Mosquito Hunting in Alaska

We stopped several times on our way to Toolik Field Station in the Arctic. We stopped at the cozy outhouses in Joy, Alaska, at a gift shop/cafe/rest stop that boasted a shed with license plates nailed on from all over the U.S. We stopped at the E.L. Patton Bridge, where the Trans-Alaska pipeline crosses the [...]

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Life at Toolik

Over at Elemental, Emily Stone writes about life at Toolik Field Station, Alaska.
We’ve been here almost a week, yet I’m still surprised by the same two things each morning when I walk out of my tent: I can see beautiful snow-covered mountains over the buildings of station from the front door, and I have to [...]

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Two years after a tundra fire

Over at greenjersey.org, Jennifer Weiss writes about the tundra fire of 2007:
Cottongrass now blankets a swath of Alaskan land burned badly in 2007. That year, lightning struck and started what became the biggest tundra fire on record here, burning an area about the size of Cape Cod for three straight months. Read the full article [...]

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In Alaska, permafrost melts and takes the ground with it

Over at greenjersey.org, Jennifer Weiss is writing about her experience seeing a Thermokarst…
In Alaska, permafrost melts and takes the ground with it Alaska’s permafrost is melting and changing the landscape.
In some places here, melting permafrost makes the ground cave in, creating a ribbon or pocket of collapsed land called thermokarst. Scientists at Toolik are [...]

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Grizzly bear sighting on the Dalton Highway

On the way to Toolik, we stopped in at the Coldfoot Interagency Visitors Center, where one of the volunteers filled me in on the grizzly she spotted the day before and the incredible wildlife she’s seen recently: muskox, caribou, wolves, and more.

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