Untapped Talent is a study of immigrants’ integration and inclusion in Anchorage with respect to education, employment, health care, access to public spaces, interactions with government agencies, social networks, and developing a sense of home. In this report, the term ‘immigrant’ is used for all people who moved from another country to the United States after their birth to live here indefinitely, including refugees, asylees, and asylum-seekers. The research team applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover the results. In this document, we share findings and summarize what may help immigrants feel more at home in Anchorage.

How healthy is the air in the villages during the summer fire seasons? Why does Fort Yukon always seem to be colder than the surrounding villages in winter and spring? How healthy is the air we breathe in our homes and workplaces? These are but a few of the questions asked by Alaska's Eastern Interior residential village's Indigenous Tribal Governments. A tribal-owned network of aerosol monitors and meteorological stations was installed at Ts'aahudaaneekk'onh Denh, Gwichyaa Zheh, Jałgiitsik, and Danzhit Khànlaj̜j̜ in the Yukon Flats, Alaska. To assess the exposure of residents in rural communities in the Yukon Flats to particulate matter of 2.5 [micro]m or less in diameter (PM2.5), both indoor and outdoor concentration observations were carried out from spring 2017 through to August 2019. Surface-based-temperature inversions occurred under calm wind conditions due to surface radiative cooling. In May, local emissions governed air quality with worst conditions related to road and river dust. As the warm season progressed, worst air quality was due to transport of pollutants from upwind wildfires. Absorption of solar radiation in the smoke layer and upward scattering enhanced stability and fostered the persistence of the surface-based-temperature inversions. Under weak large-scale forcing mountain-valley circulations develop that are driven by the differences in insolation. During the long dark nights, surface radiative cooling occurs in the near-surface layer of the mountain slopes of the Brooks, Ogilvie and White Mountains Ranges and at the bottom of the valley. Here surface-based-temperature inversion - known as roof-top inversions - form, while the cold air drains from the slopes. A frontal wedge forms when the cold air slides over the relatively colder air in the valley. Drainage of cold air from the Brooks Range governed the circulation and cold air pooling in the valley. At the site, which is closest to the mountains, concentrations marginally changed in the presence of temperature inversions. Indoor concentrations were measured at 0.61 m in homes and at 1.52 m heights both in homes and office/commercial buildings. Air quality was better at both heights in cabins than frame homes both during times with and without surface-based-temperature inversions. During summer indoor concentrations reached unhealthy for sensitive groups to hazardous conditions for extended times that even exceeded the high outdoor concentrations. Indoor and outdoor concentrations were strongest related for office/commercial buildings, followed by frame houses and cabins. These are but a few of the answers found in this research of meteorology effects, unhealthy locations for breathing PM2.5 air outdoors and in homes.

Research to date has suggested that both individual marine species and ecological processes are expected to exhibit diverse responses to the environmental effects of climate change. Evolutionary responses can occur on rapid (ecological) timescales, and yet studies typically do not consider the role that adaptive evolution will play in modulating biological responses to climate change. Investigations into such responses have typically been focused at particular biological levels (e.g., cellular, population, community), often lacking interactions among levels. Since all levels of biological organisation are sensitive to global climate change, there is a need to elucidate how different processes and hierarchical interactions will influence species fitness. Therefore, predicting the responses of communities and populations to global change will require multidisciplinary efforts across multiple levels of hierarchy, from the genetic and cellular to communities and ecosystems. Eventually, this may allow us to establish the role that acclimatisation and adaptation will play in determining marine community structures in future scenarios.

Increased anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 concentrations have resulted in ocean warming and alterations in ocean carbonate chemistry, decreasing seawater pH (ocean acidification). The combination of ocean warming and acidification (OWA) may alter trophic interactions in marine benthic communities along the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). Abundant and diverse macroalgae–grazer assemblages, dominated by macroalgae (e.g. chemically defended Desmarestia anceps and D. menziesii) and gammarid amphipods (e.g. Gondogeneia antarctica), occur on the nearshore benthos along the WAP. In the present study, the amphipod G. antarctica and macroalgae D. anceps and D. menziesii were exposed for 39 and 79 d, respectively, to combinations of current and predicted near-future temperature (1.5 and 3.5°C, respectively) and pH (8.0 and 7.6, respectively). Protein and lipid levels of macroalgal tissues were quantified, and 5-way choice amphipod feeding assays were performed with lyophilized macroalgal tissues collected at time zero and following exposure to the 4 temperature-pH treatments. For D. anceps, we found a significant interactive temperature-pH effect on lipid levels and significantly lower protein levels at reduced pH. In contrast, tissues of D. menziesii exhibited significantly greater lipid levels after exposure to reduced pH, but there was no temperature effect on lipid or protein levels. Despite shifts in macroalgal biochemical composition, there were no changes in amphipod feeding preferences. Our results indicate that despite altered macroalgal nutritional quality under OWA, both macroalgae retained their ability to deter amphipod feeding. This deterrent capacity could become an important contributor to net community resistance of macroalgae−mesograzer assemblages of the WAP to predicted OWA.

The sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (order Camarodonta, family Strongylocentrotidae) can be found dominating low intertidal pool biomass on the southern coast of Oregon, USA. In this case study, three adult sea urchins were collected from their shared intertidal pool, and the bacteriome of their pharynx, gut tissue, and gut digesta, including their tide pool water and algae, was determined using targeted high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of the 16S rRNA genes and bioinformatics tools. Overall, the gut tissue demonstrated Arcobacter and Sulfurimonas (Epsilonproteobacteria) to be abundant, whereas the gut digesta was dominated by Psychromonas (Gammaproteobacteria), Propionigenium (Fusobacteria), and Flavobacteriales (Bacteroidetes). Alpha and beta diversity analyses indicated low species richness and distinct microbial communities comprising the gut tissue and digesta, while the pharynx tissue had higher richness, more closely resembling the water microbiota. Predicted functional profiles showed Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) Level-2 categories of energy metabolism, membrane transport, cell motility, and signal transduction in the gut tissue, and the gut digesta represented amino acid, carbohydrate, vitamin and cofactor metabolisms, and replication and repair. Co-occurrence network analysis showed the potential relationships and key taxa, such as the highly abundant Arcobacter and Propionigenium, influencing population patterns and taxonomic organization between the gut tissue and digesta. These results demonstrate a trend of microbial community integration, allocation, predicted metabolic roles, and taxonomic co-occurrence patterns in the S. purpuratus gut ecosystem.

For many historical and contemporary experimental studies in marine biology, seawater carbonate chemistry remains a ghost factor, an uncontrolled, unmeasured, and often dynamic variable affecting experimental organisms or the treatments to which investigators subject them. We highlight how environmental variability, such as seasonal upwelling and biological respiration, drive variation in seawater carbonate chemistry that can influence laboratory experiments in unintended ways and introduce a signal consistent with ocean acidification. As the impacts of carbonate chemistry on biochemical pathways that underlie growth, development, reproduction, and behavior become better understood, the hidden effects of this previously overlooked variable need to be acknowledged. Here we bring this emerging challenge to the attention of the wider community of experimental biologists who rely on access to organisms and water from marine and estuarine laboratories and who may benefit from explicit considerations of a growing literature on the pervasive effects of aquatic carbonate chemistry changes.

In the last decade, the ocean has absorbed a quarter of the Earth’s greenhouse gas emissions through the carbon (C) cycle, a naturally occurring process. Aspects of the ocean C cycle are now being incorporated into climate change mitigation and adaptation plans. Currently, too little is known about marine vertebrate C functions for their inclusion in policies. Fortunately, marine vertebrate biology, behavior, and ecology through the lens of C and nutrient cycling and flux is an emerging area of research that is rich in existing data. This review uses literature and trusted data sources to describe marine vertebrate C interactions, provides quantification where possible, and highlights knowledge gaps. Implications of better understanding the integral functions of marine vertebrates in the ocean C cycle include the need for consideration of these functions both in policies on nature-based climate change mitigation and adaptation, and in management of marine vertebrate populations.