Browse the ACRC news archive for current and past news articles.
ACRC is pleased to announce the appointment of Tom Thornton as ACRC Director as of April 11, 2021. He will also serve as Professor of Environment and Society on UAS faculty. Thornton has served as Dean and Vice Provost since July 2018 and as Interim Co-Director of the Rainforest Center since August 2020, alongside Research Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Jason Fellman.
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Beneath the canopy of North America’s largest remaining old-growth forest, globally-significant amounts of carbon are captured from the atmosphere by plant life cycled through the soil, rivers, and water bodies of coastal Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. The Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest (PCTR) is a key region for research into carbon stocks and movement between forested and glacierized areas and the highly productive coastal waters.
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Hear from ACRC researchers and affiliates at one of the world’s largest scientific conferences this week! The American Geophysical Union Fall 2020 meeting is being held virtually from December 1st-17th, featuring thousands of hours of sessions and keynotes from the Earth and space sciences community.
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ACRC researchers at the University of Alaska Southeast are working with the Sitka Sound Science Center, the Central Council of the Tlingit-Haida Tribes, and RAND Corporation to gain a better understanding of how Southeast Alaskans perceive the risk of COVID-19 and consequently how Southeast Alaskans are prepared against and responding to COVID-19.
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On September 29, over 30 stakeholders as well as current and former leadership, staff, and researchers met virtually to envision the future of the University of Alaska Southeast’s Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center. The session included an overview from former Director and now affiliate faculty member Allison Bidlack, followed by discussion groups to gather input on ACRC’s research priorities, organizational structure, and metrics for success.
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In the Methow River of northern Washington state, imperiled populations of salmon and steelhead are at a mere fraction of their historic numbers. Restoration efforts can help bring back these populations, but how do managers prioritize which methods to employ, and where?
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This fall, ACRC marks a new era as long-time director Allison Bidlack transitions into a new role at the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service as Deputy Director of the Auke Bay Laboratory. Allison has led ACRC for over eight years, growing ACRC as a premier research institute in the north Pacific coastal temperate rainforest with a dynamic team of scientists, staff, and faculty. Though she will be missed, we look forward to continuing collaboration with her in her new role at NOAA.
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Check out the first video in a short series on glacial outburst flooding at Suicide Basin, in Juneau.
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As a center dedicated to interdisciplinary science in support of resilient communities and ecosystems, we are excited to announce the addition of UAS assistant professor of public administration Jim Powell to the ACRC team. Powell brings his decades of experience in natural resources and adaptive governance to our group, with a focus on how local governments are adapting to climate change.
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The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is the greatest carbon reserve in North America, capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in plants and soil. But natural and human disturbances, like erosion and logging, affect carbon stocks by moving organic material out of the forest, into streams and eventually coastal waters.
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As the novel COVID-19 virus disrupts life across the nation and world, many companies, organizations, and individuals are pivoting from their work to aid in response efforts. Dr. John Harley, a postdoctoral researcher at ACRC, hopes to fill a critical information need for COVID-19 vulnerability in Alaska. Though his work using environmental data to predict harmful algal blooms is unrelated to the current public health crisis, Harley saw an opportunity to use his background managing and visualizing large datasets to provide a valuable resource for COVID-19 response planning.
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ACRC is excited to announce the addition of oceanographic researcher Mariela Brooks to our team. She joins us following her doctoral studies in Marine Chemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD.
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For the better part of a year, supercomputers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have been running nonstop to produce a novel dataset of climate information for Southeast Alaska. Rick Lader, a postdoctoral fellow with the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center, is working with a team of stakeholders to create highly detailed climate projections for the region that will help managers at the USFS Tongass National Forest, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, National Weather Service, and the Alaska Department of Transportation prepare for the rapid changes in climate Southeast Alaska faces.
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When it comes to retreating glaciers, researchers predict there will be benefits and costs for western North American salmon populations over the coming decades. Alaska Coastal Rainforest Director Allison Bidlack and University of Alaska Southeast researcher Eran Hood are authors on a recent multidisciplinary study led by Kara Pitman at Simon Fraser University.
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For scientists collecting data deep in Alaska’s backcountry, there are few access roads and even fewer weather stations to be found. There are, however, dedicated winter recreationists traversing the landscape by ski, snowshoe, and snowmachine. These backcountry enthusiasts are being recruited by scientists to contribute to a growing dataset of snow depth observations that are improving our understanding of snow distribution in remote locations.
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A steady curtain of rain falls over the banks of the Mendenhall River, but you’d never know it from the high spirits of Thunder Mountain students who have been working in the drenching conditions for over an hour. The students collect water samples in chest-high waders, armed with small vials and temperature probes. A group onshore inspects sediment and invertebrates collected from the stream bed. They are part of an ongoing program led by science educators Adriana Northcutt and Kristen Wells to engage eleventh- and twelfth-grade biology students in studying the Mendenhall watershed and impacts of water quality on salmon habitat.
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As climate change rapidly alters conditions in southeast Alaska, lower snowpack levels have caused a massive decline of yellow-cedar trees. Without an insulating blanket of snow, the shallow roots of yellow-cedar trees freeze during late spring cold snaps. Left behind is a growing expanse of “ghost forests” of dead yellow-cedars, affecting roughly 678,000 acres (nearly the area of Yosemite National Park). The decay-resistant properties of yellow-cedar allow the trees to remain standing for decades after death. ACRC director Allison Bidlack, and collaborators Brian Buma, Sarah Bisbing, and Brian Vander Naald, set out to determine whether these ghost stands might provide an economic opportunity for small lumber mills in Tongass National Forest.
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Jason Fellman (UAS) and Gwenn Hennon (UAF) were awarded an Alaska EPSCoR Seed Grant to investigate microbial community composition and productivity in nearshore waters in Lynn Canal. Using filtered water from two rivers (one heavily glaciated, one largely forested) and natural marine microbial communities collected in Lynn Canal in May 2020, they will test the hypothesis that riverine dissolved organic matter source influences the dynamics of the marine microbial community.
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What does the future of the Gulf of Alaska look like in a changing climate?
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Shellfish harvesters and beachcombers wandering the shores around Juneau might have made an odd discovery this summer– a small white hunk of plaster under the water, strapped to a neatly labeled brick. These contraptions are part of an effort to better monitor and predict paralytic shellfish poison (PSP) levels, which were almost ten times higher this summer than at any time in the last three years.
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Across the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska, a change is taking root. Warming winters are reducing snowpack in the region and causing a massive decline in a culturally, economically, and ecologically important tree species; yellow-cedar. Yellow-cedar trees are adapted with fine, shallow roots that allow them to respond to early spring warming and get a head start on growth over other species. Once an advantageous adaptation, it has now made the species susceptible to freezing when early snowmelt and frosts can be fatal to mature yellow-cedar trees. In Alaska and British Columbia, yellow-cedar is declining across 400,000 hectares and ten degrees of latitude.
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As smoke from distant wildfires clouds the skies above Southeast Alaska, Juneau residents have a much closer hazard on their minds. Warm weather sped up water collection in Suicide Basin, a glacier-dammed lake adjoining Mendenhall Glacier that has generated outburst floods regularly over the last decade. On Sunday, July 7th, the basin water level reached a point where it began to overtop the Mendenhall Glacier ice dam, flowing along the side of the glacier towards Mendenhall Lake. Almost one week later, on July 13th, the basin began draining beneath the glacier. At Mendenhall Lake, the water level rose to 8.62 feet (just under minor flood stage) and peaked just after 8 P.M. – earlier and lower than predicted.
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Visiting graduate student Megan Behnke spent her last summer in Juneau deep in the mud, looking at how dissolved organic matter moves from wetlands into streams. This summer, she has something a few degrees cooler in store. Behnke was awarded a prestigious National Geographic Early Career Grant to investigate ancient carbon and the impacts of fossil fuels from tourism on the Juneau Icefield.
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Are tiny, heat-absorbing particles accelerating the melt of the Juneau Icefield? A recent study led by UAS Assistant Professor of Geology and ACRC collaborator Sonia Nagorski found that dust and black carbon particles darkening the snow surface are speeding up snowmelt on the Icefield by days, or even weeks each year. The study also included UAS faculty Eran Hood and Jason Fellman, Susan Kaspari from Central Washington University, and McKenzie Skiles from the University of Utah.
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The term drought brings to mind cracked earth, forest fires, and empty river beds, but at the Southeast Alaska Drought Workshop held in Juneau this week, a different type of drought was discussed.
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ACRC director Allison Bidlack, alongside USFS collaborators Ryan Bellmore and Adelaide Johnson, was featured in an interactive New York Times article on the disappearance of glaciers from the Pacific Northwest.
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Rappelling down rock cliffs, rafting across glacial lakes, and traversing icy crevasses, all in the presence of a massive, ever-changing glacier – it's all part of the job for glaciologists monitoring glacial outburst floods (also known as jökulhlaups) in Alaska.
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In March, over 30 scientists from across the US, Canada, and as far as Germany stood on the soggy wetlands of Juneau’s Douglas Island during the third Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network workshop.
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Stand above a salmon spawning stream in Southeast Alaska come late summer, and the sheer quantity of fish is impressive. Maneuvering through water sometimes barely higher than their gills, salmon are powerful ecosystem engineers that disturb sediment and fertilize rivers. This fall, a study published in Aquatic Sciences led by ACRC researchers Jason Fellman, Eran Hood, and Sonia Nagorski looked at how salmon may be changing the chemistry of streams they travel in.
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An effort to model the watersheds of southeast Alaska is coming to life as one of the AK CASC pilot projects.
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