ABOUT THE ALASKA
SCIENCE CENTER
SCIENCE OFFICES
CONFERENCES
USGS ALASKA DATA RESOURCES
OTHER ALASKA AREA
SCIENCE OFFICES
|
Weekly Highlights for 10-12-2012
I. Departmental/Bureau News
A. Upcoming Events
No Upcoming Events highlights for this week
B. Current
USGS Alaska Science Center scientists George Durner and Karyn Rode will participate in a business meeting of the IUCN (the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Polar Bear Specialist Group Oct 24-27 in Oslo, Norway. This group includes scientists from the 5 nations with polar bears (U.S., Canada, Norway, Russia and Greenland) and meets every four years to review research and management of polar bears and evaluate population status. At this special business meeting, members will discuss the function of the group given heightened interest in polar bears and resulting demands on the group for input, products, and reviews. PBSG participation in development of the Range States Action Plan, CITES, membership, guidelines, and group leadership will be discussed. The next regular meetings of the PBSG will occur in late 2013.
Contact:
Karyn Rode
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7106
USGS Alaska Science Center geneticist Sarah Sonsthagen will represent the USGS at the technical committee meeting of the Sea Duck Joint Venture (SDJV) meeting, October 23–25, in Bar Harbor, Maine. The SDJV is a body of 16 scientists and resource managers from state, provincial, and federal organizations in the U.S. and Canada, and identifies research priorities, allocates federal dollars to science projects, and provides counsel and recommendations to a diversity of entities. Recent and current priorities include delineating sea duck populations in the Atlantic and Great Lakes regions, development of effective survey techniques for population monitoring, development of a focused plan for general research that will facilitate decision-making by resource managers, and revision of the SDJV Strategic Plan.
Contact:
Sarah Sonsthagen
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7054
USGS Alaska Science Center (ASC) scientist Karyn Rode will present an invited paper titled "Using data on carnivore diets and body condition to inform population management" as part of a symposium on "Transformative research and management of northwestern large and meso-carnivores." The paper will review two biochemical approaches for estimating diets of carnivores and discuss the use of ecological information for evaluating population status. The latter will focus on an example of the use of feeding ecology and body condition data to inform management of the Alaska-Chukotka polar bear population. ASC scientists Jerry Hupp, Anthony Pagano and graduate student Lindsay Vansomeren will also present on topics including remote biopsy darting methods for sampling and marking polar bears, a technique to evaluate the quality of caribou forage, and discrepancies in timing of migration between birds marked with leg bands versus those marked with satellite transmitters. Information about the 75th Wildlife Society meeting held in Portland, Oregon, October 14-18 is available at: http://wildlifesociety.org/.
Contact:
Karyn Rode
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7106
USGS Alaska Science Center (ASC) scientist Karyn Rode traveled to Kaktovik, Alaska Oct 1-4 to discuss polar bear research activities with community leaders. Meetings were held with the mayor of the City of Kaktovik, President of the Native Village of Kaktovik, and representatives of the North Slope Borough to discuss fall polar bear research activities of the Alaska Science Center, including placement of a hair snare around a bowhead whale bone pile where polar bears congregate, coastal aerial surveys, and biopsy darting. A presentation was also given to 3rd to 5th graders.
Contact:
Karyn Rode
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7106
On October 9, USGS Alaska Science Center research geologist Peter Haeussler gave a talk on geologists, geology tools, and earthquake geology to Mrs. Michelle Jereome's 3rd and 4th grade class at Alpenglow Elementary School in Eagle River, AK. Three other classes were also invited for a grand total of 110 in attendance.
Contact:
Peter Haeussler
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7447
USGS scientists Benjamin Jones (Alaska Science Center) and Frank Urban (USGS Denver Office) join senior author Christopher Arp (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and other coauthors on an article that will be published in the November issue of Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research. The manuscript highlights the importance of lakes and drained lake basins on the hydrological response in watersheds located on the low-lying Arctic Coastal Plain of northern Alaska. The role of lake basins in Arctic watershed hydrology is particularly evident in light of dramatic landscape-scale changes in Arctic lakes that may be occurring. At smaller catchment scales in locations of intense industrial activity and winter water-use, such as portions of the NPR-A, a better understanding of how lakes modify runoff regimes will also be essential for improved watershed management and accounting for impacts to downstream aquatic ecosystems.
Arp, C.D., Whitman, M., Jones, B.M., Kemnitz, R., Urban, F., Grosse, G. Accepted. Drainage network structure and hydrologic behavior of three lake-rich watersheds on the Arctic Coastal Plain, Alaska. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research. In Press
Contact:
Benjamin Jones
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7033
USGS Alaska Science Center fish biologist Christian Zimmerman is a co-author of a paper to be published in Environmental Biology of Fishes entitled "Adaptive strategies and life history characteristics in a warming climate: salmon in the Arctic?" The paper summarizes information about current distributions and reports of Atlantic and Pacific salmon in Arctic waters and explores the potential role of changing environmental conditions as controls of Arctic colonization by salmon. The paper concludes with a list of research questions that will aid in better understanding and predicting the implications of climate change and expanding distributions of salmon in the Arctic. The article may be viewed at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/2wg0467140u77675/ .
Nielsen, J. L., Ruggerone, G. T., and Zimmerman, C. E. 2012. Adaptive strategies and life history characteristics in a warming climate: salmon in the Arctic? Environmental Biology of Fishes. DOI: 10.1007/s10641-012-0082-6
Contact:
Christian Zimmerman
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7071
New USGS Alaska Science Center scientist Karyn Rode is co-author of a paper in Journal of Mammalogy entitled "Hibernation and seasonal fasting in bears: the energetic costs and consequences for polar bears." This work was initiated while Rode was working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the results are highly relevant to ongoing USGS research about effects of climate change on polar bears. The research team compared the energetic costs of fasting of different sex, age, and reproductive statuses of polar bears with energetic costs of hibernation in black and brown bears. Daily mass losses and energy expenditures were much higher for fasting, active polar bears than hibernating bears. Using ranges of body fat for bears when they come on land in western Hudson Bay with rates of energetic expenditure while fasting, authors estimated limits in the duration bears can spend fasting before effects on reproduction and survival will occur. The long time periods in which pregnant females spend fasting and the high energetic costs experienced by lactating females make them most susceptible to increases in the length of the open water period. For an early viewing please visit: http://asmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1644/11-MAMM-A-406.1?journalCode=mamm.
Robbins, C.T., C. Lopez-Alfaro, K.D. Rode, O. Toien, O.L. Nelson. 2012. Hibernation and seasonal fasting in bears: the energetic costs and consequences for polar bears. Journal of Mammalogy: In press.
Contact:
Karyn Rode
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7106
II. Press Inquiries/Media
On October 9, reporter Jill Burke of Alaska Dispatch contacted USGS Alaska Science Center researcher George Durner to help provide scientific accuracy and background information for an article about the population of polar bears across the circumpolar north, what scientists know and why some sub-populations may be declining while others appear stable. Durner answered questions regarding the accuracy of the worldwide polar bear population size estimates (20,000-25,000 bears), and he helped explain findings reported on the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) website on different methods (e.g., mark-recapture versus line-transects) that are used to develop subpopulation estimates, and why four subpopulations do not have a size estimate. Durner also explained that polar bears only occur where sea ice is a prominent feature during most of the year and that some subpopulations such as western Hudson Bay appear to be declining because of sea ice loss. The article titled "How many polar bears live in the Arctic?" may be found at http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/how-many-polar-bears-live-arctic.
Contact:
George Durner
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7082
USGS Alaska Science Center Research Fish Biologist Christian Zimmerman was interviewed by Jeff Gillies of the Environmental Monitor, an industry news website that focuses on the measurement and technology side of environmental research. Zimmerman explained the importance and reason for measuring temperatures in spawning substrates used by salmon and described the methods that he developed and reported in a recent publication. Gillies is writing an article about those methods and highlighting the article prepared by Zimmerman and James Finn that will be published in the Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management.
Contact:
Christian Zimmerman
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7071
USGS Alaska Science Center researcher Bob Gill was contacted by Kate Gardner, production editor of Physics World, the membership magazine of the Institute of Physics that promotes physics to external audiences, increasing awareness of the importance of physics in government, education and industry. The magazine is publishing an article about bird migration written by Mark Denny and would like to use a USGS map showing the migration of bar-tailed godwits. Gill provided an image depicting tracks of nine satellite-tagged Bar-tailed Godwits (Limosa lapponica) followed on their southward flight from Alaska between 2006 and 2007. Colored dots depict the locations fixed by satellite. Dotted lines are extensions of tracks between the last report of a transmitter from a bird in flight and a confirmed sighting elsewhere of that bird. The dashed line represents the portion of flight following a confirmed stopover by a bird. For more information on shorebird research visit: http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/shorebirds/index.html.
Contact:
Robert Gill Jr.
Anchorage, AK, (907) 786-7184
|
home:
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
