Oil exploration in the Arctic is already a reality. Expanding the exploration to include offshore production in this remote frontier creates unique environmental challenges. These challenges must be met with the expertise and familiarity that scientists working and living in Alaska can provide.

A team of UAF scientists is organizing a center for excellence focused on Arctic oil spill research and development. This team is composed of experts from throughout UAF who are already hard at work on research relevant to the detection, monitoring, modeling and recovery of oil spills in the Arctic.

According to a report from the presidential commission appointed to investigate the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s north coast rank behind only the Gulf of Mexico in estimated oil reserves. But the unique challenges that working in this area present must be properly considered to avert environmental disaster. Oil spill response efforts, as well as oil exploration and production in the Arctic, are complicated by the remote location as well as the presence of ice. In addition, the slow pace of natural dispersion in the Arctic means that oil would linger much longer in this marine environment. At the same time, the infrastructure and operational support required to respond rapidly and appropriately to an offshore disaster are less developed, or altogether absent, in the Arctic.

Through this Arctic Oil Research Team, UAF experts are working to build partnerships between research and educational institutions, government agencies and industry to ensure safety of operations in arctic maritime environments. Future research will focus on four areas: data integration, oil spills in ice-covered waters, risk assessment and mitigation and hazard assessment and response.

For more information about UAF’s Arctic Oil Research Team, contact Alaska Satellite Facility director Nettie La Belle-Hamer, at nettie.labellehamer@alaska.edu.

Ben Gaglioti, a PhD student working with Professor Matthew Wooller in the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and the UAF Water & Environmental Research Center, has developed a new technique for understanding what vegetation grew in Alaska tens of thousands of years ago. Gaglioti examined fossilized grass leaves for clues about the ecology of Alaska when now extinct bison (amongst a host of other large fauna) roamed Alaska — which was part of the area known as Beringia — when the land bridge between Russia and Alaska existed.

Gaglioti’s work was recently published in the Review of Paleobotany and Palynology, “Developing graminoid cuticle analysis for application to Beringian Palaeoecology.” He is also a contributor to another paper led by Matthew Wooller that will soon appear in Journal of Quaternary Science, “The detailed paleoecology of a mid-Wisconsinan interstadial (~32,000 14C years) vegetation surface from interior Alaska.”

Effective June 1, 2011, the Arctic Region Super-computing Center’s Department of Defense contract was cut to just a fraction of its prior level. Unfortunately, this resulted in significant downsizing of the center and its number of employees. Despite this, UAF investment will sustain ARSC’s campus activity to ensure that much of the world-class research supported by the center can continue.

ARSC systems and people play a critical role in the UAF research community. The center’s campus presence serves to amplify the ability of faculty, staff and students to engage in computationally-based research, discovery and analysis. To maintain the value that ARSC provides to campus, UAF’s Chancellor Brian Rogers initiated ongoing commitment to its support through continuing staff appointments and a recurring university budget. This investment will maintain the core ARSC staff and facilities for years to come, giving confidence to campus constituents for planning research and instruction.

“This is an exciting time for campus computing, from the mid-range to the high end,” says ARSC’s Chief Scientist Greg Newby, who will lead the center in its next iteration. “As a result of UAF’s pledge to support ARSC into the future, we are able to insure continued outstanding support for the campus community.”
Into the future, ARSC will be delivering a new range of campus-focused services. These will include a campus portal for centralized access to researcher-generated data and computational products. ARSC is also working to deploy campus storage cloud services for researchers.

“UAF has long recognized the value that ARSC brings to the campus,” says UAF Vice Chancellor for Research Mark Myers. “We anticipate ARSC will remain a cornerstone of research and instruction in the digital age, supporting the full range of UAF’s computationally-based inquiry.”

For more information about ARSC facilities and personnel, or to inquire about access policies, visit www.arsc.edu.

Students at UAF participate in research and scholarly activity at rates much higher than most other institutions. Recent data indicate that one in four UAF students participates in a research project at some point in their college career. Students who participate in research are better suited to move forward in careers and graduate school. In fact, research participation is often a prerequisite for admission to graduate programs.

To celebrate the accomplishments of the many students participating in research, UAF hosted its second annual Campus Research Day in May. Hundreds of students and community members took part in a day-long celebration of research on campus. Events included undergraduate and graduate level poster sessions, an undergraduate research symposium and a keynote address and awards ceremony. In addition, labs on campus were opened to community members and schoolchildren who visited with researchers and learned about projects currently underway on campus.

For more information about UAF Campus Research Day, visit www.uaf.edu/research.