please note: this is an entry for the official Barrow Sea Ice Course Blog. Please check it out and follow along during the course!

Our friends and neighbors down south are enjoying the warm sunny days of spring, but here in Barrow the ground is still covered with a thick blanket of snow. At least, most of it is. In some places, the snow has melted away and left mud puddles in its place. A generation or two ago, this mud would have seemed strange because it was too warm, too early. Now it is becoming the new normal.

And as the weather changes the people are learning to adapt — they have to. A combination of unseasonably warm weather (i.e. above freezing) and strong winds have already led to several unusual events this winter where large pieces of ice broke off near shore and floated off into the horizon. In some places in town you can see open water from the beach — a sight so unusual for May that it has become a local attraction, with people stopping by the Gravel Pit to check out the open lead.

This afternoon we were on the ice demonstrating ice coring techniques. Shortly after we returned, there was a lot of chatter on the radios about the ice: it was cracking and shifting. Eventually a call went out to evacuate the ice, sending dozens of local whale hunters scrambling for shore. As the Arctic pack ice gets thinner and thinner over time — it's already lost about 70% of its volume — these kind of events will become more frequent. This is dangerous for the hunters and whalers who spend many hours on the ice pursuing their livelihoods. And they may not know it, but it is also dangerous for those enjoying the warm sunny days of spring in the south, who face a more uncertain climate future as the Arctic sea ice cover spirals down and Polar Amplification ramps up.

Tags:   barrow · field course · sea iceNo Comments.

10 years, last week. That’s when I first came to Barrow. Besides the fact that I was 10 years younger (10 years smarter?), a lot of things were different then — SARS was on our breath, Jean Charest had just come to power in Quebec, the iTunes store had just sold its first song, that guy in Utah who cut his own arm off was cutting off his own arm, and George W. Bush was just days from declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’ after a short-lived invasion of Iraq.

So what was I doing at ‘The Top of the World’? [or the USA, at least]. I had just started graduate school at the University of Washington, training to be an Astrobiologist. And so I was thrilled to be taking part in the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Europa Focus Group workshop, and to visit the Arctic for the very first time.

The workshop was amazing and really cemented in my mind my interest for Arctic research and its application to the search for life elsewhere in the Universe. [a fellow student kept a journal here: parts 1 2 3 4].

Unfortunately, time passes for everyone. Since 2003, two elders have passed away — one scientific and one local to the Barrow community. Ron Greeley and Arnold Brower, Sr. were both highly respected members of their communities — one a planetary geologist and the other a whaling captain and community leader. I met them both for the first time during the workshop and both were inspiring for their dedication and long years of work doing what they loved — in each case, telling stories — just from different perspectives.

Today, several instructors made a brief foray onto the ice to scope it out and plan the sampling scheme for the rest of the course. We’re planning on sampling a variety of ice types — thick ice with thick snow, rough ice, thick ice with no snow, and sediment-laden ice. Each will give students the opportunity to investigate ice formation processes and the relationships of biology to those processes.

Most of the students arrive tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to an amazing course. See you on the ice!

Tags:   alaska · barrow · field course · sea iceNo Comments.

Our paper has been accepted to Extremophiles after one round of peer review!

An inter-Order horizontal gene transfer event enables the catabolism of compatible solutes by Colwellia psychrerythraea 34H [PDF]

Conclusions– In a previous analysis of the genome of C. psychrerythraea 34H, a psychrophilic, halophilic marine bacterium, Methe et al. (2005) identified a duplicated operon encoding for heterotetrameric sarcosine oxidase (SoxBDAG), an enzyme involved in the catabolism of glycine betaine, a common osmoprotectant molecule. In the present genomic analysis we have identified this operon as the result of a horizontal gene transfer event. Molecular evolutionary estimates of important events in the adaptation of C. psychrerythraea 34H to compatible solute utilization appear to recapitulate the geological evolution of the polar regions. We have also demonstrated the genetic potential for C. psychrerythraea 34H to use both choline and glycine betaine as substrates for growth. Furthermore, we successfully grew C. psychrerythraea 34H on a medium containing sarcosine as the sole source of carbon and energy, which was then developed into SLV, a defined medium for the rapid growth of many Colwellia species. With these developments, Colwellia species, which previously could only be grown rapidly in Marine Broth, can be included in more defined and sophisticated studies of its strategies to survive and compete in extreme environments.

Tags:   accepted · bacteria · colwellia · compatible solutes · extremophiles · manuscript · publishing · scienceNo Comments.

Tags:   fairbanksNo Comments.

April 10, 2013
ConocoPhillips “has spent about $650 million” in pursuit of Arctic offshore oil drilling, but is now putting its plans on hold because of regulatory issues, so that “Shell basically will set the standard going forward.”

February 9, 2013
Dozens of demonstrators arrested in Montreal during disruption of Plan Nord job fair. Plan Nord is a project of the government of Quebec which intends to duplicate the economic development of the Albertan northern regions, with similarly little input from the Aboriginal population or citizen groups that fail to see “progress” as equating with “rampant environmental destruction.”

January 15, 2013
“A U.S. court in Alaska has overturned a federal rule aimed at protecting polar bear habitat in the Arctic, handing a victory to the oil and natural-gas industry.” Snarky commentary from Grist.org here –> “Polar bears may be cute, but the faces on dollar bills are a lot cuter.”

January 14, 2013
“According to the [Environmental Protection Agency], Shell’s self-reporting of emissions revealed both drilling vessels released excess nitrogen oxide, leading the EPA to conclude that Shell had “multiple permit violations for each ship” during the 2012 drilling.” Snarky commentary from Grist.org here –> “If Shell does manage to start extracting, it cannot be taxed on that oil because jobs.”

January 1, 2013
Shell oil drilling rig grounded in the Gulf of Alaska carrying 500,000 liters of diesel fuel. It was being towed from operations in the Beaufort Sea to Seattle for maintenance.

Tags:   accidents · alaska · arctic · oil industry · plan nord · pollution · quebec · spillsNo Comments.