Biologists Study Alaska Bugs’ ‘Antifreeze’
May 8, 2003

NASA Rockets to Explore Northern Lights Next Week
February 13, 2003

Cretaceous Park
Originally published in Scientific American, December 2002

From a bluff-side vantage point 500 feet above the braids and twists of Alaska's Colville River, we notice that a line of brush along a distant gravel bed is, in fact, moving. "Caribou," someone says--hundreds of them, in fact, surging along the river in an improbably large, swirling mass. For expedition leader Anthony R. Fiorillo, it's enough to prompt a paleontological daydream: What if, 70 million years ago, a similar grouping of dinosaurs had passed this way?

(Free excerpt available at Scientific American Online, but downloading entire story requires payment.)

In places, dried mud crumbles beneath our touch. In others, it gives way to boot-suckingly fresh muck. All the while, the river surging below makes it clear there is little room for error.
Shortly before 10 a.m., we reach the top of the bluff and are rewarded with a rapturous view: The Colville slices deeply through the tundra, leaving behind a corrugated pattern of steep, eroding bluffs like the one we just summitted. Spread behind us is an endless expanse of tundra. We’re gasping for air and sucking down water, exhausted — but expedition leader Tony Fiorillo, 44, is exhilerated.
“Welcome to the northernmost horned-dinosaur bone bed in the world,” he announces. “Actually, that’s not true,” he corrects with a grin, “-there’s another one around the corner.”
He’s practically giddy.

(Heartland magazine, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, August 25, 2002)

Copyright 2004 Alaskawriter LLC

Student project leads to
new view of permafrost

INTRO: Federal water researchers involved in a comprehensive study of the Yukon River recently concluded two years of water sampling cruises to see how the river is responding to melting permafrost. Their results will be published in about a month.
But one of the project's earliest discoveries has come with the help of a group of Alaska schoolchildren who live on the river's banks. Sonya Senkowsky visited with students at Eagle Community School earlier this year.

(APRN Statewide Alaska News, Oct. 11, 2003)

Testing the Waters
of the Yukon

EAGLE, ON THE YUKON RIVER — Some lines of scientific inquiry are so evocative, their pursuits so dramatic, they inspire drama, fantasy and fiction. From paleontology came "Jurassic Park"; archaeology, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"; volcanology, the movie "Volcano."

This is less likely to happen with water quality fieldwork.

That’s my line of thought as I enter my second or third (or is it sixth?) hour in a small boat on the Yukon River with U.S. Geological Survey water scientists Paul Schuster and Dusty Langley.

(Heartland magazine, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, July 13, 2003)

Text and photo copyright 2004 AlaskaWriter LLC

•1st Place, Personality Profile, Alaska Press Women 2004 Communications Contest

Gangloff’s Gang

As three Army Chinook helicopters came in for a landing across from the soccer field, players stopped their game midkick and passing motorists pulled over to gawk. Though it’s not rare to see military aircraft above Fairbanks, it is unusual to see them land in the middle of the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. Even as rotor wash bent nearby spruce trees nearly in half, onlookers remained rooted. Unbeknownst to the awed spectators, the real wonder was aboard the aircraft: a treasure trove of fossils from above the Arctic Circle, shepherded by Alaska’s No. 1 dinosaur defender, Roland Gangloff.

(Alaska magazine, August 2003)

Text and photo copyright 2004 AlaskaWriter LLC

Land of Little Sticks

Set aside for a moment images of the lush, temperate rain forests of Southeast Alask —home of the Tongass— where the growth of towering cedars is measured in centuries.

There is another kind of Alaska forest, this one crisscrossed by burn scars and floodplains, shaped by lightning strikes, wind and campers’ fires as well as by frozen ground and the gnawing of winter-starved animals. In some places it is dominated by scrawny spruce no taller than a person. In others, it might open into a wild rose garden under a canopy of birch. But despite what may appear to be vulnerability or delicate beauty, it is a place that endures destruction and often embraces it in order to thrive.

Welcome to the boreal forest.

(Alaska magazine, July 2002)

Copyright Sonya Senkowsky 2002

As we gain on them, I don’t need to strain my eyes to recognize the two white bodies rising and falling close in front of us in slow, purposeful arcs. More evocative of large dolphins than whales, the animals slide in and out of the water steadily, mottled backs working the water like marble pistons. We pursue them for maybe 15 minutes, until they find water deep enough to hide their wakes as they swim away.

They disappear like ghosts.

(Alaska magazine, Feb. 2002)

Copyright Sonya Senkowsky 2002
Download pdf here.

A Burning Interest
in Boreal Forests

Here in Delta Junction, a stand of black spruce once cut a classic postcard profile against the snow-capped backdrop of the Alaska Range. But in 1999, it burned in the Donnelly Flats wildfire, a blaze that consumed 18,000 acres of forest. What's left looks like a field of oversized matchsticks, the trees’ characteristically cone-heavy tops charred and curled into giant, burned-out match heads. A once moss-cushioned forest floor remains coated in ash.

(BioScience magazine, Nov. 2001)

Full text of this article is available online in Bioscience archives, but there is a charge to download it. Link to publication is for information purposes only.

Alaska’s Thorny Future

State of the Sea

Wimpy Walruses

Morels

Alaska Fire Research

(Arctic Science Journeys radio: Script and sound files available by clicking above links)

Deep Dive

When Jules Verne wrote '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' in the late 1800s, he conjured up a terrible beast to lure his characters into the hostile, watery abyss.

In 1999, marine geologist Peter Lonsdale needs no imaginary monster to draw him below. He knows precisely the undersea drama lurking there.

Eyes Under the Sea

Some of the dozen or so Alaskans offered the unusual opportunity to take a ride in the sub last week had their doubts. Could this bobbing tub toy really transport them safely 500 feet beneath the waves? And even so, was there anything worth seeing?

Alaska 1,000 Years Ago

As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Alaska 1,000 years ago was still shrouded in 'prehistory.' Despite more than 10,000 years of human inhabitation, invention and ingenuity, this northern land was still a secret shared only by the seminomadic people who lived here.

This was to be the millennium when that secret got out.

Live link to full text.

A Wild Life

Why would a scientist need a vet's help?

"The days of doing science by sitting on a rock with a pair of binoculars and a notebook are over," says Mulcahy.

Nowadays, taking measurements, implanting transmitters, and taking tissue samples are all a part of learning about wild animals. "To study them,'" he says, "you have to catch them.''

Wild Treats

Sharing foods has allowed Alaska Natives to make the most of local resources while eating balanced diets, crucial for those who live in the city, said Jeane Breinig, a UAA assistant professor who provided the herring eggs on hemlock branches from her freezer.

"We rely on it (sharing) in urban areas," she said. "It keeps us connected to home. It brings us together. It reminds us of our families."

Taken Too Soon

Shawn Adams dying of a heart attack didn't make sense.

At 6-foot-2, 190 pounds and still in his 30s, Shawn appeared fit. He ate low-fat foods, jogged three to five miles a day, lifted weights and took a daily vitamin pack. Once a smoker, he no longer let himself be seen with a cigarette. He'd gotten a high blood pressure problem under control without medication. He'd recently passed his latest workplace physical. He seemed healthier than most.

Just married in June, Shawn was a romantic who faxed love notes to his wife. He had a zest for life, said Christine. He was looking forward to turning 40, she said.

"He wanted to live forever."

He never made 39.

Owls

By the end of a long Alaska winter, birders are straining to hear the sounds that mean the arrival of spring: the quacks and honks of waterfowl, the warbles of songbirds and the cries of shorebirds, all returning "home." It can be a long wait. …

So what's a bored birder to do?

Some start looking for another harbinger of spring: the owl. That's right. Owls. The creatures that help put the ''hoo'' in Halloween also are among the earliest birds to warm the season with their songs.

Bounty of the Harvest

This seal will be shared in a new way.

A 5- or 6-pound shoulder of meat will go to the table of Cordova elders Fred and Rose Brizgaloff; they'll boil it with salt and eat it for dinner.

The seal's stomach will go to a scientist at the University of British Columbia to identify what's inside. ...

Totemoff will keep the pelt, have it tanned and turned into a parka or vest. He also will save a small piece of skin from the back of the seal's neck so a scientist in La Jolla, Calif., can extract and analyze its DNA.

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