by Ned Rozell

Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but Alaska has more than that in the great expanse of flatlands north of the Brooks Range. These ubiquitous far-north bodies of water — most of them formed by the disappearance of ancient, buried ice that dimples the landscape as it thaws — make the maps of Alaska’s coastal plain look like Swiss cheese.

A large group of scientists are now taking a closer look at Alaska’s “thermokarst” lakes, some of the fastest-changing landforms on the planet.

Fairbanks, Alaska, August 14, 2012--- Three videos detail the Unmanned Aircraft work from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). In March, Greg Walker, UAF's Unmanned Aircraft Program Manager, led research in the Aleutians. Walker flies the UAVs in just about all conditions except freezing rain which would stick to delicate equipment. “We’ve regularly flown in showers, we’ve flown in snow and 25 knot winds,” said Walker.

by Ned Rozell

Marc Mueller-Stoffels unscrews the top of a glass jar and invites a visitor to smell the powder inside. A sniff evokes the image of kayaking Prince William Sound or walking a beach in Southeast.

“We call it ‘Instant Ocean,’” he says, returning the lid to the jar.

Sea ice made by Marc Mueller-Stoffels, who suspended chunks of fresh-water ice in salty brine at below-zero temperatures. He took this photo of a thin cross-section of ice using a polarizing filter. Individual shapes are ice crystals: Photo by Marc Muelle

Mueller-Stoffels, a doctoral student in the Physics Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, uses the white contents of the jar — different types of salts found in seawater all over the world — to create homebrewed ocean.

by Marie Gilbert

As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature.

Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, authors write. However, the effect of thawing permafrost on climate will be 2.5 times greater because emissions include methane, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Ben Abbott, graduate student, records gas flux measurements from a landscape where permafrost has thawed and the ground has collapsed - called a thermokarst - just north of the Institute of Arctic Biology Toolik Field Station on the North Slope. Abbott is: UAF photo by Marie Gilbert

US Forest Service: Tongass

by Ned Rozell

In Alan Weisman’s book, The World Without Us, the author ponders “a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow.”

by Ned Rozell

One hundred years after the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is still a moonscape of ash and volcanic rock, without a tree or shrub in sight. The valley, located on the Alaska Peninsula where the Aleutians hook on to mainland Alaska, is a silent reminder of the power and potential of Alaska’s volcanoes.

Hikers trek the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes on the Alaska Peninsula, walking on a sheet of ash and volcanic rock more than 500-feet-thick: Photo by Ned Rozell.

I once visited the valley

Fairbanks, Alaska, July 10, 2012--- “To this point no one has much of any terrestrial record anywhere in the Arctic older than 125,000 years ago,”

by Ned Rozell

The more Tony Fiorillo explores Alaska, the more dinosaur tracks he finds on its lonely ridgetops. The latest examples are the stone footprints of two different dinosaurs near the tiny settlement of Chisana in the Wrangell Mountains.

Fiorillo, a dinosaur hunter with the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, recently wrote of the foot impressions of a large plant-eater and small meat-eater in the science journal Cretaceous Research. Fiorillo is a yearly summer visitor to Alaska who seems to discover something exciting on every trip.

Methane-induced melt-hole on a frozen lake in the Brooks Range in Alaska in April of 2011: Photo by Katey Walter Anthony

by Marmian Grimes

Geologic methane is seeping through the edges of thawing permafrost and receding glaciers in Alaska and Greenland, according to a study recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Katey Walter Anthony led the study, which, for the first time, documents the widespread occurrence of these terrestrial sources of geologic methane seepage in the Arctic.

“They had never before been quantified and we didn’t know they were so widespread,” she said.

In the past, researchers have found that, as permafrost thaws, previously frozen organic matter like dead plants or animals decays and releases methane.

by Ned Rozell

Some places in this world are just too dirty, dull or dangerous for human pilots to fly. An airspace in the latter category is anywhere near gas flares in Alask's oil fields.

With only a few seconds of warning, flames blast high in the air from a network of pipes, releasing the stress of sucking oil from deep in the ground.

Greg Walker recently found himself taking a look these fire-breathing nozzles near Prudhoe Bay, but he was barely close enough to see them from where he stood. He instead watched a "flying king crab" that buzzed around flaming flare heads 50 feet above the ground.

An Aeryon Scout flies over the shoreline of Prince William Sound near Valdez during an exercise in summer 2011 to check its usefulness in oil spill cleanup assessment.

The 2.5-pound flying machine captured video and five-megapixel images of the flares and their support pipes, some of them jacked by frost and needing repair.

NOAA: Launching an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists

Speeding over Arctic sea ice, small remote-controlled aircraft snag video footage and high-definition shots of endangered Steller Sea Lions in their natural habitat. Quiet and unobtrusive, the machines can serve as Special Op.s for researchers. Low-altitude remote sensing using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has vast potential... and we're only beginning to explore it.

Fairbanks, Alaska, June , 2012--- “So our job is to get it out there, get exposure to the technology, get people to understand its benefits and its limitations. And see how it can solve their problems.”

by Ned Rozell

A flock of bar tailed godwits departs Alaska in September from Nelson Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula.
Photo by Bob Gill

After flying northward from Chile, a whimbrel landed in late March in an alfalfa field near Mexicali, Mexico. The handsome shorebird with a long curved beak left its wintering ground in South America one week earlier and flew more than 5,000 miles. Nonstop.

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists

Deep under a frozen lake in Siberia, Russia, lies a researcher’s gold: an astounding record of past climates preserved in untouched layers of lake bed sediment. In 2009 an international team of scientists headed to Lake El'gygytgyn (pronounced El'geegitgin). They perched specialized drilling equipment atop the icy lake surface and drilled down.

by Ned Rozell

The scar from the Anaktuvuk River fire of 2007, which scorched an area as large as Cape Cod: NASA MODIS image.

Four summers ago, Syndonia Bret-Harte stood outside at Toolik Lake, watching a wall of smoke creep toward the research station on Alaska’s North Slope. Soon after, smoke oozed over the cluster of buildings.

“It was a dense, choking fog,” Bret-Harte said.

The smoke looked, smelled and tasted like what Bret-Harte has experienced at her home in Fairbanks, but the far-north version was composed of vaporized tundra plants instead of black spruce and birch. The 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire, which burned an area the size of Cape Cod, is the largest fire ever recorded in tundra.

Play in the dirt with Dig Afognak
Laura Nielsen for FrontierScientists

If uncovering archaeological treasures and exploring local culture appeal to you more than simple sightseeing, you’ll want to check out the Kodiak Archipelago the next time you can make it to Alaska. The Afognak Native Corporation’s program Dig Afognak has visitors, archaeologists, and Native tribal members working side-by-side to find and preserve cultural artifacts and archaeological sites.

Additionally, Dig Afognak offers cultural activities with varying focuses all meant to teach and preserve Native Alutiiq ways.