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Tag: "alaska" at biology news

Alaskan puzzles, monitoring provide insight about North Pacific salmon runs

The University of Washington Alaska Salmon Program, the world's longest-running effort to monitor salmon and their ecosystems, has received nearly $2.4 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to expand its sampling scope and sophistication. . .. The grant boosts research into climate and other factors affecting salmon in the Northeast Pacific and determining such things as how much hab...

Habitat use by North Pacific right whales, Eubalaena japonica, in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska

The small population of North Pacific right whales, found during the summer in Alaska waters, is one of the most critically endangered whale populations in the world. Commercial whaling in the 1800s has now left us with only a few dozens. Recently these whales have been recognized as a different species from right whales seen in the North Atlantic and others in the Southern Hemisphere. . To help...

Lands surface change on Alaska tundra creating longer, warmer summers in Arctic

A gradual lengthening of the snow-free season in Alaska's tundra, and a corresponding northward progression of the growth of shrubs and trees, may be creating a cycle of warmer and longer summers in the Alaskan Arctic according to a new study to be published in the Sept. 22, 2005, issue of Science Express. . The resulting atmospheric heating in the region of northern Alaska is equivalent to what...

On a wing and a prayer - Alaska researchers seek clues to bird flu

While Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" made many of us uneasy at the sight of amassing gulls years ago, today public health officials around the world are beginning to cast an equally uneasy eye toward migratory birds, especially in Alaska, following recent outbreaks of avian influenza in Southeast Asia and, last week, in Siberia. . Alaska is at the intersection of the Asian and North American flyw...

Alaska seal pup diet may hold key to decline of population

Female harbor seal pups whose blubber falls below average levels may be at higher risk of delayed sexual maturation or death, even if they get enough fat in their diets later on, according to a new study sponsored by The American Physiological Society and presented at Experimental Biology 2006. . The study found that harbor seals pups that were heavier when captured from the wild continued to gai...

NASA study: Alaskan fires affected Houston air quality in 2004

An innovative new NASA-funded study based on a combination of satellite data, computer models and weather balloon readings finds that smoke from Alaskan and Canadian forest fires as much as doubled ground-level ozone thousands of miles away in Houston during a two-day period in July 2004. The study, which will appear online Sept. 26 in the Journal of Geophysical Research, offers scientists a rare...

Shrinking ponds signal warmer, dryer Alaska

A first-of-its kind analysis of fifty years of remotely sensed imagery from the 1950s to 2002 shows a dramatic reduction in the size and number of more than 10,000 ponds in Alaska. The analysis, by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists and published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research, indicates that these landscape-level changes in arctic ponds are associated with recent climate...

Ice Age extinction claimed highly carnivorous Alaskan wolves

. .. The study, which will be pu...