Catch the latest news from ACRC's scientists, staff, students, and partners.
Oct 1, 2026
Follow the Flow: National Cohort Explores Low Water Impacts on Aquatic Environments
In August 2023, a group of postdoctoral researchers gathered in Santa Barbara, California. They came from different backgrounds and represented disparate regions, but they shared a common focus: our Nation’s aquatic ecosystems. Among them, ACRC affiliate Megan Behnke brought her expertise as a biogeochemist studying the flow of nutrients through Alaska’s cryosphere-influenced watersheds. Originally from Juneau, Behnke first crossed paths with ACRC as a stream chemistry technician in 2016. After receiving her PhD in Chemical Oceanography from Florida State University in 2022, returned as a postdoctoral researcher to continue her work tracking particulate organic carbon in aquatic environments in the Northeast Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest.
Read MoreJul 6, 2026
“It’s all connected”: How red seaweed show us complex linkages between land and coastal ecosystems
On the rocky shorelines of Haines, Alaska, the lifecycles of seaweed groves are shaped upstream.
Read MoreFeb 18, 2026
From Blooms to Bivalves: Investigating Ecosystem Effects of Harmful Algal Blooms in Glacier Bay National Park
Saxitoxin— a powerful neurotoxin deadly at a dose a thousand times smaller than a lethal dose of cyanide— is the weapon of choice for an endemic phytoplankton of Southeast Alaska. And ACRC Research Assistant Professor John Harley has an overflowing freezer of its potential carriers.
Read MoreFeb 18, 2026
ACRC Researcher Logan Berner Awarded Grant to Investigate Wild Berries in a Changing Forest Landscape
In Southeast Alaska, concerns are high that the abundance and nutritional quality of wild blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) in the region could be shifting, all while gaps in scientific berry knowledge persist, posing a threat to this culturally and ecologically important wild food cherished by its residents.
Read MoreAug 26, 2025
From Ice to Ecosystems: NSF Backs ACRC Study of Glacial Carbon Sources
Glaciers are rapidly melting across the globe, yet there is still much that we do not understand about their impacts on downstream ecosystems. While increased volumes of water released from melting glaciers may be apparent to most people, glacier meltwater also contains large quantities of dissolved organic material, known as DOM, which contains carbon that is exported downstream. Dissolved organic matter derived from the glacial ecosystems is important to downstream food webs due to its high “bioavailability” to stream microbes compared to other sources of carbon in the environment (e.g., from soils in deglaciated portions of the watershed).
Read MoreMay 6, 2025
Changing Watersheds, Changing Nutrients: Glacier Loss and Coastal River Chemistry
As glaciers retreat across the Gulf of Alaska’s coastal mountains, the flow of nutrients from land to sea is being reshaped, potentially transforming nearshore food webs that support fisheries, marine mammals, and seabirds. In a new multi-year study, ACRC researchers Jason Fellman, Eran Hood, Emily Whitney and colleagues investigated how glacier loss and shifting hydrology are altering patterns of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus export from coastal mountain catchments into the Gulf of Alaska. The research, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, offers new insight into how watershed nutrient dynamics are changing in a future with vanishing glaciers.
Read MoreJan 27, 2025
ACRC Researcher Eran Hood Awarded $1M NSF Grant to Study Glacial Outburst Floods
ACRC’s Eran Hood is a Co-Principal Investigator for a project funded by a newly awarded grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This research effort is being led by Jason Amundson (UAS) and is focused on glacial outburst floods, known asjökulhlaups—a term of Icelandic origin describing sudden, catastrophic floods caused by the rapid drainage of water from a glacier-dammed basin.
Read MoreDec 14, 2024
Biennial Pink Salmon Spawning Shapes Juvenile Coho Growth in Southeast Alaska
Pink salmon have a strict two-year life cycle that results in distinct populations and biennial differences in spawning abundance. In Southeast Alaska’s rivers, odd-year pink salmon returns are typically larger than in even years and deliver greater pulses of marine-derived nutrients to freshwater ecosystems. These nutrient-rich marine resources, primarily in the form of salmon eggs, influence the growth and survival of stream-dwelling fish such as juvenile coho salmon.
Read MoreDec 5, 2024
Carbon on the Move: Insights from Montana Creek
Peering down from the side of the trail, Kaxdigoowu Héen (Montana Creek) initially appears crystal clear to passing hikers, with swift riffles and smooth pools allowing for glimpses of sandy gravel bars and smooth granite stones below the surface. To juvenile salmon, however, the waters are anything but transparent. Pine needles, leaves, and dislodged invertebrates such as mayfly nymphs and rove beetle larvae are suspended throughout the water column, floating downstream in a parade of particulate matter alongside molecular forms of organic and inorganic carbon unable to be seen with the naked eye.
Read MoreNov 26, 2024
Climate Change and Shellfish Safety: ACRC and Sitka Tribe of Alaska Tackle Emerging Challenges with New Grant
ACRC researcher John Harley and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate how changing climate conditions may impact the safety of subsistence shellfish harvesting in coastal Alaska. This five-year grant will support ongoing toxin monitoring efforts and fund new research to understand how harmful algal blooms (HABs) will be impacted by a changing climate.
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