IARC Annual Report
This is the web version of the International Arctic Research Center 2022 annual report. The full publication, along with past years’ reports, can be downloaded from the IARC Communication Products page.
Message from the Director
This report is a great reminder of the abundance of talent, expertise and action that IARC researchers, students and staff combine under one roof. It specifically highlights the importance of stamina in achieving research and personal goals.
Claudine Hauri in developing a carbon glider system had to overcome multiple challenges – technological, scientific and organizational – resulting in a sophisticated, innovative research tool to track the ocean’s response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations. Thanks are due to the National Science Foundation as the key sponsor of this research. Their unwavering support and trust in the research excellence of Dr. Hauri and her team were critical to their success.
Cristina Ornelas’ path to cutting-edge research on how plants evolve genetically as they expand into new environments is both inspiring and a testament to her perseverance and the sustained support by her mentor, IARC faculty Katie Spellman, a leader in citizen and climate science.
Margaret Rudolf, Craig Chythlook and Victoria Buschman exemplify the importance of sustained engagement and stamina as Indigenous scholars working to improve the societal benefits of environmental observations in a rapidly changing Arctic. As the Indigenous liaison team for an international Arctic research network contributing to a roadmap for Arctic observing and data systems, their work is critical in helping the university achieve greater equity in the outcomes of our research.
IARC thrives on these contributions and those of other members of our team. Having just returned from a longer trip – joined by several IARC early career researchers – to reconnect with our many science partners in Japan, it is great to see the connectivity, impact and sustained engagement of the multi-faceted work underway at the International Arctic Research Center.
Please stay engaged with our work and keep in touch,
Hajo Eicken, IARC director
About us
We are the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) on the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Troth Yeddha’ Campus. Our purpose is to understand the Arctic to make a difference. These six core values guide our research and frame how we interact with our partners:
Useful, actionable science
Our research responds to society’s needs in a changing Arctic and world.
Deeper understanding
Our emphasis on fundamental research sets the groundwork for understanding and responding to Arctic change.
Grounded in place
Living and working in Alaska gives us a holistic knowledge and understanding of the Arctic. We value what the North and its people teach us.
Inclusion and diversity
We actively cultivate an environment where all individuals and groups feel welcomed and heard. Our different experiences, expertise and ways of knowing are our strength, creating diverse thoughts and ideas.
Innovation and expertise
Drawing on our expertise, we value a culture of creativity that fosters innovation.
Collaboration
We solve problems through local to international collaboration with different disciplines, knowledge systems and by engaging with government agencies.
Useful & actionable — Academia in response
Responding to typhoon Merbok
What began as a partnership between IARC scientists and the Native Village of Unalakleet rapidly became a critical component of the statewide disaster response when ex-typhoon Merbok hammered 900 miles of Alaska coastline in September 2022.
The partnership initially trained drone pilots and got them licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The goal was to monitor erosion, environmental change, infrastructure and other points of interest to communities and the U.S. Coast Guard, which funded an early phase of the work.
Once Merbok struck, those same drones took to the skies to provide rapid aerial imagery and up-to-date maps detailing damage to homes, roads and oil tanks. The maps produced also showed the riverine and coastal erosion that occurred during the storm.
“The pilots and their equipment were already on the ground, trained and able to be deployed first by the Coast Guard and later by FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency],” said Jessica Garron, the project lead and deputy director of the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center at IARC.
Over a two week period, the team surveyed storm impacts in fifteen rural western Alaska communities. Unlike satellites or other technology, the drones were able to collect imagery when clouds obscured the view, they provided higher resolution images and were redeployed easily to follow up on points of interest.
The data gathered were shared through the State of Alaska Open Data Geoportal. This made the information available to communities, state and federal agencies that were part of Alaska’s coordinated emergency response following Merbok.
This project successfully bypassed limitations that often block partnerships between rural communities and academia. The availability of FAA drone licensing in remote Alaska is often a significant hurdle, as is the need for a pipeline to put drone data into the hands of decision-makers in places like the State Emergency Operations Center.
From a research perspective, the effort reiterated ways academia can continue to integrate drone technology and human infrastructure into timely emergency operations.
More waves and wind
Merbok was an extreme reminder of the kind of damage that Alaska faces due to climate change. As sea ice diminishes and storminess continues to increase, scientists expect more coastal impacts. IARC’s Vladimir Alexeev and Alec Bennett are working with the Department of Energy National Laboratories to build tools that support future decision making surrounding nearshore navigation and coastal infrastructure.
An important step of the project, known as InteRFACE, is modeling how offshore wind and wave activity manifests as it nears the coast of western and northern Alaska.
As wind and waves increase so does freezing spray. For barges delivering goods, or fishermen and crabbers chasing the ice edge further north later in the season, this means they may experience more icing from waves than in the past.
“With increased wave activity there’s more moisture being sprayed up out of the ocean, and it freezes to the ships,” explained Bennett. “So you get this build up of ice over time on the upper portions, and it can change the stability and cause boats to capsize.”
When it comes to understanding changes to the coastline, these new wave and wind models are the glue connecting the offshore ocean conditions to coastal flooding and erosion. Alexeev and Bennett are passing their models’ output to other teams focused on understanding how higher water levels amplify permafrost loss, coastal erosion and ultimately the integrity of roads, buildings and pipelines along the coast.
“Changes are happening all along the North Slope and Western Alaska,” said Bennett. “The way the coastline looks now is not the way that the coastline might look in the future.”
The work will provide better predictions of erosion and permafrost thaw, and how it may differ along coastlines from beaches to steep drop offs. Translating these models into future decision making may help Alaska get ahead of future problems, reducing risk before it arrives.
Deeper understanding — Park landslides
Landslide risk in Alaska national parks
The Pretty Rocks landslide, spurred by greater warmth and rainfall, will force Denali National Park’s main access road to close at the halfway point in 2023 for the second full summer.
To help park managers plan for and mitigate such events, IARC scientists assessed future landslide risks along road corridors in Denali and other Alaska parks.
“Park managers were interested in looking at park climate data to figure out how much warming has occurred and what the future might bring,” explained Pam Sousanes, a physical scientist with the agency in Fairbanks.
Sousanes turned to Rick Lader and a team of IARC climate modelers.
“In Denali we had data from sites that were relatively close to the landslide area and we were able to determine that the average annual temperatures were approaching, and in some cases, exceeding the thawing threshold of zero degrees Celsius [32 Fahrenheit],” said Sousanes. “We wanted some way to incorporate those into really good downscaled climate projections, and we didn’t have the skills to do that. So we reached out.”
Lader and his team used the data from park weather stations to fine-tune projections from global climate models. IARC often provides this dynamical downscaling service to Alaska’s decision-makers so they can incorporate climate data into local planning.
To identify the local landslide risk, Lader focused on mean annual air temperature and summer precipitation. Permafrost starts thawing and the ground slumps when mean annual air temperature rises above freezing. Heavy precipitation then can reduce the soil integrity and exacerbate or cause additional slumping.
Changes are happening now
For Denali, Wrangell-St. Elias and Gates of the Arctic national parks, Lader and his team created a set of maps and datasets predicting where and when these critical thresholds will occur. Though historically all three parks had a mean annual air temperature below freezing and a relatively stable precipitation trend, that’s changing.
Gates of the Arctic will likely see the biggest change in temperature and the second greatest increase in summer precipitation. That said, the park is considerably colder than the others, so the permafrost is more stable. Along the still undeveloped Ambler Road corridor, landslide risk likely won’t become a concern until after 2060.
“They will actually have the information before they try to build something, which is potentially more valuable than saying it’s already sliding,” said Lader.
The risk is more immediate in both Denali and Wrangell-St. Elias. Both parks are already seeing occasional years with above freezing mean annual air temperature. By 2060, that threshold will be consistently met. Precipitation is also increasing, especially in Denali. By 2060, Denali may become 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and see almost 6 inches more summer precipitation. As evidenced by the Pretty Rocks landslide, some areas along the Denali Park Road are already at risk, while others will remain stable for a few more years.
The Pretty Rocks landslide, which the Denali road has traversed since its completion in the 1930s, has increased in speed recently as warmer temperatures and heavy rain thawed frozen soil. Construction of a bridge at the crossing site, costing up to $102 million, will begin summer 2023.
“We’re right on the cusp in Denali and Wrangell-St. Elias. These changes are happening now, and they’re happening fast,” said Sousanes. “And even though they’re out in the future for Gates of the Arctic, we’re still moving in that direction.”
Sousanes said the landslide risk assessment will pay off years down the road as Alaska park managers plan for new and existing infrastructure to stand up in a changing climate.
Lader’s work is just one of several ongoing IARC studies to understand changing snow and landslide conditions in Alaska. These efforts, some in collaboration with international partners, inform response and planning by several state and federal agencies.
Grounded in place — Climate & king salmon
Bringing experts together
Alaska’s fisheries community needs both local knowledge and the latest climate tools to find connections between rapid king salmon declines and climate change. Though people have been counting salmon on rivers like the Yukon and Kuskokwim for decades, they haven’t consistently measured certain environmental conditions that may be contributing to declines.
For example, biologists and residents suspect that there are links between river flow and salmon returns, but there is seldom enough data to confirm. This is especially true when looking across large drainages like the Yukon River and not just a single tributary.
This is where an unconventional group of fish experts is coming to the rescue. Scientists, data modelers, fisheries managers, fishermen and local residents are all combining their unique skill sets to find answers.
“Our approach has been to pull in data from different complementary sources of information,” explained Erik Schoen, the project lead and a scientist at IARC.
The work launched with a king salmon workshop that gathered together dozens of people from Alaska and Canada who have experience on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers and the Bering Sea. They discussed changes people have seen and lingering questions, then brainstormed potential reasons for declines and how to study them. Local fishermen made up a critical contingent of the group.
“There are people living all up and down Alaska rivers who have deep knowledge of how conditions have changed in their area. In a lot of cases they have strong ideas about how those changes in the environment are connected to changes in food resources,” said Schoen. “Scientists are just now realizing what a rich source of information that is.”
Filling gaps in river data
Equipped with knowledge and priorities shared by these experts, Schoen and his team began harnessing new climate toolsets to fill gaps in environmental data that may be key to understanding salmon declines.
“My role is to investigate different products and models and see how they can be used to fill our data gaps,” said Becky Shaftel, a research scientist from the University of Alaska Anchorage and Ph.D. student working with Schoen.
She is focused on two data gaps: stream temperature and flow. Exceptionally warm water is known to harm salmon. Though many groups have recently started measuring water temperature, these datasets seldom go back as far as Alaska’s fish count data. Stream flow data is also important for determining when floods or droughts have harmed salmon or their eggs. This type of data is often completely absent.
Shaftel is testing a series of global and regional precipitation and air temperature datasets and models to find the best replacement for the missing data. Scientists and fisheries managers can use the methods and tools she develops to answer questions about salmon in rivers all over Alaska.
“I hope that some of these tools could be beneficial for understanding the impacts of climate change on our salmon populations and helping to manage them better,” said Shaftel.
Conditions linked to salmon runs
Armed with better environmental data from Shaftel, Schoen’s team is bringing the research full circle with another study linking climate conditions to king salmon returns.
“My work links different components in both freshwater and marine environments to Chinook salmon productivity in the Yukon and Kuskokwim region,” said Megan Feddern, a postdoctoral fellow at the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.
Like Shaftel, Feddern uses computer models and big data to explore conditions that affect king salmon populations in 26 watersheds rather than focusing on a single river or stream.
Several strong and consistent patterns emerged across all populations. More salmon survived when river ice broke up earlier and when the Bering Sea was colder and had more sea ice. Stream temperature and flow affected salmon differently depending on the tributary.
“We now understand a bit more about how as the climate changes this giant aggregate stock responds,” said Schoen. “People’s ability to harvest that resource is stabilized because it’s made up of all these different king salmon populations that are experiencing different conditions in freshwater.”
Schoen and his team’s success shows that understanding big salmon issues requires many people and creative tools.
“The workshop brought all these people and different knowledge systems together to generate hypotheses and questions,” Schoen said. “Becky’s work shows how environmental conditions have been changing across this huge region even though we often lack measurements. Megan’s work shows how those environmental shifts are connected to changes in salmon runs.”
Inclusion & diversity — Student evolution study
Shattering stereotypes while studying plant urban evolution
When you imagine a scientist conducting cutting edge research, do you imagine a Latina makeup artist who started out in community college? Maybe not, but Cristina Ornelas is proving these stereotypes wrong. In 2022, she published in one of the world’s premier scientific journals, an accomplishment that few scientists have achieved. The work helped her get into graduate school at UAF to study hydrology.
Ornelas participated in a global study exploring how humans alter the way life evolves. Along with scientists in 160 cities and 26 countries, Ornelas contributed to groundbreaking research showing that cities are driving the evolution of white clover, an invasive plant that has colonized nearly every urban place on the planet, including Alaska.
Cities tend to have similar environmental conditions — more area covered in pavement, higher summer temperatures, fragmented green spaces and fewer herbivores. The research, which was published in the journal Science, found that a gene that helps deter animals from eating clover tends to have lower expression in clovers growing in cities compared to nearby rural areas.
White clover in Alaska
White clover was introduced into Alaska about 120 years ago, giving it less time to evolve than clovers in southern cities. Fairbanks also shares fewer urban characteristics. As a result, Ornelas found no trend in gene expression along the urban-to-rural gradient.
She did, however, find that Fairbanks clovers are adapting to the local environment. When non-native species like white clover are first introduced to a new location, local animals typically do not recognize them as food. So, there is little benefit for white clover to express the anti-herbivory gene when it first arrives. Since Ornelas found that 35% of the individual plants at some Fairbanks locations expressed the gene, it means the species has begun to protect itself from local herbivores.
“For Alaska, it means that some species that we have introduced are here to stay, and are part of our flora,” said Katie Spellman, co-author on the study and Ornelas’ mentor. “White clover is integrated now, it’s part of our system.”
Finding her way to UAF
At the start of the study, lead scientists Marc Johnson and James Santangelo from the University of Toronto Mississauga approached Spellman, an ecologist and educator at IARC, about adding a northern city to the project.
“We remembered Cristina’s enthusiasm for fieldwork,” recalled Spellman. “So we asked Bonanza Creek LTER [Long Term Ecological Research program] if they would help fund her work with me on this global project. It’s been a shockingly cool study, and the part that made me the happiest is what it did for Cristina.”
It was the opportunity Ornelas had been waiting for. As a student at Santa Ana Community College Mesa Program, she had participated in a research intensive with Spellman at UAF that exposes underrepresented and first-generation college students to research. Days into the experience, Ornelas knew that UAF was where she wanted to be.
“I was like, I am going to come and be a student here,” exclaimed Ornelas. “I love the campus, the mountains, everything!”
Turning that dream into a reality has not been easy for Ornelas. At times she felt like giving up and instead working full time at Sephora where she was a makeup artist and enjoyed expressing her creativity.
“My undergrad journey was 10-12 years. I was thinking maybe I’m not cut out to be a scientist,” said Ornelas. “I was told women don’t really make it as scientists and engineers, especially Latinas.”
With encouragement from her husband and mentors, Ornelas persevered. Now she is published, in graduate school and ecstatic to be investigating and discovering new things. As she advances in science, she wants to be a role model for other girls who look like her.
“We deserve to be here just as much as everyone else does,” proclaimed Ornelas. Ornelas, like the clover she studied, is here to stay.
Innovative expertise — First carbon dioxide seaglider
Ocean acidification tools
Alaska has a new tool for tracking ocean acidification — a 7-foot-long, bright pink Seaglider. In 2022, IARC’s Claudine Hauri and her commercial partners became the first people to reliably measure carbon dioxide, the driving factor in ocean acidification, with an unoccupied underwater vehicle.
Globally, ocean pH is decreasing as humans burn coal, oil and gas. When carbon dioxide from these activities is absorbed by the ocean, it affects the ability of marine organisms to build and maintain their shells and may also change the behavior of some fish.
The Gulf of Alaska’s cold waters naturally hold more carbon dioxide, so it only takes a little added human-made CO2 to reach a threshold that puts marine organisms at risk. Melting glaciers that dump freshwater into the ocean can further reduce the number of building blocks available for shells.
Despite the urgent risk to commercial, subsistence and sport fishing in Alaska, data are lacking to assess the status of ocean acidification around the state.
“In order to understand how the human-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere changes the oceans, we also need to know how ocean chemistry varies naturally throughout the year,” explained Hauri.
Technological limitations restricted research in the past. Ocean moorings gathered data at a single location year-round, or ships sampled along transects for several weeks from spring to fall. Although these tools are still needed and provide critical information, large areas of the ocean are not sampled, especially in winter.
Hauri’s team devised a plan to fill those data gaps. They integrated a carbon dioxide sensor with a Seaglider that can dive up to 1,000 meters and carry out weeks-long missions to remote parts of the ocean in every season.
“My job is to find the compromise between what the scientists want and what the glider can do,” said Ehsan Abdi, an electronics engineer with Advanced Offshore Operations Inc. and Cyprus Subsea.
The integration required specialized skill in materials science, mechanical and electronics engineering. For example, Abdi had to consider how the heavier sensor changed the buoyancy of the Seaglider while moving through the water. He made adjustments as needed using weights and fabricated material created on a 3D printer.
Meanwhile, Jöran Kemme and his colleagues at 4H JENA Engineering redesigned one of the market’s most precise carbon dioxide sensors for underwater measurements. The new design is more compact, yet its precision still requires a larger size and higher power consumption than the sensors a Seaglider usually carries.
“The most exciting thing is seeing such a big and power-hungry sensor go on such a humble and small glider that was not meant to do stuff like this,” said Abdi.
Overcoming obstacles for an exciting future
In spring 2022, the team tested the new carbon dioxide Seaglider in Seward where local partners played key roles. Hauri adjusted the glider’s balance while swimming in a tank meant for sea lions at the Alaska SeaLife Center. At Alutiiq Pride Marine Institute measurements taken by the Seaglider were compared to those from instruments used in labs. The Seaglider took its first ride into Resurrection Bay via the UAF Seward Marine Center’s research vessel Nanuq.
Nearly a year later in early 2023, another carbon dioxide Seaglider made the first long-distance data gathering voyage in the Gulf of Alaska. Hauri anticipates many future missions, even by gliders carrying sensors that can measure other variables like methane.
In many ways the Seaglider’s story is one of perseverance. There were many setbacks beyond the expected challenge of creating the glider technology. Coronavirus delayed trial missions, the original industry partners dropped out and a glider was lost at sea. Through it all, the team was driven by the promise of better carbon dioxide measurements in Alaska’s oceans and globally. Hauri found creative ways to juggle the work challenges while giving birth to twins at the project start and raising her young family.
“I realize how many data gaps we still have, and those data gaps need to be filled,” said Hauri. “If it were easy, someone else would have done it already, but that’s the fun part.”
Collaboration — Supporting Alaska leaders
New report aids Alaska’s energy decision-making
IARC created a new report designed to aid state leaders as Alaska confronts a rapidly changing Arctic and the increasingly globalized North. The report was led by the Center for Arctic Policy Studies at IARC and included contributions from experts across the University of Alaska system.
The first in a series of four, Alaska’s Changing Arctic focuses on energy issues and trends most likely to require action by the Alaska Legislature in the near future.
IARC and UA plan to produce a new report annually, each focusing on a key Arctic issue and tailored to the most pressing needs of the state at the time. The reports will not make recommendations, instead leaving that task to policymakers.
“As a global leader in Arctic research, policy development and leadership, the university system is uniquely positioned to provide essential information to the state’s leaders and all Alaskans,” said UA President Pat Pitney. “This report, representing the breadth and depth of our Arctic expertise, illustrates how we can support state interests and policy initiatives, such as infrastructure and energy sustainability.”
The Alaska’s Changing Arctic reports provide Alaskans with accessible, concise and comprehensive information about relevant Arctic issues. Additional information is provided in viewer-friendly graphics. Read the first report.
Centered around Alaska’s Arctic Policy Act
The foundation for the reports is the state’s Arctic Policy Act of 2015, which lays out four priorities. The 32-page report released in January 2023 by IARC focuses on energy and addresses the first of those priorities: “promoting economic and resource development.”
The report covers four energy topics:
- The history of Alaska’s reliance on oil and the boom-bust impact on the state’s economy
- How Alaska currently produces energy and has become an expert in cold climate renewables and microgrids
- Energy infrastructure planning under rapidly changing environmental conditions
- Current competition and cooperation in the international Arctic energy regime
“This University of Alaska report provides a timely overview of trends and issues affecting energy production and use in the state,” said Hajo Eicken, IARC director.
“Most importantly, the contributing experts from across the university provide depth and context,” he said. “Context matters in this case, since Alaska sits at the juncture of major environmental, economic and geopolitical trends, from the local to the global scale.”
Alaskans need clear information to make sound policy decisions, said Amy Lauren Lovecraft, director of the Center for Arctic Policy Studies.
“If Alaskans develop our Arctic policies in state, where we have the most knowledge of our changing environments and human needs, the resulting energy policy can be more effective than waiting for federal regulations or reacting to disastrous events,” she said.
This first report is a collaboration among the University of Alaska system office, the University of Alaska Southeast, the University of Alaska Anchorage and the UAA Institute of Social and Economic Research, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, including the Center for Arctic Policy Studies, the International Arctic Research Center, the Alaska Center for Energy and Power and the Department of Political Science.
New at IARC
IARC’s giant climate stripes boldly proclaim Arctic change
IARC is showing its stripes with a bold 40-foot-long hallway installation. The array of red and blue vertical bands makes a rainbow-like bar code representing Arctic temperatures from 1900 to 2021.
Bluer bands mean the temperature was cooler than the 1900-2021 average in a given year, while red means warmer than average. The color shade corresponds to the rank of each year, from the coldest to the warmest.
The trend in the Arctic is remarkable. Every year since 1992 shows red, meaning that annual temperatures have been above average for nearly three decades.
Such climate stripes, sometimes called warming stripes, have made a big splash internationally. They represent a movement to acknowledge climate change and work together to find solutions. During the past two years, IARC has passed out over 2,000 climate-stripe stickers showing temperature data from communities like Utqiaġvik, Nome and Fairbanks, all in Alaska, and Tromsø, Inuvik and Nuuk in other Arctic countries. People report that the tool makes talking about climate change in the Arctic easier.
Anyone is welcome to see the Arctic climate stripes at IARC on the fourth floor of the UAF Akasofu Building. We are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Our scientists hope visiting decision-makers, reporters, students and others will use the stripes to talk about the changing Arctic and be inspired to make a difference for its future.
Help us make a difference
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing Alaska today. Arctic residents experience a near constant barrage of new threats, from severe weather extremes, to failing infrastructure and changing subsistence resources. Climate research can give communities, agencies and private enterprise an advantage to better understand and address climate change impacts. Sound climate modeling and localized data can help Alaskans be proactive about the future.
In 2021, IARC research supplied climate data and tools that make it easier to design Alaska infrastructure to withstand the future climate. We helped coastal communities facing relocation access local climate data and develop informed adaptation plans. Our citizen scientists contributed critical information to make life along Alaska rivers safer.
You can come alongside our team of world renowned scientists, talented staff and forward thinking students by supporting research that makes a difference in the lives of Alaskans. Consider making a donation to our new fund, Alaska Climate Research Makes a Difference Fund. With your support, IARC scientists can:
- Nimbly respond to needs of Alaskans adapting to climate change
- Build strong collaborative relationships with Indigenous communities, private sector, agency partners and policy makers
- Bring trusted climate change information to public venues
- Engage students in meaningful climate change research