Ken Dunton is project director for the Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems Long term Ecological Research (LTER) Program.  The researchers within the program are using various methods to track and understand 1) how natural climate cycles influence coastal ecosystems in the Arctic, and 2) how climate change impacts alter coastal ecosystems. Lagoon ecosystems are at the land-sea interface, the zone where the land and ocean meet. Changes within these key environments can impact various aspects of life for the people that depend on them.

Jess Stekettee and Austin Roy are part of Team Vole, a multi-university collaboration led by Dr. Natalie Boelman from Columbia University. During their time in Utqiagvik, Jess and Austin trapped voles and ran a series of experiments using artifical enclosures on the tundra to learn about small mammal population dynamics and how these tiny herbivores influence carbon cycling.

Bob Hollister has been monitoring vegetation change in the Arctic since the mid-1990s. He is joined in this episode by grad student, Mackenzie Lift. We discussed the long term research project they are part of and what they are learning about the impact of climate change on vegetation and the resulting impacts on other organisms.

Colorado State University, Department of Atmospheric SciencesWe learned about some key impacts of thawing permafrost in Episode 1 with Vladimir Romanovsky and Dmitry Nicolsky. In this episode we talk to Jessie Creamean and her team who are doing research on the cutting edge of another important aspect of permafrost thaw, which is its potential to impact clouds and even local weather.

Emily Eidam, Jim Thomson, and their teams are collaborating on two separate but closely related research projects. Thomson's team is trying to understand the impact that larger waves are having on Arctic coastal erosion. Eidam's team, meanwhile, is tracking the journey of the materials that erode from coastal bluffs to understand where they go after they enter the ocean.  

Vladimir Romanovsky and Dmitry Nicolsky are part of a research team studying changes in ground temperature across the North Slope to understand where and how fast permafrost is warming. Thawing permafrost can lead to ground surface caving, changes in terrain, and damage to infrastructure. It can also cause the ground surface to become wetter or drier. These landscape changes are likely to impact many aspects of life for people living on the North Slope and, in this episode, we learn about the science and its practical applications.