Latest Research News and Events
Career at rocket range energizing, fun
June 12, 2025
After 35 years of driving to work over a small mountain each day, Kathe Rich will soon make her last daily ascent of Cleary Summit.
Mastodons long gone from the far north
June 06, 2025
A long, long time ago, a hairy elephant stomped the northland, wrecking trees and shrubs as it swallowed twigs, leaves and bark.
4-H pH program gives Sitka youth a taste of ocean science
June 05, 2025
Youth in Sitka spent five months testing the water as part of an ocean acidification education program called 4-H pH. The project, funded by the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, is part of a citizen science program called Global Learning & Observations to Benefit the Environment Program, or GLOBE.
Changing winds could amplify North Atlantic climate anomaly
June 04, 2025
As the planet's oceans are gradually warmed by the effects of climate change, a huge area in the North Atlantic stands out as an unusual zone of relative cooling. A region that stretches roughly from Greenland to Ireland, counterintuitively dubbed the North Atlantic warming hole, is a conspicuous patch of blue on global climate change maps. Researchers say its temperature contrast could intensify in the decades ahead as shifting climate-driven winds amplify the cooling process in the North Atlantic.
The greatest story of man and permafrost
May 29, 2025
In 1973, Elden Johnson was a young engineer working on one of the most ambitious and uncertain projects in the world -- an 800-mile steel pipeline that carried warm oil over frozen ground. Decades later, Johnson looked back at what he called "the greatest story ever told of man's interaction with permafrost."
Study finds birds nested in Arctic alongside dinosaurs
May 29, 2025
Spring in the Arctic brings forth a plethora of peeps and downy hatchlings as millions of birds gather to raise their young. The same was true 73 million years ago, according to a new paper in the journal Science. The paper documents the earliest-known example of birds nesting in the polar regions.
The American robin returns on time
May 22, 2025
American robins have returned to northern Alaska.
An old friend returns to the far north
May 16, 2025
A Fairbanks biologist recently cupped in his hand a tiny bird whose arrival he had been rooting for. That bird -- a female Hammond's flycatcher -- now holds the title of the oldest known of its species.
UAF to host free Arctic Research Open House
May 12, 2025
The University of Alaska Fairbanks will host its annual Arctic Research Open House Thursday, May 15 from 4 - 7 p.m. on the West Ridge of the Troth Yeddha' Campus in Fairbanks.
Dale Guthrie opened door to lost world
May 09, 2025
Sometimes -- but not very often -- a door creaks open to a lost world. Sometimes the right person steps in. Dale Guthrie, an Alaska biologist and paleontologist who died in 2024 at the age of 88, was that guy.