2012 Season Plans

Alaskan glacier.  Photo by Todd Valentic.

All season plans are in Adobe PDF format. In order to view and print them you must have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software installed on your computer

Boelman -This project, a collaborative effort, will seek to determine how the increase in regional shrub abundance caused by atmospheric warming is affecting migratory songbird communities in the tundra. (94KB)

Bowden - This combined season plan documents work for the PI’s two grants, for the first one researchers will conduct stream sampling at a variety of sites around the Toolik area to describe and quantify seasonal fluxes of Phosphorous (P), Nitrogen (N), and Carbon (C) in river network systems—and to suggest how these may respond to changing climate and seasonality. For the second grant, 1065682 SCALER, research teams will use small-scale ecological experiments on streams at five major sites to understand how entire stream networks operate from scales of centimeters to kilometers. (81KB)

Briner - Investigators working on this collaboration will reconstruct past glacier changes in the northern Brooks Range, changes spanning from the last glacial maximum (~30-20 thousand years ago) through the 20th century. (122KB)

Cairns - This project will focus on patch-scale dynamics of arctic shrub expansion in Alaska by quantifying and modeling the changes in shrub cover. Researchers will use historical aerial photographs and interviews with Alaska community elders to identify these changes. (103KB)

Chapin - This project will document the current status and trends in ecosystem services in the Arctic and Boreal Forest; project future trends in these services; and assess the societal consequences of altered ecosystem services. (100KB)

Cory - Researchers on this collaboration will measure the photochemical and microbial processing of particulate and dissolved carbon that takes place when previously buried or frozen carbon in soils is released to surface waters. (69KB)

Eicken - January fieldwork for this collaborative sea ice study. (118KB)

Eicken - SIZONet efforts occurring March/April to January 2013.  (134B)

Deegan - Researchers on this 3-year collaboration between will examine the impact of changing seasonality on grayling migration and how that in turn affects the system-level function of aquatic ecosystems. To collect information for this study, the research team will work in the Kuparuk River system near Toolik Field Station, Alaska. (191KB)

Deming - For this study of frost flower microbiology, researchers will work in Barrow, Alaska. (92KB)

Dixon - This project is a continuation of the PI’s previous grant, NSF 0703980, and explores the PI’s hypothesis that the Americas may have been settled by coastal migration along the continental shelf of Southeastern Alaska.(55KB)

Dunton - Researchers on this collaboration will conduct a field-intensive study based out of Kaktovik, AK, designed to improve our understanding of how terrestrial inputs (i.e. freshwater runoff and organic matter contributions) influence biotic communities in coastal waters of the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. (114KB)

Golden - Researchers on this collaboration will monitor transport processes in sea ice. (120KB)

Harms - Researchers on this collaboration will investigate the influences of climate-driven hydrology patterns on biogeochemistry of water tracks draining arctic tundra.(123KB)

Hinkel - This plan documents a collaborative study of Alaska's lakes called CALON. The 2012 plan involves 4 teams of researchers (Teams A, B, C, and E) in a long season of study. (377KB)

Howe - This interdisciplinary project will work in salmon-dependent Yup'ik and Koryak communities on opposite sides of the Bering Strait. (67KB)

Hu - Researchers on this collaboration will develop high-resolution proxy records of climate, vegetation, and fire from three regions in Alaska. (182KB)

Juhl - Researchers on this collaboration will conduct experiments in Barrow, Alaska, to better understand the sinking rate and nutritional quality of organic particulates released from pools in melting sea ice. (84KB)

Kaufman - This grant supports a collaborative project that will test the hypothesis that decadal- to millennial-scale climate change across southern Alaska is manifested as a shift in the overall strength and position of the Aleutian Low. (182KB)

Lipson - Researchers on this project will look at anaerobic respiration in peat soils. Over the course of three long field seasons, researchers will work near Barrow, Alaska, to study and sample these soils from drained thaw lake basins that differ in structure and age. (77KB)

Lougheed - This project’s researchers will visit Barrow, Alaska to continue and potentially extend a study of tundra ecology that originated in 1971 with NSF funding. (109KB)

Mahoney - Researchers on this collaboration will develop a video system capable of identifying features of the ice cover and reconstructing 3-D sea-ice morphology. (113KB)

Mayer - This grant funds multibeam mapping and bottom-sampling cruises aboard the USCGC Healy from 2008 to 2012. The investigations should help shed light on the full extent of the continental shelf of the United States, consistent with international law. For the 2008-2011 cruises, around 35 US scientists aboard the Healy will work in concert with Canadian investigators aboard the Canadian icebreaker Louis S- St. Laurent. In 2012 the HEALY will work on its own. (339KB)

McGraw - For this project, a team of scientists from five colleges/universities will assemble to re-census two reciprocal transplant gardens of two important arctic plant species: Dryas octopetala and Eriophorum vaginatum. (73KB)

O'Brien - This season plan documents the researchers cellular biology experiments on fish harvested from Kashwitna Lake, Alaska. To collect samples, the PI will annually travel to the lake, about 250 miles south of Fairbanks. As part of this project the PI will partner with the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) at UAF to train both graduate and undergraduate students, with an emphasis on involving Alaska Native students. In addition to the sampling trip, in years 3–5 of the grant, the PI and one field team member will make three short trips (2-3 days each) per year to Alaska Native villages to conduct outreach. (97KB)

Oberbauer This collaboration is a renewal of ITEX research previously funded under lead grant 0632277. The PIs will continue ITEX measurements (and introduce novel “info-mechanical” systems to the research) at ITEX plots established at Barrow, Atqasuk, Toolik, and Imnavait Creek, Alaska, and Thule Greenland. (79KB)

Oberbauer - Barrow specific support for the above ITEX research.  (141KB)

O'Rourke -For this IPY collaboration, scientists will document geographic patterns of genetic variation in both prehistoric and modern human populations along the North Slope of Alaska; further, they will assess how the ancient residents of arctic Alaska are related to contemporary Inupiaq populations throughout the Arctic. (167KB)

Paytan - With this proof-of-concept project, the PI seeks to evaluate the role of Subterranean Groundwater Discharge (SGD) as a conduit for methane gas release from permafrost melt to the coastal Arctic Ocean and the atmosphere. (125KB)

Peteet - Researchers on this collaboration will conduct a study of carbon accumulation in arctic peatlands at Toolik Field Station, Alaska. (70KB)

Rasic -This grant supports archaeological excavations at a remote site, called Raven Bluff, in northwestern Alaska located 30 miles north of the village of Kivalina and 30 miles west of the Red Dog Mine. (265KB)

Romanovsky - With this grant, the researchers will extend their Thermal State of the Permafrost project with continuing measurements at sites in Alaska, Canada, and Russia. (78KB)

Shaver -This project, a study of regional changes in the carbon cycle as a result of wildfire, will continue work started under the PI’s previous grant, NSF 0632139. (139KB)

Shaver - This season plan covers CPS support for two projects led by Gus Shaver: the Toolik Field Station (TFS) –based Long Term Ecological Research effort, and the Arctic Observing Network collaboration, which fields teams at TFS and the Northeast Science Station, near Cherskii, in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia. (138KB)

Shepson - This project’s researchers will make measurements of molecular halogens and halogen oxide radicals from a heated building northeast of the town of Barrow, Alaska. (113KB)

Shiklomanov - The Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring Network (CALM), established in the early 1990s, observes the long-term response of the active layer and near-surface permafrost to changes and variations in climate at more than 125 sites the world over. (171KB)

Shur - This research integrates field sampling, remote sensing, and modeling to evaluate the nature and extent, dynamics, and consequences of ice-wedge degradation in Arctic ecosystems. (151KB)