It has been a long, but productive and enjoyable trip to
Alaska. In the last 10 days, we've landed in Prudhoe Bay and driven south on the
Dalton Highway; we've learned about the Toolik Lake field station in Interior
Alaska and benefited from insights from our NSF-sponsored colleagues; we've
flown beyond the Arctic Circle and worked in Barrow on the North Slope; and
we've conducted field research outside of Nome on the Seward Peninsula. That
covers a tremendous north-south gradient in latitudes and reinforces the great
diversity of terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska.
Experiencing that diversity first-hand and in a timeframe
that spans slightly more than a week emphasizes the many challenges we face in
modeling important feedbacks between Arctic ecosystems and climate. We must
take measurements to inform models of current climates and also do so such that
we can represent model-based predictions of future climates. This is not be
easy undertaking, but it is an important one if we are to improve climate
simulations and potential impacts of future climates on what we believe are
globally important, sensitive, and poorly understood high-latitude ecosystems.
This is both the challenge and the opportunity being tackled by the NGEE Arctic
team.
As we depart Anchorage, bound for Knoxville, I upload the
following pictures for what has been a rewarding trip to Alaska. My thanks to
Rich, Dan, Guido, Victoria, Santonu, and Jenny; we had our share of long days
and late nights. By the way, I'll be back in Barrow in two weeks; keep an eye
out and an ear open for more thoughts from the tundra...
