Carrying oil to the lower 48

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.

Things I didn’t expect to find in the Arctic

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.

Mosquito Hunting in Alaska

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.

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

Read the full article here.

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 here.