When the Science Journalists weren’t busy in the field or interviewing the researchers at Toolik Field Station, they had some time for fun. Here they are helping a group of Toolik scientists, research assistants, and others in an Arctic tribute to Michael Jackson. This is claimed to be the northernmost performance of Thriller… Enjoy!

Jane Qiu has written a Q & A with Breck Bowdon, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Vermont, Burlington for Nature.

Last week marked the start of a US$5 million project to study the effects of thawing permafrost on ecosystems in the Arctic. Based at the Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska and sponsored by the US National Science Foundation, the project will look at the impact of thermokarsts — the scars and pits left behind as melt water from permanently frozen ground leaks away, and soil and rock collapses in its wake.

Read the full article here.

Went to the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge on a hike—saw sheep, a wolf (from far away) a golden eagle (flew over my head, was nice enough not to drop a missive) and we just missed having a bunch of rocks slide on our heads. And two of us hiked a couple of kilometres past the van. Oops. Sorry to everyone waiting and wondering….

Over at Field Notes, the Polar Field Services Newsletter, Emily Stone writes about Linda Deegan’s research of Arctic Graylings on the Kuparuk River.

Linda Deegan, a senior scientist at MBL who studies an arctic fish called the grayling, doesn’t need to see temperature stats to know that the climate around Lake Toolik is changing. She just has to check her travel calendar.

Click here to read the full article.

Over at greenjersey.org, Jennifer Weiss has written about the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline.

Toolik Field Station, AK – It’s like a strange, 800-mile-long piece of public art: The Alaska pipeline. A monument to the country’s LTR with oil that has carried billions of barrels of it, and still provides hundreds of thousands of barrels a day (15 percent of U.S. domestic oil production, according to operator Alyeska, though that figure may be low). Click here for the full article.

Over at C&ENtral Science, Chemical & Engineering News’ blog, I’ve tried to provide readers with a little slice of life up here in the tundra. Check out 5 thing I didn’t expect to find in the arctic.

One person you won't see wearing a mosquito net: instructor Chris Neill

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 Yukon River. We stopped for moose. And every time we stopped, we brought loads of mosquitoes with us when we piled back into the van. Hence this video, which shows how we dealt with the extra passengers.

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 go to two separate spots to brush my teeth and go to the bathroom.

Read the full article here.

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 here.