Ice roads in Alaska, a form that connects people during the winter months, enable the importing of critical goods and accessibility to medical services. These ice roads span 100 miles or more and are subject to spatial and temporal safety variability during the shoulder seasons and unseasonal warm events of above-freezing temperatures. In this work, we explore using an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) coupled with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) to inspect ice thickness safety and the presence of subsnow liquid overflow, common during winter. We compared our UAS-based GPR with ground-based GPR and nearby ice coring. We found the UAS-based GPR biased compared to the ice cores and the ground-based GPR. Nonetheless, when accounting for this bias, the UAS-based GPR had an RMSE of 5 cm for an ice thickness of 20 to 60 cm. More work is needed to understand the root cause of the UAS-based GPR for measuring ice thickness. The UAS-based GPR also effectively mapped subsnow liquid overflow by measuring the radar return amplitude, which is particularly strong when reflecting between the snow and water layers. Coupling UAS and GPR technology has great promise in conducting ice river safety assessments from a safe location. Still, more work must be done to understand the data’s bias.

Two Alaska sport fish species, burbot and northern pike, were used to test the ability to estimate carrying capacity of fishes based on biotic and abiotic indices of lake productivity. Understanding the quantitative relationships between the potential fish productivity of freshwater lakes and physical, biological, or chemical characteristics could provide models sufficient for calculating a timely prediction of carrying capacity to evaluate the population status. This would provide a technique for allocating limited resources for fishery stock assessment as an aide in resource management of sport fisheries. The lakes covered in the study lie in an area spanning West 151°--142°/North 64°30ʹ--61°52ʹ. They are Fielding Lake, George Lake, Glacier Lake, Harding Lake, Hudson Lake, Jatahmund Lake, Lake Louise, Landlocked Tangle Lake, Moose Lake, Paxson Lake, Sevenmile Lake, T Lake, Tolsona Lake, Volkmar Lake, and West Twin Lake.

Welcome to the Northwest Coast Hall. Reopened in 2022, it is the result of an intensive five-year collaboration between the Museum and ten advisors from the Indigenous cultural groups featured in the hall. This revitalized hall celebrates Indigenous worldview, artistry, cultural persistence, and the distinct practices and histories of the individual Nations along the Northwest Coast.

Sustainable Indigenous resource use reflects balance between animal populations and levels of human consumption, influenced by natural cycles of faunal abundance, community size and subsistence needs, procurement technologies, and the requirements of trade or commodity production. Sustainability is “epiphenomenal” when animal populations are preserved, and community needs met, without deliberate measures to prevent overharvesting. Alternatively, Indigenous conservation—cultural practices that moderate use of a resource to prevent its depletion—may play a determinative role. In this study from the Tlingit community of Yakutat, Alaska in the Northwest Coast cultural region, we interweave Indigenous and scientific perspectives to trace the use and conservation of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) from before Western contact through the Russian and American colonial periods to the present. Harbor seals, which concentrate in large numbers at a summer ice floe rookery near Hubbard Glacier, are the community's most important subsistence food and a key to its culture and history. The Smithsonian Institution and Yakutat Tlingit Tribe undertook collaborative research in historical ecology and archaeology in 2011–2014 including oral interviews with elders and subsistence providers, excavations at sealing sites, archaeofaunal analysis, historical and archival research, and consideration of climate cycles and biological regime shifts that influence the harbor seal population in the Gulf of Alaska. We compare technologies and hunting practices before and after Western contact, estimate harvest levels in different periods, and evaluate the effectiveness of traditional conservation practices that included hunting quotas enforced by clan leaders and the seasonal delay of hunting with firearms to prevent abandonment of the rookery by the seal herd.

Interest in farming kelps has grown beyond using kelp for food, feed or biofuels. There is considerable interest in generating biomass from seaweed for use in bioplastics and other products that would substitute for petroleum-derived products. For these uses to be viable, large amounts of biomass are needed. Very large kelp farms can be expensive to build and maintain, leading to the need to optimize the biomass per unit area. Although close spacing of growlines can lead to poor growth, a viable approach may be to grow two species of kelps together: one that hangs down and one that is buoyant, growing up. This system would increase the spacing in three dimensions. In Alaska, Saccharina latissima is commonly grown hanging down from longlines. One of the buoyant Alaskan kelps is Nereocystis luetkeana. Because there are commercial uses for wild-harvested Nereocystis in Alaska, we undertook a preliminary trial in Kodiak, Alaska, that grew both Saccharina and Nereocystis in the same longline array. Closely spaced lines were seeded the first week of February 2023 and set at 3 m below the surface. The arrays were harvested in late June 2023. Total yields were greatest on the combined arrays, followed by the Nereocystis only and Saccharina only arrays. Despite having 45% fewer grow-lines, the total yield of the Nereocystis on the combined arrays was statistically similar to the Nereocystis only arrays. These results may have significance for large scale macroalgal production.

The effects of plant architecture on browse selection and the extent of use of Salix alaxensis and Salix plantifolia by moose foraging in winter in Interior Alaska were studied during 1997 and 1998. Three sampling techniques were employed to estimate forage availability and utilization. Sampling forage availability prior to use (in autumn) provided the best estimates of forage use in spring. In Salix plantifolia, selection of current annual growth (CAG) twigs was significantly related to basal diameter of CAG, diameter of nearest neighbor, distance to nearest neighbor, and number of leaders per cluster. In contrast, CAG selection in Salix alaxensis was related only to basal diameter. The proportion of CAG biomass removed from stems of either species was not related to any measured plant architecture variables. Because plant architecture affects browse use by moose, it is an important factor in determining food availability, and thereby in assessing moose habitat