Faculty
I’m interested in glacier behavior and its effect on records of past climate. My current University of Maine dissertation research deals with surface melt in alpine glacier accumulation zones. I work on understanding the processes of meltwater formation and percolation into the snow and firn, and their subsequent influence on climate records recorded in glacial ice. This combines geophysical methods and remote sensing to study surface melt on glaciers in the St. Elias Mountains (Yukon, Canada), just over the border from McCarthy. In the Wrangells field studies program, I bring my background in glaciers and meltwater dynamics and apply some of the concepts to the local landscape in the Kennicott Valley. Topics I’m interested in digging into include glacier surface albedo and melt rates, the relationship between air temperature and surface melt, and the variation of temperature, humidity and wind in the first several meters of air overlying the glacier surface.
In addition to studying some really incredible landscapes and systems, I’m also excited about getting other people out there learning about and playing in them! In the past, that has included instructing on field courses in Alaska and the Yukon, and guiding glacier hikes for a couple summers in McCarthy. The Wrangells are a special corner of the world and I’m looking forward to being back and exploring them with you all!
I’ve has been spending time in the McCarthy area since 2009 and believe in the power of this place to transform people. I often wonder how living in such a dynamic landscape full of melting glaciers and moving rivers affects the community here. I live in a cabin on the Nizina River and work as a science illustrator, artist, and educator. I love the way art can connect people with their surroundings and how different ways of communicating can explain elements of science. One of the best ways to learn is to draw something, and sketching is also a tool for curiosity and reflection. I enjoy working with place-based and hands-on environmental education and have worked with the Wrangell Mountains Center field studies programs as well as the Juneau Icefield Research Program and Inspiring Girls* Expeditions, and am a teaching artist with the Alaska Artist in Schools program. My academic focuses are on field sketching and science communication.
I’ve has also worked as a guide, leading backpacking trips and glacier day hikes in the Wrangell-St. Elias. I love the opportunity to go on multi-week backcountry trips. I’m also on the board of local Emergency Medical Services and a volunteer with the Wrangell St Elias Search and Rescue team. I’ve has exhibited my work at the Alaska State Museum, Bunnell Street Arts Center, and at other galleries around Alaska, and have received multiple awards and grants to pursue my art and teaching. I’m currently writing a book about field sketching for Timber Press.
McCarthy rests beside a receding glacier, and as the climate of northern regions continues to warm rapidly, the wider Copper River Valley faces growing erosion, thawing permafrost, increasing wildfires, and vegetation community shifts that are implicated in the changing ranges and numbers of animals like caribou that have long been crucial to regional subsistence. This landscape has always been dynamic though, as can be learned from listening keenly to these places and the people who call them home. Ecological, geological, glacial/periglacial, and social processes have been interplaying for millennia and longer here, forming a system much greater and more complex than the sum of its parts. I study Arctic systems science at the University of Maine, and for my PhD research I use paleoecology approaches to take a long-term perspective on ecosystem dynamics and landscape changes. I focus on the roles grazing herbivores (like caribou and sheep), vegetation, people, and climate play in alpine/tundra ecosystems. The Wrangells are an inspiring region ideal to experience and learn from these interacting processes, and I’m excited to do so alongside our students in the field this summer.
Before I began my research, I had been working as staff at the Wrangell Mountains Center, helping to run art, science, and naturalism programs while keeping the Old Hardware Store’s off-grid facilities operating. I’m excited to return now as the program coordinator for Field Studies, and to explore how place-based education and community-based research can work hand-in-hand to create locally-engaged interdisciplinary research programs.
In summer, at my home in a meadow on Porphyry Mountain near Kennecott, I hear ice collapsing, though recently it is quieter, because the glacier filling the valley floor below has melted so much. The meadow was formed by forest fire spreading up from the railroad tracks, when the copper mines were operating a century ago. After, grasses and flowers made sod, preventing tree reestablishment. Above the meadow, birch and spruce roots intertwine, appearing to share nutrients via mycorrhizal networks. I wonder, do they? How can I know? My career has centered on teaching college students in these mountains. My Berkeley environmental planning masters thesis was about management options for Wrangell-St. Elias. My PhD dissertation included a footnoted novel about this place. I lobbied a decade for congressional protection of Alaska wildlands. I train in the peacemaking martial art of Aikido and have practiced meditation with Thich Nhat Hanh. I avidly devour Wrangells geoscience academic papers. Now I am most interested in relationships between complexity theory, science and religion. And how to live well in a world transforming with climate change. What may my experience offer young people facing this challenge? Actually, more this: What does this place, my home, have to offer? How can I be a guide to that?
For summer 2024, I’m excited about our emphasis on material and energy flows. I’m reminded of Indra’s Net, the Vedic image of interconnectedness, in the Wrangells, the way it expresses at multiple time and space scales, the similarity of braided stream channels incised today in periglacial sand – I can cover them with my hand – with the huge braided Chitina River, incised into two hundred million years of Wrangellia bedrock overlain with multi-millenia of river, lake and ice-borne sediments. When students understand this – and they do! – I’ve seen their lives change forever.
Wrangell Mountains Center Field Studies Program Oversight Committee:
Jack Holt
https://www.lpl.arizona.edu/faculty/jack-holt
Timothy Bartholomaus
Nathan Anderson
https://www.alaskapacific.edu/people/nathan-anderson/
Jon Erdman, Executive Director, Wrangell Mountains Center
https://www.wrangells.org/staff
Sally Gibert, President, Wrangell Mountains Center