KUAC - Fairbanks

Alaska Division of Forestry personnel will burn off dry vegetation in two areas around the Delta Junction State Bison Range over the next few weeks.

The prescribed burns are intended to improve habitat for bison and other species that live on the range.

Alaska Fish and Game Program Coordinator Sue Rodman said the department wants to conduct the prescribed burns early in the season, after the snow melts off and before green-up, so the fires would burn hot enough to thin out dried vegetation and promote growth of grasses for forage.

“We’re looking at a pretty narrow window to support a hot fire that will kill off the grass and the shrubs, so that we can have fresh grass come back in,” she said in an interview last week.

About 3,600 acres will be burned in two large fields on the range from April 17 through early May, Rodman said. It’s the first of what Fish and Game officials hope will be regularly recurring burns around the 90,000-acre range that are intended to improve conditions for bison and other animals that live there, including two species of grouse and snowshoe hare.

“We haven’t burned for a few years,” she said, “but we’re trying to renew this pattern of prescribed fires in the bison range.”

Rodman said Fish and Game and Forestry officials don’t expect the fires to generate enough smoke to create a nuisance for Delta, located about 14 miles northwest of the range.

Firefighters also will try to keep smoke from drifting to the handful of homes scattered outside the range, the closest of which is about a half-mile from the burn area, Forestry spokesman Tim Mowry said.

“With these prescribed burns, smoke is always a big concern,” he said. “So, we’re doing our best to mitigate that.”

Forestry will have up to 14 firefighters on site to manage the burns, along with smaller fire engines and other equipment as needed. They’ll be careful to only burn when conditions are right, Mowry said.

“Wind and relative humidity are the two main factors,” he said. “If it’s too windy, we can’t burn; if it’s too wet, we can’t burn.”

The state created the bison range in 1979 to give the approximately 400-head herd an alternative to barging into the cultivated fields in the agricultural area south of Delta Junction.

The State Medical Board has suspended the license of the former chief of staff at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. The suspension of Dr. Christopher Jensen earlier this month is the result of accusations filed by the state, including drug use.

Angela Birt is chief investigator for the state office of professional licensing. She said Jensen had “allegations of potential substance abuse.”

Birt referenced a report detailing Dr. Jensen’s alleged use of cocaine, which came to light following a Jan. 18 mental health breakdown, information she said was enough to raise safety issues.

“The board has the ability to summarily suspend the provider based on their public safety responsibility,” Birt said.

FMH Chief Medical officer Danny Robinette said Dr. Jensen’s privileges at the hospital were immediately suspended following the January breakdown, during which State Troopers brought him to the hospital, after finding him lightly clothed on the street at 40 below zero.

“He requested at that time, a leave of absence from the medical staff and subsequently submitted a resignation as chief of staff,” Robinette said.

Robinette said Jensen, a plastic surgeon, was well respected and had no known history of mental health issues or drug problems, nor any complaints filed against him.

“He’s been on staff here since, I believe 2009, if I’m correct in that, I’ve actually worked with him myself personally before I was chief medical officer as a surgeon on patients together, his outcomes and results were good,” Robinette said. “There was never any evidence of any issues or any reported problems, prior to January.”

Robinette underscored that Dr. Jensen was not a hospital employee and therefore only subject to drug screening if there was suspicion of a problem. The Medical Board license suspension notice orders Dr. Jensen to get a psychiatric evaluation. Chief Investigator Birt said Jensen has requested a hearing on the suspension. Jensen did not return a call requesting comment.

It’s been a chilly winter here in the Interior and elsewhere around the state. But for the Arctic Ocean, it’s been one long warm spell. That’s led to another record-low year for formation of Arctic winter sea-ice cover.

Experts with the National Snow and Ice Data Center say formation of sea ice around the Arctic Ocean probably petered out about two weeks ago. On Wednesday, they finally declared that the extent of sea-ice cover on the Arctic Ocean has grown as much as it’s going to this year.

Mark Serreze is a senior research scientist with the Snow and Ice Data Center.

“What we have now is what we call the lowest maximum on record,” Serreze said.

Serreze said well-above-average warmth over the Arctic Ocean since fall has led to well-below-average sea-ice formation. So much so that the center declared this year’s Arctic sea-ice maximum extent was the lowest in 38 years, since satellite monitoring began.

“Part of what’s going on is it was so darn warm this winter over the Arctic Ocean, especially out on the Atlantic side,” Serreze said.

Center officials say the sea ice probably reached its maximum extent on March 7^th, when it covered about 5-and-a-half-million square miles of the Arctic Ocean, including portions of the Bering Sea that lie south of the Arctic Circle. That’s about 470,000 square miles less than the 38-year average. And it’s about 37,000 square miles less than the 2015 maximum extent, the previous record-setting low. 2016 set the third-lowest maximum extent on record.

“This is the third year we’ve seen these extreme low values of sea ice,” Serreze said.

The center said it’s been a warm fall and winter for the Arctic Ocean, with temperatures averaging 4-and-a-half-degrees Fahrenheit above the norm. The air over the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska and the Barents Sea north of Scandinavia was even warmer, averaging around 9 degrees above the norm.

“And so that prevented sea ice from growing, in part,” Serreze said. “And it’s looks like we’ve probably got a lot of very thin ice about there.”

Serreze said Arctic sea ice is already beginning to melt and recede, setting the stage for a very low sea-ice minimum extent that the center will declare in September.

“So we’re starting the melt season in a deep hole right now,” Serreze said. “And we’ll see how things work out this spring and summer, but I’m expecting we’re going to have a very, very low September extent.”

Serreze said seasonal weather conditions around the Arctic will determine whether the minimum sea-ice extent will set another record. He said the minimum is the more important and telling metric.

“That’s the one that really matters in the end,” Serreze said. “And what we’re seeing is that September extent is going down quite quickly right now.”

Serreze said the polar ice cap won’t last long if the region continues to warm at this rate.

“We are on course sometime in the next few decades, maybe even earlier, to have summers in the Arctic where, you go up there at the end of August, say, and there’s no ice at all,” Serreze said.

Serreze said that means, aside from some scattered icebergs and clusters of pack ice, the view from space in the fall of around 2040, will be of a blue Arctic Ocean.

Fairbanks and North Pole have suffered numerous Clean Air Act violations again this winter due to fine particulates from wood, coal and other burning. Smoke pollution persists despite long term government efforts to assess and remedy the problem, and a local group has taken air quality monitoring into their own hands.

It’s an off day at the office of North Pole veterinarian Jeanne Olson, with time to focus on the problem that’s forced her to install an air filtration system at her clinic and now air monitoring station in the yard.

“We went from thinking about the possibility that we could do this,” Olson said. “And a week later, it was up and going.”

That’s in part due to the nimbleness of the small group Citizens for Clean Air, Olson co-coordinates. She said they contacted Oregon based manufacturer of high-tech air monitoring machines Met One and were loaned a unit called a “beta attenuation monitor,” or BAM, and set up in a tent in her yard.

“So this is the BAM,” Olson said. “This is the expensive $20,000 gadget. And this is a piece of insulation because there’s actually a heater in here that preheats the air at a known volume. In a little while, this pump’s gonna come on and it’ll be way noisy in here, but right now it’s just sitting there thinking and measuring and doing stuff in its little box.”

The BAM is the same EPA approved unit the North Star Borough officially gauges air quality within downtown Fairbanks and North Pole. The Citizen’s for Clean Air station also includes a more basic style monitor the borough deploys in local neighborhoods.  Olson says the combination enables on site assessment in what’s perceived to be a very smoky neighborhood, as well as a way to compare readings from the 2 types of monitors.

“Our neighborhood monitors have never really been thoroughly vetted and tested, especially in the cold temperatures and the high levels. So that was why it was really important to put a BAM and a neighborhood monitor together, simultaneously measuring the same basic air in the same area.”

Olson says Citizen’s for Clean Air tried to work with the borough to get the information, but became frustrated.

“The approval process was going to take way too long, and rather than wait a whole ‘nother season, we said, ‘Well let’s just see if we can figure out how to do it ourselves.’”

Olson maintains the citizen monitoring project is not about going rogue, and says they will share all their data, with an end goal of cleaning up local air.

“There’s just so many people that A: The air is as bad as it is in the North Pole, B: That there’s a health problem for it and C: That these monitors could even have an inkling of being accurate.”

North Pole routinely violates federal air quality standards during the winter months, and Olson says the BAM monitor on her property one day registered a fine particulate level in excess of 250 micrograms per cubic meter, far above the EPA threshold of 35. EPA officials, in town this week to discuss air quality issues with the borough, planned to meet with Citizens For Clean Air and view their monitoring station.

It’s been a relatively cool and snowy winter here in the Interior, compared with the past couple of winters.

But climate experts say the Arctic has been warmer than average. They say that’s why it appears this year’s maximum Arctic sea ice cover, measured near the end of winter, is likely to set another record for the smallest maximum on record.

Spring equinox is a week away, which means the time is nigh for the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s annual declaration that Arctic sea ice cover has grown as much as it’s going to this winter.

“We’re at about the maximum sea ice extent you’ll see for the year. Usually the maximum happens around mid-March,” said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the Snow and Ice Data Center.

Serreze said the formation of sea ice this past winter was once again sparse, due mainly to above-average air and sea-surface temperatures throughout the winter and again last month.

“We already had a record-low sea ice extent in February,” Serreze said. “We’re looking at a very, very low sea ice extent ending the freeze-up season, starting the melt season.”

This may seem contradictory to residents of the Interior after a week during which the mercury dropped to 30-, 40-, even 50-below overnight in many areas around the region. Serreze said this season was cooler than the previous two, which set consecutive records.

Overall, for the Arctic, it’s been a very, very warm winter, and you see that reflected in the very, very low sea ice levels that we have right now,” he said.

National Weather Service climate specialist Rick Thoman said it’s been a chilly winter for much of the Alaska.

“For Alaska as a whole, for the 2016-17 mid-winter – say, December-through-February period – Alaska as a whole was actually very close to the long-term normal,” Thoman said.

Except for some parts of the state. Thoman said it was a much milder winter north of the Brook Range, especially along the Arctic Ocean coast.

“As you would expect in Alaska, there (are) regional differences,” Thoman said. “The North Slope, in particular, was quite warm this winter – about the 12th warmest winter for the North Slope as a whole.”

Serreze said it’s been especially warm on the Atlantic side of the Arctic. And he expects that will be reflected in the sea ice maximum extent map the Snow and Ice Data Center will post in the next week or so.

A U.S. State Department official said planning is well under way for the big, biennial meeting of top diplomats from the eight Arctic Council member nations to be held this spring in Fairbanks.

“We have an advance team of 40 individuals who are up with us – to give you an idea of how much commitment and how much work goes into planning a meeting with these many moving parts,” Ann Meceda, a State Department Arctic affairs officer, said.

Meceda told the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce this week that the advance team handles the logistics of preparing for a high-profile meeting like the Arctic Council’s ministerial – now known as the Fairbanks ministerial.

“So they come and look at the locations and preparations in advance of a meeting like the Fairbanks ministerial,” Meceda said. “So this will be the ministerial at the end of the U.S. chairmanship of the Arctic Council.”

Larry Hinzman, vice chancellor for research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, told the chamber audience that local and statewide organizers also are working on preparations for a weeklong series of events called the Week of the Arctic, to be held May 8-14, in conjunction with the ministerial.

“The Week of the Arctic is going to be a big event for Fairbanks,” Hinzman said. “We’ll have a thousand people coming in, we’ll have policy-makers, decision-makers, engineers, scientists from around the world. We’ll have local stakeholders.”

Hinzman is helping coordinate UAF’s support for events to be held in Fairbanks, most of which focus on scientific, engineering and technological issues Arctic nations are dealing with. The events include the Arctic Interchange, a four-day series of sessions to review U.S. achievements during its two-year Arctic Council chairmanship; and the Arctic Broadband Forum, a two-day series on the challenges of providing telecommunications to the region, and efforts to improve broadband availability here.

The Week of the Arctic will wrap up with a series of arts- and culture-related events called North by North, to be held May 12-14 in Anchorage.

“And so they’ll have a film festival, culture and craft shows, dance party, local foods and brewery tasting,” Hinzman said. “So, it’s going to be fun.”