Outside of Deadhorse, we drove through fields that provide oil which flows through the trans-Alaska pipeline to Valdez. Oliktok is northwest of Deadhorse, and I was told it is the farthest north you can drive in North America. Oliktok Point is a spit of land that juts into the ocean, and the US Air Force maintains a radar site for scanning the skies along the northern coast. The radar site was built during the Cold War, and is one of several such sites scattered along the coasts of Alaska.

Oliktok is much different than either Deadhorse or Kaktovik (a town farther east on the Alaska coast). The radar site is normally operated by crews of 2 people, but rooms and meals can be provided for up to 12. An oil drilling facility is just down the coast, but this area feels much more isolated. The living quarters are in a single long, narrow building that seems like a ship on the inside. All visitors here are required to watch an informational video about polar bear safety. Polar bears are frequently seen in the area and in fact, a tragic attack occurred here in 1993. A polar bear broke through a closed window to attack a man sitting in the living space. The bear mauled the man and other people at the facility were forced to shoot it. You can read the full story here. Since then, precautions have been taken to make the facility safer, such as placing grating over the windows. Such an attack is an incredibly rare event, but serves as a reminder to use caution in the habitats of wild animals.

Skies were blue and temperatures climbed into the upper 60s (Fahrenheit) and maybe even 70s our first several days here. This unseasonable heat felt odd – I expected to be wearing a light winter coat rather than a t-shirt. Yesterday heavy fog and cooler temperatures returned. Hopefully skies will clear and we will be able to fly again tomorrow. The tundra is completely transformed from May, and summer is in full bloom.

A tundra-covered island off the coast, pocked with small ponds.

A large herd of caribou, grazing near piles of driftwood on the coast.

Thus far we have caught two adult females, each with twin male cubs. It is great to see bears again. After working with polar bears last August, last October, in the spring this year, and now seeing them again in August, I am beginning to get a better understanding of their annual patterns. For example, their fur is much thinner in August and many bears are still shedding heavily. By October, their fur was deeper, and by spring the fur was quite deep with very distinct layers of coarse guard fur and thick underfur.

Yvon Csonka, a professor at the University of Greenland and president of the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA), gave one of the Plenary Keynote talks on “Polar Societies and Cultures in a Changing World.” Among the variety of challenges facing polar societies mentioned by Csonka, is the melting permafrost and its effect on people who have been surviving in the Arctic for millennia. Csonka described small communities that have already been forced to leave their villages due to erosion caused by melting permafrost and because of a lack of sea-ice in summer. Csonka said currently these moves “Are not common, but will happen more and more in the future.”

Later, I pulled Csonka aside for a few minutes, and he elaborated on how climate change will affect people’s access to resources, especially animals like seals and caribou, which local people depend on for sustenance. Reductions in sea-ice have been devastating to seal populations since they require the ice for both birthing and weaning. When mother seals can’t find sea-ice, they are forced to give birth in the water and the pups drown. Even if they find ice to birth on, the sea-ice has been breaking up too fast and the pups don’t have time to wean before they are subjected to the freezing waters.

A young spotted seal.

The changing climate has caused serious problems for Caribou populations who require specific snow thickness and type of snow. “When the snow layer is thin and dry, Caribou can scrape at the snow to get to the lichen underneath,” Csonka said. “But, with increased precipitation-from climate change-there is an increase in snow and its wetter creating deadly conditions for caribou since the upper crust becomes too thick for the caribou to break through.” Despite these drastic problems, Csonka is hopeful that Arctic communities will successfully adapt to climate change, since they have been doing so for millennia.

Caribou on the tundra.

Stay tuned in the next few days to learn in more detail just how people, animals and the environment will cope and adapt in a changing polar environment.

COLVILLE RIVER, ALASKA– We awoke this morning to rain, wind, and 35? F temperatures. Immediately the remaining sampling lost most of its appeal, but we inhaled our coffee and oatmeal and staggered forth through the wet brush and tussock tundra. Though we are weary of the repetitive sampling, the ideas and importance of vegetation change in the arctic are still alive and inspiring.

For example, certain vegetation communities are more apt than others to foster alder shrub seedlings, and there is agreement between our observations on the ground and the sites identified as expanding or stagnant using the photos. This is a pattern we’ve observed, or moreso absorbed unavoidably, by traversing across and spending time in the various shrub communities. It is a visceral mode of learning that relies on observation and experience to reveal patterns and correlations, not unlike the development of indigenous knowledge. In that sense, I think all of us on the trip are getting a little flavor of indigenous knowledge by being out here and basing critical logistical decisions on wilderness properties like weather patterns, game migration routes, and vegetation patterns, much as the Inupiat have done for thousands of years. It strikes me that the Inupiat dependence on the landscape (and seascape) for survival fostered a close relationship between man and landscape, one that relied primarily on a catalogue of observed patterns.

Two bull caribou grazing, and several more lying down in the background.

But here’s the thing: Greenland really is green if one comes here at the right time to the right places. The Norse arrived during a particularly warm and green period in human history, an era called the Medieval Climate Optimum between the 8th and 13th centuries. The weather got less cooperative for farming and livestock rearing later during what’s known as the Little Ice Age (from the 16th to the early 19th century) and the Viking settlements in West and East Greenland died out. With recent warming, Greenland may be returning to the days of the early Norse settlers and I’ve read that farmers are growing broccoli in South Greenland. (We’re farther north and I didn’t see any food cultivation, except in window sills and greenhouses.)

A green Greenland.

We came to Kangerlussuaq at the height of summer, our own climate optimum, and found places out of town chockablock with green plants and life bursting at the seams. On the coastal margins, where most of Greenland’s terrestrial ecosystems and all its human communities outside of science camps exist, this Arctic habitat can be dense if not especially diverse. Plants and animals have adapted to their environment in robust ways, including mosquitoes that to our dismay can fly at temperatures approaching freezing, and Arctic Foxes and Hares that are perfectly happy in –40 degree C weather.

But things are changing here and it may become more difficult for Arctic species to adapt and survive. One consequence of climate change is that spring is arriving earlier now than in the past, a trend that can adversely affect iconic Arctic animals such as caribou. We learned about global warming and Arctic ecosystems during a nature hike outside Kanger with Henning Thing, a biologist from Denmark. In the 1970s, Henning came to Greenland to study caribou and more recently as an IPY research facilitator for the Danish Agency for Science, Technology, and Innovation.

Henning Thing.

On our hike, Henning pointed out a tiny, perfectly formed orchid that I did my best to photograph. We also came across a patch of crowberries, a tart black berry used here to flavor beer and delicious to eat straight from the bush (which we did). Henning said the berries were early and especially dense this year, along with other plants that have been budding and flowering two weeks earlier than they have during the past 14 years, when he first started coming to Greenland.

My attempt to photograph the orchid.

The result: a Greenland orchid.

Plants respond to warming temperatures by producing shoots, flowers and fruit earlier in the season. Animals, however, are typically cued by day length rather than temperature so increasingly plant and animal communities are getting out of step with each other. For female caribou, this can become a problem because the timing of their pregnancies and births has evolved to coincide with the first new leaves of spring. If they give birth after the first and most nutritious leaves have come and gone, the mother caribou might not receive enough calories and nutrients to produce rich milk for their calves.

This is just one of the consequences of global warming being actively investigated by biologists, glaciologists, and climate scientists here in Greenland.

The abundant, early crowberries.