Northern News from a Massive Conference

Hubbard is one of a few Alaska glaciers that scientists have said will continue to advance regardless of how much air temperatures warm, because it has so much ice to deliver from up high in the mountains. Twice in the past thirty-four years, Hubbard has shoved itself into Gilbert Point, damming Russell Fiord until the rising water burst a new channel to the ocean.

A few weeks before the conference, Fahnestock noticed a bite out of the broad face of Hubbard Glacier when viewed from a satellite. This “embayment” is similar to what scientists saw in Columbia Glacier just before its twelve-mile retreat from the sea that began in the 1980s. Glaciologists called that a catastrophic retreat.

Fahnestock said the missing chunks of ice at the face of Hubbard Glacier might be evidence of a very strong year of melt having formed a subglacial river that causes even more melting underneath.

“That image suggests the first sign of weakness for that glacier,” Fahnestock said at a press conference in San Francisco.

Burned areas hold less snow

In the twenty years I have roamed the cavernous poster halls at the meeting, the average age of the scientist I’ve seen standing in front of a poster has been about forty. This year, I was surprised to see Adeline Hiemstra, a fourteen-year-old eighth grader.

Hiemstra, who goes to Randy Smith Middle School in Fairbanks, credited her parents, Theresa Kay and Chris Hiemstra (a snow ecologist) for inspiring her to submit her study to the American Geophysical Union’s Bright Stars program. The program allows kids to present at the conference without paying the fee adult scientists pay.

Each fall Hiemstra and her family pick blueberries in the hills near Nome Creek, Alaska. Looking around at the burned-matchstick forests of black spruce and other unburned hillsides, she wondered if the bare forest would hold more or less snow compared to healthy forests with tree needles intact. She wanted to see if blueberry crops were different in either type of landscape.

She set out cameras in both a burned forest and an unburned one, to help her measure snow using graduated sticks that were in the camera frame. She found that burned forests held less snow during the winter, and burned areas melted out sooner in one of the three years she monitored. She did not have enough information to relate the sites to blueberry production.

Why did a teenager do a science project that involved swatting bugs, feeling the sting of cold wind, and investing lots more time than just her school homework?

“Because it’s fun,” she said in San Francisco. “I could do the research and figure it out for myself. I didn’t have to rely on other people’s opinions. You have the facts and data right in front of your face.”