday, June 18, the guest will be Charles Deehr, professor of physics from 1958-1988.

For more information, visit the Summer Sessions website or contact the office at 474-7021.

Several alumni from the Department of Petroleum Engineering received awards during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Jordan Scott, who holds a 2018 bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering, was the third-place winner in the 2018 Society of Petroleum Engineers Student Paper Contest for western North America. Jordan competed with peers from Stanford University, University of Southern California and California State University, Long Beach.

Frank Paskvan, who holds a 1985 bachelor’s in petroleum engineering, won the 2018 SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award. Paskvan is the subsurface team leader and Prudhoe Bay integration manager at BP Alaska.

Chidiebere “Chidi” Igbokwe, who holds a 2006 master’s in petroleum engineering, received the 2018 College of Engineering and Mines Distinguished Service Award. Igbokwe serves as the executive assistant to the president of BP Alaska.

Eric Toskey, who holds a 1986 bachelor’s in petroleum engineering and a 1990 master’s in petroleum engineering, received the 2018 UAF Distinguished Alumnus Award from the UAF Alumni Association. Toskey is CEO of Letton Hall Group in Houston, Texas.

The U.S. Department of Energy has also announced $7 million in funding for research into unconventional oil and natural gas recovery, a project that will be led by UAF faculty. The project’s overall co-principal and principal investigator are Yin Zhang, an assistant professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering, and department Chair Abhijit Dandekar.

For more information, visit the Petroleum Engineering Department’s website.

UAF researcher Lawson Brigham testified during a June 7 congressional hearing on maritime transportation in the Arctic.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing addressed the United States’ lack of infrastructure, research and preparedness as maritime traffic increases rapidly in Arctic waters.

“No discussion on this topic can be made without review of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment,” said Brigham, a professor of geography and Arctic policy at the International Arctic Research Center.

Brigham referred to the three main themes of the assessment during his testimony: enhancing Arctic marine safety; protecting Arctic people and the environment; and building Arctic marine infrastructure.

Building marine infrastructure to ensure safe navigation and protection of the environment should be a U.S. priority, according to all six experts who testified. With the exception of the coasts of Iceland, northern Norway and northwest Russia, Brigham said, the Arctic lacks facilities for search and rescue efforts and environmental response and monitoring.

Brigham also said that only 4.7 percent of the maritime Arctic is charted to modern international standards.

After the testimony, representatives at the hearing agreed that policies must address changing Arctic conditions and the increased vessel movement through the Bering Strait into polar waters.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-California, suggested that $1 billion of the $717 billion Department of Defense budget be allocated to the Arctic this year. Garamendi said $50 million of that amount could be set aside for research. He urged Brigham and the other five witnesses to recommend the funding, personnel and equipment necessary to prepare for the future Arctic.

The six Arctic experts were encouraged to continue offering advice to the committee as an Arctic strategy is developed.

For more information on the hearing, visit the Transportation Committee website.

A map and overview of all Fairbanks campus projects is here.

For more information about projects at UAF, call 474-7000. Information about public road construction is available from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities at www.alaskanavigator.org.

Yukon Drive — Sidewalk installation on both sides of the road; some sewer work in front of Moore-Bartlett-Skarland. Closed from Chandalar Drive to Sheenjek Drive through mid-July. The shuttle bus will use North Tanana Loop to access MBS and Cutler, Reichardt, and West Ridge. The museum can be reached from North Tanana Loop and from the west end of Tanana Loop until mid-July, after which the west end of Yukon Drive will be limited to one lane, and the museum can be reached from the east side of Yukon. The project is expected to be substantially completed by early August.

The UAF shuttle and MACS, the borough bus, will continue to use the stop on the north side of Wood Center during the project.

A simplified map of the road closure and alternate routes is here.

Ballaine parking lot — Resurfacing; electrical upgrades. Closed for the summer starting in mid- to late June. The Taku lot will remain open, as will pedestrian access from Taku to the stairs at the bottom of the hill.

Eielson Building, first floor — New hallway carpet; some office construction/refurbishing. Work is expected to begin in late June or early July. The hallway will remain open, but use caution when moving through the area.

Lola Tilly — Reroofing; foundation/sidewalk repairs. Work will continue most of the summer. The sidewalks immediately adjacent to the building will remain closed, but pedestrians can continue to use nearby sidewalks.

The Pub — New flooring. Closed for the summer starting June 25.

University Park — Construction; refurbishing. Work is not expected to begin until July.

A number of other, smaller projects will take place in many buildings this summer, most of them for renovation or structural improvements. The activities are not expected to have a significant impact on the university community or public.

Renovation and repair work will also be done at the following sites:

• Chukchi Campus
• Community and Technical College (downtown building and garage)
• Matanuska Experiment Farm
• Northwest Campus
• Seward Marine Center

I’m inside a silent, pitch-black room, being stalked by a relentless cartoon moose.

The ungulate slowly materializes out of the darkness to my left, vanishing as soon as it catches my eye. It reappears behind me, accompanied by the sound of footsteps, then to my right, highlighted by a glow from above. Every time, seconds after I turn to spot him, the moose disappears.

Ten feet away, outside the confines of my virtual reality headset and headphones, recent University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate Tristan Craddick watches patiently. Craddick is demonstrating his senior Honors Program thesis: a clever test to determine the most effective way to direct someone’s gaze in a VR world.

“I wanted to look and see whether, in a virtual reality environment, audio cues or visual cues are more effective at directing a user’s attention,” said Craddick, who was selected as UAF’s 2018 outstanding student in computer science.

“If you were to take traditional film or game design, the director always has control over where the camera is pointing, and that’s where the viewer is looking. In virtual reality, you can’t manipulate the camera … so that poses a challenge of how to direct the user toward a particular element of your scene you want them to see.”

Craddick got the idea for the thesis while working as a student assistant for the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. He used EPSCoR’s visualization development space on UAF’s West Ridge, which includes two full VR setups.

Craddick said despite the growing interest in VR technology, he couldn’t locate much existing research regarding ways to make it more user-friendly.

“One of the ideas that kept coming about was how to make the technology be more accessible for people, how to make it more intuitive for people to use,” he said. “One way to do that is through proper software design, but there really isn’t a lot of consensus on the proper techniques.”

So Craddick designed an experiment. He built a virtual room with an object (the moose) that slowly materializes at random out of the participant’s view, either accompanied by a steadily brightening light, the sound of footsteps or no cue at all. As soon as the participant looks at the moose for two seconds, it vanishes and reappears again. The process repeats 30 times, and the person’s response times are recorded.

Craddick planned to run the experiment on 100 volunteers, but discovered he didn’t need to. “I had a lot of issues trying to get people to participate, unfortunately,” he said. “I was still far away from the 100 participants I was originally going for, but when I was analyzing my data, I realized I already had enough to come to some conclusive results.”

As it turned out, the audio cues won by a significant margin. On average, participants found the moose in 4.8 seconds when they heard the footsteps, versus about 6.5 seconds for both the light cue and the control group. That’s a 29 percent difference.

Craddick said it would have been possible to improve the performance of the visual cues by making them more obvious — say, a flashing arrow — but that’s not the point.

“With virtual reality, part of the focus of design is immersion — you don’t really want to make them think, oh yeah, I’m wearing a headset, this is all just some type of software,” he noted. “You want to make them think they’re in the scene.”

Craddick turned his findings into a four-page thesis, which he and his advisor, associate professor of computer science Orion Lawlor, hope to have published. He also made a research poster, which he presented to the Honors Program and at the UAF Research and Creative Activity Day.

Meanwhile, Craddick is furthering both his career and his education: he will intern this summer with Coupi, Inc., a Fairbanks firm that makes software to model granular materials for industry simulations. He’ll be back on campus in the fall to begin a master’s degree in computer science, which will continue to focus on computer graphics.

All of a sudden, we are again the land of no night. Summer happens every year, but it is always a surprise. Maybe because winter is the normal state of middle Alaska, with a white ground surface possible from late September until late April.

Over the years, I have marked this frenetic, green time by slaving my body clock to the circling sun and trying to stay awake at least once for 24 hours. Races are a convenient way to do this. This year, there was one on the calendar I could not resist.

The Alaska Endurance Trail Run is a six-mile loop through my backyard, the North Campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The North Campus is 1,100 acres of boreal forest, cleared fields and a few lakes owned by the university. It’s a rectangle of land with perfect ski trails in the winter and a few semi-dry running and walking loops in the summer.

Though we are still a few weeks from our deepest nod toward the sun (summer solstice will happen at 2:07 a.m. Alaska time on June 21), race organizer Don Kiely knew darkness would be a memory in Fairbanks on the race day, June 1.

“This is the land of the midnight sun, so leave your headlamps at home!” he wrote on the description for the race, which attracted 15 people for the 24-hour option. They would see how far they could go on foot from 8 p.m. Friday to 8 p.m. Saturday.

At the race’s darkest point — about 2 a.m. Saturday — I rammed a spruce root with my big toe and wondered if a headlamp would have been a good idea. The sun had set at midnight, dropping behind the green hills almost dead north of us. It would pop over the treetops again at 3:30 a.m., just 24 degrees to the east of pure north.

For that fleeting few hours, Fairbanks experienced civil twilight, when the sun bobbed less than 6 degrees below the northern horizon. Civil twilight provides enough lumens to read a book outside, pull weeds in your garden or anticipate bumps on a path of sodden wood chips. It does not allow you to see aurora or stars. They will be back soon enough.

I reached my jogger’s low point at the time I expected, during the dimmest part of the day/night. The body’s mysterious requirement for sleep (scientists still don’t know why we need eight hours) was most noticeable at that time. I fantasized about tucking into the little cabin on my property, 200 steps from the trail, and yanking a sleeping bag from its stuffsack.

But, as Kiely had reminded us at the start, we could sleep every other night. The point here was to endure, to push through those learned habits and see where it took us. We knew it would take us over the same earthy-smelling 6-mile loop, for as many revolutions as we could complete in 24 hours.

That concept seemed dreadful at times — for me before the race and then on my second lap, when my legs reminded me I had not trained and, oh, there were 22 hours to go.

However, much like life outside the sporting realm, extra-long events are a roller-coaster of highs and lows. Some pains can be ignored or ibuprophened into numbness. A good moment is just around that tree, or maybe beyond that hill.

At 3:30 a.m., the sun rose, bathing the snowy peaks of the Alaska Range red. An hour later, splotches of sunlight penetrated the spruce, striking my shirt and warming my heart, resetting the circadian clock that tunes our bodies to a 24-hour day. I felt good: Hey, I’m supposed to be awake now!

It’s true that the scenery never changed in those 24 hours, but no 6-mile lap was the same. The quality of light was always changing, from warm and bold at 8:30 p.m. to shadowy and so-chilly-your-hands-didn’t-work at 4 a.m.

In 70-degree heat of 2 p.m., winds combing the tall spruce pulled down curtains of pollen, tiny yellow orbs that hold the male genetic material of the tree. Though they dust car windshields with a mustard-colored film, those grains don’t bother allergy sufferers as much as birch pollen, composed of more irritating proteins.

Leaves of deciduous trees were fully unfolded, gorgeous neon green and not yet stenciled by insects. In the breeze, Populus tremuloides lived up to its name, shimmering with a sound like the sea. In a few weeks, the aspen leaf miners will turn many of those leaves into silver potato chips.

At a bend of the trail near the Potato Field, we entered a pool of air that smelled like honey. A flowering chokecherry tree blooms there, amid a half-dozen boreal forest species. Like all the chokecherries in Alaska, this one has been imported to this spot. Its location in the forest suggests the tree’s seed might have been deposited by a Bohemian waxwing that swallowed frozen berries on a dark December day and perched on a nearby branch.

Throughout the day, but especially late and early, the summer visitors to North Campus were making themselves heard. There was the Hammond’s flycatcher from Honduras, squeaking out its song in an aspen near the Bicycle Bumps. And the Townsend’s warbler from Costa Rica, so high in the tallest spruce it was pretty much invisible. And, the sound of summer, the fluty call of a male Swainson’s thrush, a recent arrival from Panama.

Then there were the locals, the family of ravens screaming from a white spruce not far from the race start. Baby ravens grow to adult size almost right away; you can tell newborns by their pinkish inner mouths, which are visible because the chicks shriek all the time.

The squishing of sneakers was a reminder that cold is the most common state of this country (Fairbanks’ year-round average temperature is a hair below freezing). Spongy wet trail betrayed the presence of icy ground underneath that acted like a sheet of plastic, not allowing winter’s snowmelt to drain away. That hidden permafrost is a legacy of a colder time, hundreds and thousands of years ago when frigid air penetrated deep. Permafrost is not present in southern Alaska, nor on the south-facing, higher elevation places on the UAF campus.

At the end, as I sank into a folding chair for a delicious rest, I thought of the truism spoken by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. On an unsuccessful quest for the North Pole during which he had fed most of his sled dogs to one another, Nansen found himself on a floating raft of sea ice, grinding up against other chunks, with no apparent way out.

He of course made it home, because he wrote this memorable quote in his book, “Farthest North.” It seemed fitting for the tough moments of the Alaska Endurance Trail Run, and anything else that seems like it will go on forever.

“Everything comes to an end, and so did this.”

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

• On Monday, June 11, the Down Memory Lane interview series will host a discussion with Dan Swift, a former UAF professor of physics who taught 1963-1994. Veteran journalist Robert Hannon will conduct the interview at 7 p.m. in the Elvey Building auditorium.
• On Tuesday, June 12, the Healthy Living lecture series will feature naturopathic doctor Scott Luper on “Mechanics of Memory: How It Breaks Down and How to Fix It.” The lecture will be at 7 p.m. in the Murie Building auditorium.
• On Wednesday, June 13, the Discover Alaska lecture series will present Patrick Druckenmiller, the University of Alaska Museum of the North earth sciences curator, discussing “Dinosaurs of Darkness: The Latest on Alaska’s Dinosaur Research.” The lecture will be at 7 p.m. in the Murie Building auditorium.
• On Thursday, June 14, the Music in the Garden concert series will host O Tallulah, a family band featuring a mix of old-time, gospel, country and folk styles. Music begins at 7 p.m. in Georgeson Botanical Garden.

For more information, visit the Summer Sessions events website or call 907-474-7021.

By Meghan Murphy

Kiersten Johnson isn’t afraid of reaching new heights.

The newly minted University of Alaska Fairbanks alumna will elevate her learning of atmospheric science with a prestigious internship aboard a NASA research aircraft.

After considering hundreds of applicants, NASA selected Johnson to be one of 28 interns with the NASA Student Airborne Research Program based in southern California. Johnson recently earned her degree in chemistry.

The interns will study the Earth’s lands, oceans and atmosphere through scientific instruments aboard NASA’s DC-8 aircraft. They will also look at satellite and ground-based data as they pursue individual projects focused on all the data collected.

“I’m excited to learn about what goes into setting up an aircraft for sampling and the processes that follow for sample analysis and presentation,” she said. “My long-term plan is to stay in Alaska, so I hope I can learn how to apply some aspects of the program to help improve sampling, education or analysis for Alaska.”

Johnson, who is from Palmer, Alaska, said the internship won’t just push her to new heights — it will also push her to new locations.

“I’m really excited to go and meet students from across the United States and learn from all the of the people working with the program,” she said. “However, it makes me pretty nervous to pick up and go to California for a couple months, as I’ve never lived outside of Alaska before.”

The internship will run June 17-Aug. 10.

Johnson said she learned about the internship from her mentor, chemistry professor Jingqiu Mao of UAF’s College of Natural Science and Mathematics and Geophysical Institute. He studies how human activities influence the global atmosphere.

Johnson has worked in Mao’s lab as an undergraduate researcher for the past two semesters. She helped study the health effects of air pollution by examining the water soluble aerosol metals in the Fairbanks air.

As part of the research, she has learned how to take air samples and analyze data — but all from the ground.

Mao said the internship will give Johnson a new perspective on atmospheric research and on how she can develop as both a scientist and a leader.

“This experience helps students learn about a wide range of research topics relevant to climate change and help them to develop a vision for earth system research in the next several decades,” he said. “Internships like this will train and educate the next generation of leaders in climate research like Kiersten.”

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Jingqiu Mao, jmao2@alaska.edu, 907-474-7118

This collaborative exhibit, sponsored by the arts-humanities-science consortium, features 14 artists and writers who magnify the microbiome. The project was directed by Mary Beth Leigh, associate professor of microbiology.

Learn more about the collaboration.

Recent University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate Brandt Lomen has taken the top prize in the university’s 2018 Invent Alaska Competition for a device that can test solar cells on Earth, in space and on other planets by mimicking the light of the sun.

Lomen’s Pseudo-Sun Instrument was initially designed to test the solar cells on satellites, but when Lomen presented the instrument at a conference, researchers there had ideas for numerous applications, terrestrial and extraterrestrial.

The Pseudo-Sun Instrument uses a combination of colored LED lights to mimic the sun’s spectrum and can be adjusted to match the sun’s location in relation to the solar cell.

The $7,500 in prize money from the competition will fund a student to continue Lomen’s work and to conduct research on potential customers. Lomen has accepted a job at BAE Systems Inc. but will continue to be involved in the development of the Pseudo-Sun Instrument.

The Invent Alaska Competition, sponsored by the UAF Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization, aims to encourage invention and commercialization of inventions by UAF and University of Alaska Southeast students and employees.

Other winners of this year’s competition include:

• UAS researcher Heidi Pearson for a video camera and sensor system to record dolphin behavior and life events in their natural habitat.
• UAF undergraduate student Aaron Rouse for a radio frequency check-in/check-out system for mining operations.
• UAF affiliate professor Lee Santoro for Arctic Automatic, a smart controller that can help prevent vehicles from freezing up in Arctic conditions.

For additional information, visit https://inventalaska.com.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Amanda Byrd, agbyrd@alaska.edu, 907-474-7544.

Students receiving a 3.9 grade point average or higher are placed on the chancellor’s list, while those receiving a grade point average of between 3.5 and 3.89 are named to the deans’ list.

UAF is a Land, Sea and Space Grant institution. Located 160 miles south of the Arctic Circle, UAF is the leading doctoral degree-granting institution in the state. Since it was founded in 1917, UAF has been internationally recognized for research relating to the Arctic and sub-Arctic, in areas such as biology, geophysics, engineering, natural resources and global climate change.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Students who have earned academic honors but have requested that their directory information remain confidential may not appear on the public honors list.

• Chancellor’s list
• Deans’ list

KaJeng Wong of Hong Kong wins first prize and the chamber music prize of the 2018 Alaska International Piano-e-Competition.

The Inside Out program offers a comprehensive preview for students who want to learn more about UAF. Students and parents will be given information about financial aid, the admission process, extracurricular activities, academic programs and professors.

Inside Out includes walking tours, academic presentations, question-and-answer sessions and a variety of other opportunities. Lunch is included. Check-in begins at 8 a.m. and activities conclude at 4 p.m.

To register and find more information, go to the Inside Out website or call 907-474-7500.

A graduate student from UAF has won a prestigious fellowship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Richard Buzard, a recent graduate from the College of Natural Science and Mathematics, is working on his doctoral studies in geoscience with Chris Maio, an assistant professor of coastal geography.

The two-year fellowship provides on-the-job training opportunities in coastal resource management and policy for postgraduate students, and provides project assistance to Digital Coast partner organizations.

Buzard, a former Alaska Sea Grant research trainee, will be based in Anchorage and work under the supervision of Jacquelyn Overbeck, lead scientist and manager of the Coastal Hazards Program within the State of Alaska’s Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

“The state of Alaska and the National States Geographic Information Council are very lucky to have Richard Buzard join as our organizations’ Digital Coast Fellow. Rich brings both the technical acuity and the experience working with Alaska Native tribes that is needed to successfully map, monitor and move forward with coastal flood mapping in our state,” said Overbeck.

Buzard’s graduate work at UAF, funded by Alaska Sea Grant, focused on measuring past and current rates of shoreline erosion in 11 villages in the Bristol Bay region, using tools such as aerial and satellite imagery, time-lapse video, drones and ground penetrating radar. He also worked closely with tribal and city officials to install erosion-monitoring equipment and trained them to use it. He received his master’s degree this spring.

Buzard’s Digital Coast Fellowship work is designed to close vast information and data gaps about coastal Alaska’s vulnerability to flooding and shoreline erosion. His research will take place in 13 coastal communities in western Alaska and will include building a GIS-based online mapping tool for visualizing flood impacts.

More than 80 percent of Alaskans who live in coastal communities are vulnerable to extreme storms, flooding and erosion. Critical infrastructure like homes, schools, tribal offices, fuel storage tanks, clinics and roads are in danger of being destroyed in many coastal villages. Alaska lacks the baseline data to adequately forecast flood and erosion hazards and allow residents to plan for the future to minimize harm.

“I’m very much looking forward to working closely with the residents of these villages to help them bolster their resilience in the face of severe climate change impacts,” said Buzard.

The board approved adding the Cooperative Extension Services as a stand-alone unit and eliminating the School of Natural Resources and Extension. SNRE’s academic programs will move into the College of Natural Science and Mathematics. The changes take effect at the end of next fiscal year, on June 30, 2019.

On May 22, Chancellor Daniel M. White notified employees in the affected units about the specific reorganization request that was to go before the board. The reorganization has been in the process of being developed for several months with input from a committee of natural resource management and CNSM faculty, and planning will continue for the next year.

The board also approved two new degree programs: the Bachelor of Applied Management and the Bachelor of Sport and Recreation Business degrees. More news about the BOR meeting, including the recently approved budget, is on the UA website.

June 13 addendum from the Faculty Senate: The UAF Faculty Senate would like to clarify a point in the above June 5, 2018, Cornerstone article on the Board of Regents’ approval of making the Cooperative Extension Service into a stand-alone unit, and moving the natural resource management faculty into the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. While it is true that a committee of natural resource management and CNSM faculty has been tasked to implement this change, faculty in SNRE and CNSM were not asked to provide input into whether the School of Natural Resources and Extension should be reorganized.

Read more.

— Teaching Tip by Christen Bouffard, an instructional designer, adjunct faculty and Google for Education-certified trainer with 14 years of design experience in academics and higher education

A team in the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks created the tool, which transforms predictions from global climate models into more detailed information about local conditions.

“We recognized that these global climate models by themselves cannot be used at face value,” said UAF’s John Walsh, the project’s lead researcher. “The raw output is not suitable for what many users or decision-makers want. That recognition was the motivator.”

So the team created a community charts tool to help people see and interpret the data. The tool displays temperature and precipitation projections through 2100 under three scenarios for more than 4,000 communities in Alaska and western Canada. The scenarios are based on three different levels of greenhouse gas emissions linked to the burning of fossil fuels.

The tool can be customized. For instance, it allows users to ask questions like which winter months may transition to above-freezing temperatures. Season lengths can affect transportation, subsistence hunting and fishing, and other activities.

The tool is hosted at the UAF Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning group’s website.

“You can get an output at the SNAP website for your community based on the work of thousands of people in the climate modeling enterprise around the world,” Walsh explained. “We’ve distilled all of these efforts down to tools that will get you the information you really want for your location.”

The tool uses data from a process called statistical downscaling, which takes global climate models and transforms them into models with finer resolution.

With the help of the SNAP group, the climate research center’s team looked at 30 global models and identified five that worked best for Alaska and the Arctic. They compared what the models said should have happened from 1958-2004 to actual historical data from that period.

“Since climate in Alaska varies considerably from year to year and decade to decade, we want to use the longest record possible,” explained co-author Jeremy Littell, a climate center researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage. “Averages for 50 or 100 years are more reliable than 10 or 20 years.”

The SNAP team also developed a tool for modelers and climate experts to better identify useful models. Of the roughly 30 global climate models to select from, each has strengths and weaknesses when considering different regions and variables.

“The community charts tool is something very useful that came out of this, but so is the companion tool that was created to help others in the research and modeling community to better identify accurate models to help their future projections,” said SNAP operations lead Tom Kurkowski.

The researchers described their work in a recently published paper in the journal Environmental Modeling and Software.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: John Walsh, 907-474-2677, jewalsh@alaska.edu

ON THE WEB:
Community data: https://www.snap.uaf.edu/sites/all/modules/snap_community_charts/charts.php
Tool for modelers: https://uasnap.shinyapps.io/ar5eval/

If the answer is no, this will be the second year in a row with no COLA increase. A previous Grapevine question highlighted the fact that the UA pension plan contribution rate has been capped at its current limit since 1992; in addition, the newest PERS/TERS tiers offer less benefit than previous versions. Please address how the university plans to retain employees by keeping total compensation competitive with other employers.

Thank you.

“This course is incredibly useful in creating a new online course or modifying an existing course,” said Associate Professor Sarah Fleisher Trainor. “The assignments guide you through the conceptual framing and the nuts and bolts of online instruction. Course instructors are knowledgeable, helpful, thoughtful and patient.”

Faculty and adjuncts must apply by June 29 at iteachu.uaf.edu/apply-for-iteach-online. iTeach Online is open to all University of Alaska faculty.

Download flier.

• On Monday, June 4, the UAF Legacy Lecture will feature “An Evening With Neal Brown.” Brown, the former director of Poker Flat Research Range, has been a longtime advocate for science education and outreach. The lecture will be at 7 p.m. at the Murie Building auditorium.
• On Tuesday, June 5, the Healthy Living lecture series will host osteopathic doctor Todd Capistrant to discuss “Pain — Reasons Beyond Inflammation: How Osteopathic Medicine Can Address Function and Pain to Keep You Moving.” The lecture will be at 7 p.m. at the Murie Building auditorium.
• On Wednesday, June 6, the Discover Alaska lecture series will present Mary Erhlander, the director of UAF’s Arctic and Northern studies program, on “Walter Harper, Alaska Native Son.” The lecture will be at 7 p.m. at the Murie Building auditorium.
• On Thursday, June 7, the Music in the Garden concert series will feature Cold Steel Drums playing Caribbean-influenced music. Music begins at 7 p.m. at the Georgeson Botanical Garden.

For more information, visit www.uaf.edu/summer/events/ or call 907-474-7021.

Earth scientists consistently look for a reliable way to forecast earthquakes. New research from University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute professor Carl Tape may help in that endeavor, due to a unique set of circumstances.

“Our observations have recorded an unequivocally interesting sequence of events,” Tape said.

Tape and his colleagues found evidence for accelerating activity before a 2016 earthquake in a laterally moving fault zone in central Alaska. The activity included a phenomenon known as very low-frequency earthquakes, referring to the type of energy waves associated with it.

Typical earthquakes have two associated energy waves, called the P and S waves. Very low-frequency earthquakes do not have such signals. Instead, their waves occur on much lower frequencies.

“Most earthquakes start abruptly, but not always,” said Luciana Astiz, a program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, which supported the research. “A fault zone in central Alaska monitored by new scientific instruments offers a look at a more complex process. This study reports the first observations of a slow process that transitions into an earthquake — something previously observed only in laboratory experiments. These new observations contribute toward understanding the physics of earthquakes.”

In 2015, Tape installed 13 seismic stations in the Minto Flats of central Alaska to capture the area’s fault activity. Nine days later, the instruments recorded a long-duration, very low-frequency process, normally only seen in deep subduction zones. This event showed a small amount of activity gathering, or nucleating, in a central area below the surface. It did not lead to an earthquake.

A second, similar event in 2016 led to a key observation. At Minto Flats, a magnitude 3.7 quake occurred at a depth of about 10.5 miles, not an unusual event in itself. However, the event was preceded by a 12-hour accelerating sequence of earthquakes and 22 seconds of distinct high- and low-frequency waves in a concentrated area.

Tape said that this kind of slow event transitioning into a rupture had previously only been seen in laboratory experiments.

“The rupture process started, then it found a patch of the fault that was ready to go, and that’s what people have not seen. It’s really exciting,” Tape said.

“The leap we make, and maybe the more controversial thing, is that this emergent long-period signal only seen on top of the fault is a low-frequency signal that can sometimes turn into an earthquake and sometimes not,” Tape said.  

Tape and his colleagues may have seen this kind of activity before. In 2012, there was a similar small event recorded in central Alaska. At that time, a magnitude 8.6 earthquake took place under the Indian Ocean and its energy was felt around the world. Because of the magnitude of this event, the smaller activity from central Alaska was overshadowed. Whatever signal the Minto Flats site gave off could not be confirmed. However, it was intriguing enough to help justify putting sensors in the area.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I expect we’d see something like that again,” Tape said. “I assumed that the conditions that happened in 2012 were somehow unique and that huge surface waves led to this nucleation. Even though I proposed putting instruments on the area in a proposal, it was the last item I put on. I thought, “Maybe we’ll see something crazy out there.'”

By 2016, Tape had high-quality stations on top of the Minto Flat faults, around 18 miles from the main events, and no triggering earthquake to complicate the data.

“We are staring right at this process, and what it showed was that exactly during the tremor-like signal there is this emergent long-duration signal that hints at what’s driving this nucleation phase,” he said.

Geologists have been looking for something like this for a long time. So why hasn’t anyone seen it?

“I’m left saying ‘I don’t know,’” Tape said. “I’m going to assume everyone has been looking for something before the P wave forever. It leads me to believe there is something special about this fault zone.”

Minto Flats has a deep sedimentary basin, strike-slip faulting, active tectonics and deep earthquakes; it is an unusual site.

“In some ways, I wish there wasn’t anything special. I wish it was a global phenomenon that we discovered, but it’s not,” Tape said. “It appears there is something special about the conditions in Minto Flats.”

The results of the research will appear in the latest issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The paper is titled “Earthquake Nucleation and Fault Slip Complexity in the Lower Crust of Central Alaska.” 

The project was primarily funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER project that supported Tape and his student co-authors, Vipul Silwal and Kyle Smith.

In Alan Weisman’s book, “The World Without Us,” the author ponders “a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow.”

In his thought experiment, Weisman travels around the world to explore that question, revealing that cockroaches and bedbugs would not fare well without our sloppiness and warmth, but Theodore Roosevelt’s granite face will stare down from Mount Rushmore for the next 7.2 million years.

Weisman devotes a chapter to buildings, going into detail on their natural, gradual destruction. It all begins with water, Weisman writes, quoting a farmer who said a sure way to destroy a barn is to cut an 18-inch hole in its roof.

Posed with the question of the fate of Alaska structures without us, researchers with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks agreed that the liquid stuff of life is the most powerful agent of demise.

The research center’s Ilya Benesch has witnessed the slow and interesting fade of a mining building in Poorman, Alaska, which benefited from a still-intact tin roof. Built in the early 1900s, the structure, about 70 miles south of Ruby, was still in decent shape about 75 years later.

“Inside, tools were still on the shelves, (as were) duplicate and triplicate spare parts and rebuild sets for a lot of the equipment they used,” he said. “The biggest issue was bears and porcupines that broke in and started making a mess of things.”

Most other structures, even those in the dry and cold interior of Alaska, where decomposition is on hold for half the year, don’t fare so well.

“The old town of Chatanika (about 25 miles north of Fairbanks) was vibrant and occupied up into the 1930s, and there is almost nothing left,” said Robbin Garber-Slaght, the center’s product testing lab engineer. “The camp that covered the whole hill is gone.”

She and others at the center noted that in an extreme climate like ours, water eats a building from the inside as well as the outside.

The problem would start as soon as power stations run out of coal or diesel or natural gas and there’s no one there to feed them. Dropping temperatures within buildings would then freeze pipes, water tanks and bottles of apple juice. The expansion of those frozen liquids liberates them from containers, and there the problems start, said research engineer Bruno Grunau.

“The spring thaw would ease these liquids right onto the floor of your home, hastening rot of the structure, and beginning the gently accelerating path toward decomposition,” he said.

The longevity of Alaska buildings depends largely upon the materials builders used, said Aaron Cooke, an architectural designer who grew up in Alaska and works with the Technical University of Denmark.

“Organic stuff goes first,” he said. “Metals rust second, and ceramics last the longest. Except for maybe stainless steel.

“In Shaktoolik, which is prone to violent storms, the old village school (circa 1940) had its wooden body obliterated,” he said. “The concrete foundation remains.”

Some people think concrete is less enduring in the North, but it holds up for a long time when a building is not heated, Cooke said.

“As soon as they go cold, they can’t damage the ground anymore (by warming the permafrost), which means that they can’t damage themselves (by wrecking their foundations). Ironically, there are some buildings in the high Arctic that would last far longer without us in them.”

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute. A version of this column appeared in 2011.

No other bus stop locations have changed. All new locations will have signs in place by the end of the day on Friday, June 1. The shuttle tracker will be changed for the new construction routes.

For more information call 474-7000.

Mark your calendar for July 19-21 for Nanook Rendezvous 2018, the annual UAF alumni reunion. Alumni from all years are encouraged to attend.

The celebration will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 19, with a picnic in the garden, followed by Nanook night at the Goldpanners, a Riverboat Discovery ride and a final gathering at Ursa Major.

Make sure to register in advance. View the full schedule and RSVP here.

Beginning at 9 a.m., 36 flower beds will be available to plant across campus. Sign-up tables will be in front of Constitution Hall and the Murie Building with maps and planting tools.

For more information, call 474-7000.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy has announced an award for a project to receive approximately $7 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development in unconventional oil and natural gas recovery.

The project, selected under the Office of Fossil Energy’s Advanced Technology Solutions for Unconventional Oil and Gas Development funding opportunity, will address critical gaps in our understanding of reservoir behavior and optimal well-completion strategies, next-generation subsurface diagnostic technologies, and advanced offshore technologies.

As part of the funding opportunity announcement, DOE solicited research field projects in UOG plays in a variety of environments and geological formations to better understand the subsurface and improve oil and gas recovery efficiency. Research focuses on addressing challenges of flow conformance and sweep efficiency, and the geophysical and geochemical mechanisms governing enhanced gas and oil recovery, in a variety of environments.

The newly selected project will help DOE master oil and gas development in these types of unconventional formations––and more specifically in the Artic region. The project will also bolster DOE’s efforts to strengthen America’s energy dominance; protect air and water quality; position the nation as a global leader in UOG resource development technologies; and ensure the maximum value of the nation’s resource endowment is realized.

The project represents a critical component of DOE’s portfolio to advance the economic viability and environmentally sound development of domestic UOG resources and support ongoing programmatic efforts in both onshore and offshore UOG research. These efforts include:

1. Improving understanding of the processes involved in resource development;
2. Advancing technologies and engineering practices to ensure these resources are developed efficiently with minimal environmental impact and risk; and
3. Increasing the supply of U.S. oil and natural gas resources to enhance national energy dominance and security.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory will manage the project. A description of the awarded project follows:

Alaska North Slope Field Laboratory – Enhanced Oil Recovery
The University of Alaska Fairbanks will investigate the first-ever polymer flood for heavy oil resources on the Alaska North Slope in the Milne Point Field. The estimates of total heavy oil in place within the ANS reservoirs amounts to about 20–25 billion barrels, with around two-thirds of the heavy oil lying under the adjacent Kuparic River Unit. Traditional water floods have yielded low oil recoveries while thermal, miscible fluids and gas injection methods are not applicable to this resource. Laboratory and simulation studies indicate that polymer flooding has great potential to enhance oil recovery from the Schrader Bluff heavy oil reservoirs. This field test will advance knowledge of heavy oil’s production viability using polymer floods at ANS and across the United States. Success at this location will strengthen the viability of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System in the upcoming decade and improve royalty and other fees to the U.S. taxpayer.
DOE funding: $6,967,196; Non-DOE funding: $2,584,285; Total value: $9,551,481

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