Browsing by Subject "Alaska"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Improving Knowledge of Permafrost-Affected Soils in Alaska - Field Data Collection and Sampling Design to Support Current and Future Soil Survey Initiatives
    (2020-12) Sousa, Michael
    Lands in the United States without detailed soil survey coverage are considered "not complete" (NOTCOM). There are currently approximately 430 million acres of NOTCOM remaining in the United States, with Alaska making up more than 70% of this remaining area. The first part of this work is a collaborative sampling of black spruce forests and associated permafrost-affected soils in the central Copper River basin. After sampling sites under burned and unburned areas, we assess trajectories of soil carbon, permafrost and vegetation change following fire to inform future management strategies. The second portion of this work examined the utility of implementing a Conditioned Latin Hypercube Sampling (cLHS) methodology in order to locate optimal sampling locations for future study. The cLHS used in this study was constrained by an inclusive cost layer representing an aggregation of real-world costs associated with travel within the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta study area located in south western Alaska.
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    Interrogating Intimacies: Asian American and Native Relations in Colonial Alaska
    (2013-08) Pegues, Juliana
    Interrogating Intimacies examines intersections between Asian and Native peoples in Alaska during the American territorial period in order to critically understand the formation of settler colonialism. In four case studies that touch on the historical periods of Alaskan purchase, the Gold Rush, incorporated territorial status, and World War II, I demonstrate how the colonial project racialized and gendered Native and Asian people in Alaska in different yet interdependent ways. Interrogating Intimacies utilizes an expansive archive of texts (historical documents, interviews, travel narratives, literature, and photography) to inform how settler colonialism defines and delimits its proper subject. I contend that the narrative of Alaska as a democratic state rather than a colonial territory depends upon the disavowal of both Asian labor and Native land claims, made possible through the spatial and temporal logics of settler colonialism. Tracing the multiple violences rendered by these interlocking disavowals, as well as possibilities for creative resistance, underscores the crucial benefit to bringing Asian American and Native studies into closer conversation.
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    Wetlands of Cook Inlet Basin, Alaska: Classification and Contributions to Stream Flow
    (2017-04) Gracz, Michael
    Wetlands face threats from global change, even as protections have been institutionalized to conserve the amenities they provide. These institutional protections frequently rely on a wetland classification system to guide conservation. In the Cook Inlet Basin of Alaska, USA (CIB), for example, best wetland assessment practices require the use of a classification system to ensure the conservation of the most valuable amenities. However, the systems used widely in the USA outside of Alaska, where peatlands are not common, inadequately describe the diversity of peatlands on the glaciated landscape of the CIB. Here I present a new Cook Inlet Classification system (CIC) organized around the hydrogeologic settings of wetlands in the CIB. The variables most strongly correlated with ecological differences within major geomorphic classes were used to construct a system supported by ample field data. The CIC produced greater within-class similarity than other widely-used systems, likely due to the overriding importance of the seasonal variability of water levels in CIB peatlands. The CIC has been mapped over an area of 7600 km2 and has guided wetland functional assessments in the CIB, and may be adaptable to any region supporting peatlands on glacial landforms. The harmful effects of a warming climate on aquatic resources may be partially ameliorated by discharge of shallow groundwater from peatlands to streams. This potential benefit of peatlands was investigated in the CIB using end-member mixing analysis (EMMA) and a sensitivity analysis of a water budget to quantify the contribution from extensive peatlands formed over glacial lake deposits to stream flow during the dry-season. Although peatlands in this hydrogeologic setting are common globally, the discharge from them is challenging to quantify. A spatially distributed sampling protocol at a single point-in-time produced a reliable EMMA showing that over half of stream flow on a day during the summer dry period originated near the surface of peatlands. This finding is being used to establish the value of peatlands for buffering increases in stream temperature, which have exceeded tolerances of commercially important fishes in the CIB. The analysis also suggests that differences in hydrogeologic setting influence shallow groundwater hydrology in peatlands.