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TOBACCO SALES
Ancient beavers, sea floor bumps, thick air
Ned Rozell
It’s time to start emptying the notebook following the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which happened from Dec. 9-13, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
More than 25,000 scientists shared their work during those five days. Here is a sampling.
Where have beavers been? Neve Baker of the University of Minnesota uses ancient traces of DNA in pond sediments to determine if beavers have lived in a place. Last year, she found signs that beavers were present 7,500 years ago in a pond within Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Beavers don’t live there now.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials are interested in stocking some areas with beavers to help restore wetlands
and provide more fire resiliency.
Baker hopes to visit Alaska in 2025 and sample northern lakes. Baker would like to try her technique to see when beavers may have been present in extreme northern wetlands thousands of years ago.
A mysterious bump on the Alaska sea floor.
Kendal Hobbs of Oregon State University stood by her poster one afternoon with the hope that educated passers-by could help her identify a 400-foot lump she and others noticed on the sea floor beneath the Gulf of Alaska.
The bump might be a seamount (an underwater mountain often formed by a volcano), a mound caused by earthquake action, or maybe even debris kicked up by a meteorite strike. She and her colleagues imaged the underwater hill while aboard the University of Alaska
ship Sikuliaq in summer 2024.
Those who visited Hobbs’ poster were also a bit puzzled.
“We have no idea what it is — that’s what makes it a good story,” said Sean Gulick of the University of Texas at Austin.
By the end of several hours talking with passers-by in the massive poster hall at the Walter Washington Convention Center, Hobbs had not come up with an answer for what she calls “Sikuliaq Knoll.”
“Everyone I’ve talked to for the past four hours has a different idea,” she said. “I came away with a lot less clarity.”
Smoke ’em if you got ’em. Living in downtown Fairbanks, Alaska, is like smoking a cigarette a day during the town’s worst airquality days in midwinter.
Winter temperature inversions — in which warmer air sits atop stagnant cold air — create conditions during which Fairbanks air is thick with tiny particles, reported Manabu Shiraiwa of the University of California, Irvine.
Shiraiwa visited Fairbanks in January and February of 2022 to sample the city’s air during a campaign with UAF researchers. Team members felt temperatures of minus 40 as they monitored air outside in downtown Fairbanks. They also measured air inside local homes.
Team members were able to detect when people fired up their woodstoves during ex-
treme cold weather and how particulate matter from cars increased in overall percentage when the temperature warmed. Though not as bad as air quality in urban China, Fairbanks air was worse than most cities in the United States.
“Fairbanks people — even if they were not smoking — were breathing the equivalent of (up to) one cigarette daily,” Shiraiwa said of the worst days.
He also said that indoors often offered no escape due to particles that escaped wood and pellet stoves.
“Indoor air quality can be even worse than outdoors when people are burning wood,” Shiraiwa said.
This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
Fairbanks research
Photo by Ned Rozell.
Kendal Hobbs tried to find the origin of an undersea mountain while she was at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. in December 2024.
Photo by Ned Rozell. Neve Baker stands beside her poster on discovering ancient evidence of beavers in Grand Tetons National Park while she was at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. in December 2024.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
Fairbanks air quality is at its worst on still days like this one on January 27, 2024.
Fun and Games Fun and Games
AT THE RINK WORD SEARCH
Find the hidden words in the puzzle
CROSSWORD
Find the words hidden vertically, horizontally, diagonally, and backwards DISCIPLINE EDGE FLIP HOCKEY ICE JUMP LIFT NOVICE PROGRAM RINK ROLLER SEASON SINGLES SKATING SPEED SPIN WARMUP ZAMBONI
AXEL BLADE BREAKAWAY CHECK COAST COMPETITION
WORD SEARCH ANSWER
SUDOKU
(Level - Easy)
The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9 only one time each.
ACROSS
1. Hand (Spanish)
5. Siskel and __, critics
10. Seaman
12. Chemical weapon
14. One who eliminates
16. They precede C
18. Baseball stat
19. Americans’ “uncle”
20. Cassia tree
22. Surround
23. Crisp and Pebbles are two
25. A sudden very loud sound
26. Affirmative
27. Disadvantage
28. Corpuscle count (abbr.)
30. OJ trial judge
31. New York art district
33. Become more bleak
35. Upstate NY city
37. Clarified butters
38. One who witnesses
SUDOKU ANSWER
CROSSWORD ANSWER
40. Condemn
41. __ juris
42. Natural
44. Prohibit
45. Swiss river
48. Greek war god
50. 5 iron
52. New Zealand mountain parrot
53. Scandinavian surname
55. Follows sigma
56. Doctor of Education
57. Spanish be
58. One that feeds on bugs
63. Tooth issue
65. Get into
66. Lumps of clay
67. Overly studious student DOWN 1. Variety of Chinese 2. Boxing’s GOAT 3. Japanese classical theater
Prayer
Inspire with love
Ballplayers’ accessory 7. Retailer payment system 8. More raw 9. Atomic #81
13. Sea dweller
15. Resinlike substance secreted by certain insects
17. Businessmen
18. Rest here please (abbr.)
21. Loud devices
23. Make a soft murmuring sound
24. One point west of due south
27. Trout 29. Type of grass 32. South American plant 34. Letter of the Greek alphabet 35. Not secure 36. Traveler 39. Sweet potato 40. Period after sunrise and before sunset 43. Some are choppy 44. Asian country 46. Genus of mosquitoes 47. Cool!
49. Shrill, wailing sound 51. A baglike structure in a plant or animal 54. Within 59. Unhappy 60. Decorate a cake with frosting
61. Videocassette recorder
62. Largest English dictionary (abbr.)
64. It cools a home
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Hi Kids! Let your creativity flow onto the page. Have Fun and Enjoy!
Name: Age: Community:
Email: Phone:
Parents - Please help your child legibly write their name. Use crayons or colored pencils. Please NO GLITTER. Submissions must be received by January 17th, 2025. Mail entries to: GreatLander, 3110 Spenard Road, Anchorage, AK 99503 Space permitting, submissions of this coloring page will be shown in the February 2025 GreatLander.
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Meia Age 11, Noorvik
Randy Sergie Age 8, Napaskiak
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Roman Dennis Age 3, Bethel
Oscar Chelmo Age 9, Kodiak
Sable Age 11, Healy
