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  • Augustine Volcano erupts in 2006.

    Tiny crystals provide insight to massive 2006 Augustine Volcano eruption

    July 11, 2025

    Samples of extremely small crystal clots, each polished to the thickness of a human hair or thinner, have revealed information about the process triggering the major 2006 eruption of Alaska's Augustine Volcano.

  • St. George Creek Fire in Alaska.

    黑料社appclimate report: June jumped from cool to hot, hot, hot

    July 11, 2025

    June began cool and wet but rapidly changed to hot and dry at the midpoint, with wildfires bursting out across the state, according to the monthly summary from the 黑料社appClimate Research Center.

  • A man stands on a gravel mound, looking out over green thickets of small deciduous trees. Spruce-covered hills in a hazy sky in the background.

    One big earthquake, two 黑料社appghost towns

    July 11, 2025

    DOME CITY -- "I'm really happy to be out here," Carl Tape says as he stands on a pyramid of dry gravel, 20 feet high. "I've been thinking about this earthquake for 10 years."

  • Call for Proposals: URSA Community-Engaged Learning Awards

    July 11, 2025

    Undergraduate students, graduate students, researcher staff, postdoctoral fellows and faculty from all UAF-affiliated campuses are invited to apply for an URSA Community-Engaged Learning Award of up to $5,000.

  • A dragonfly rests on a twig.

    Alaska's state insect is not the mosquito

    July 03, 2025

    Thirty years ago, students from the Auntie Mary Nicoli Elementary School in Aniak were among those who held a statewide election to declare an insect that best represented Alaska. Their school's winner: The dragonfly.

  • A man with wire frame glasses wears a blue winter parka with a dark brown wolverine ruff while facing the camera for a portrait.

    Natural changes only part of the story

    June 26, 2025

    Last week, I sent out a story on changes in 黑料社appover the past few million years. The theme: Many of the transitions were drastic, and they all had nothing to do with the billions of us now walking the planet's surface.

  • A paddle boarder floats in front of a large glacier.

    Change is the state of Alaska

    June 20, 2025

    With its melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, and floating sea ice that gets tougher to see from its northern shores each summer, 黑料社appis the poster state for global warming. Things are changing here, no doubt about it. But it's not the first time.

  • Career at rocket range energizing, fun

    June 12, 2025

    After 35 years of driving to work over a small mountain each day, Kathe Rich will soon make her last daily ascent of Cleary Summit.

  • A painting depicts a brown furry elephant-like creature in three different illustrations.

    Mastodons long gone from the far north

    June 06, 2025

    A long, long time ago, a hairy elephant stomped the northland, wrecking trees and shrubs as it swallowed twigs, leaves and bark.

  • A woman shows two children how to take ocean water samples as they stand on a beach in Southeast Alaska

    4-H pH program gives Sitka youth a taste of ocean science

    June 05, 2025

    Youth in Sitka spent five months testing the water as part of an ocean acidification education program called 4-H pH. The project, funded by the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, is part of a citizen science program called Global Learning & Observations to Benefit the Environment Program, or GLOBE.

  • Maps show projected sea surface temperature trends over 2015-2099 due to moderate-high greenhouse gas emissions. The upper map includes a model where winds can't change the ocean circulation, and the lower one shows the same model with wind-driven changes.

    Changing winds could amplify North Atlantic climate anomaly

    June 04, 2025

    As the planet's oceans are gradually warmed by the effects of climate change, a huge area in the North Atlantic stands out as an unusual zone of relative cooling. A region that stretches roughly from Greenland to Ireland, counterintuitively dubbed the North Atlantic warming hole, is a conspicuous patch of blue on global climate change maps. Researchers say its temperature contrast could intensify in the decades ahead as shifting climate-driven winds amplify the cooling process in the North Atlantic.

  • A man in a white hardhat and orange safety vest talks while pointing to a metal structure under a large pipe. Other men stand around him listening.

    The greatest story of man and permafrost

    May 29, 2025

    In 1973, Elden Johnson was a young engineer working on one of the most ambitious and uncertain projects in the world -- an 800-mile steel pipeline that carried warm oil over frozen ground. Decades later, Johnson looked back at what he called "the greatest story ever told of man's interaction with permafrost."

  • an illustration of two types of birds, including a group of birds that look like baby ducks, in a prehistoric landscape with dinosaurs in the background

    Study finds birds nested in Arctic alongside dinosaurs

    May 29, 2025

    Spring in the Arctic brings forth a plethora of peeps and downy hatchlings as millions of birds gather to raise their young. The same was true 73 million years ago, according to a new paper in the journal Science. The paper documents the earliest-known example of birds nesting in the polar regions.

  • A bird with a bright orange breast, black head and back, and yellow bill stands upright on grass.

    The American robin returns on time

    May 22, 2025

    American robins have returned to northern Alaska.

  • A human hand holds a small bird by the legs; the bird's mouth is open.

    An old friend returns to the far north

    May 16, 2025

    A Fairbanks biologist recently cupped in his hand a tiny bird whose arrival he had been rooting for. That bird -- a female Hammond's flycatcher -- now holds the title of the oldest known of its species.

  • Three children holding cups gathered around a table. One of the children is holding a bug.

    UAF to host free Arctic Research Open House

    May 12, 2025

    The 黑料社app will host its annual Arctic Research Open House Thursday, May 15 from 4 - 7 p.m. on the West Ridge of the Troth Yeddha' Campus in Fairbanks.

  • Black and white photo of Dale Guthrie in a heavy turtleneck sweater and jacket leaning against a birch tree and looking directly into the camera.

    Dale Guthrie opened door to lost world

    May 09, 2025

    Sometimes -- but not very often -- a door creaks open to a lost world. Sometimes the right person steps in. Dale Guthrie, an 黑料社appbiologist and paleontologist who died in 2024 at the age of 88, was that guy.

  • four people lying on a steep gravel hill digging with small hand tools, with a large body of water in the background

    New ancient fish species earliest known salmon ancestor

    May 09, 2025

    A new paper published this week in the journal Papers in Paleontology has named three new species of fish from that time period, including a salmonid, dubbed Sivulliusalmo alaskensis.

  • A woman in bright yellow pants, a gray jacket and a blue ballcap directs a long white plastic pipe into a hole in a spot of dirt emerging from a snowy forest floor.

    The 'Hole-in-the-Ground Girl'

    May 01, 2025

    Leanne Bulger recently found a new hole in the forest floor on the west end of Fairbanks. Into it, she poked a long plastic pipe.

  • Tundra swans take two pathways to Alaska

    April 25, 2025

    Tundra swans -- at 15 pounds and with a wingspan of almost six feet -- are now touching down on the ponds and snowfields of Alaska.

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