1  Introduction

You are about to embark on one of the most memorable field experiences of your life, with tremendous learning potential, new colleagues and friends, and adventure literally around every corner. The originator of this course was Prof. Chien Lu Ping; he and Gary Michaelson took hundreds of students on this course over 30 years starting in 1985. Since Dr. Ping retired in 2015, instruction of the course has been maintained by a collaborative group of instructors.

Students enrolling in this course come from many different backgrounds and specialties Naturally, there will be wide variability in field experience, background, and familiarity with soil science and arctic environments. Throughout the course please know that we all work to learn and experience together. The diversity of this class is one of its greatest strengths.

We gratefully acknowledge the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home in AK today, and commit to following Woodwell Climate’s guiding principles for working in northern communities.

1.1 Course Goals

During this unforgettable 2-weeks and ~1000 kilometers long trip students can see profiles of 6 soil orders: Gelisols (Histels, Turbels and Orthels), Inceptisols, Spodosols, Andisols, Mollisols and Entisols; different vegetation communities including deciduous and coniferous boreal forest, tundra and grassland as well as different permafrost related landforms such as polygons, pingo, palsas, solifluction, stone circles and, of course, glaciers.

  • Provide students a rich variety of field experiences in all the major Alaskan boreal and Arctic soils and ecosystems during a 1000-km road expedition with camps along the Parks, Glenn, Richardson, Elliott and Dalton Highways.

  • Discuss permafrost properties, occurrence, and degradation in the wake of climate change.

  • Train students in methods of field sampling of soils, vegetation and permafrost in a variety of Arctic and Subarctic ecosystems.

  • Relate the chemical, physical, biogeochemical and morphological characteristics of soils to their occurrence, behavior, and classification.

  • Describe hydric soils and identify common wetland indicator plants and hydrology features in the field.

  • Relate soils to hydrology, climate, parent materials, age, chemistry, ecology,and anthropogenic disturbances across the interior of Alaska.

  • Provide in-depth discussions of the relevance of their readings and field observations to current Arctic science issues regarding conservation, applications to remote sensing and modeling of the Arctic ecosystems, biodiversity, climate warming, degradation of permafrost, and adaptations of infrastructure and local communities to the changing Arctic.

The first priority for this course is to bring students closer to the excitement and surprises that come from experiencing the Arctic up close. In the early days of Ecology, much of a student’s experience was outdoors — learning plant names, observing wildlife, and being introduced to basic ecological principles. Today, the tools for doing ecological research have greatly expanded, and students’ course work and time are increasingly spent indoors learning the latest genomic, laboratory analyses, GIS, remote-sensing, statistical-analysis, and modeling tools. Surprisingly, this is especially true for the Arctic, which is remote and difficult to travel to during most of the year. Field work is generally limited to the summer months. The focus in this course is an in-depth field experience across a wide range of disciplines and environments. Students will experience an amazing 500-km ecological transect through the U.S. arctic and boreal forest biomes. They will draw on the long experience of several instructors who have all spent their careers studying these systems. The goal is to achieve an in-depth understanding of arctic ecosystems, and their interactions with climate and human-related changes.

The course has a geo-ecological focus with strong grounding in geology, soils, and permafrost conditions. Permafrost has a special importance, and students will see the many manifestations of permafrost that occur in cold-climate ecosystems, including a wide-variety of unique periglacial landforms, such as ice-wedge polygon, frozen debris lobes, rock glaciers, frost-boils, pingos, and river icings (aufeis). Students will collect permafrost cores to understand how ice gets into the soils, how it degrades, why it is so sensitive to climate change, a hazard for infrastructure, and how it contributes to increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. They will see how degrading permafrost is affecting boreal and arctic ecosystems, and experience ancient buried permafrost in the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research Laboratory’s Permafrost Tunnel — complete with Pleistocene mammal remains.

Another major focus is recognition of plants, including the mosses and lichens, because vegetation is the key to understanding many aspects of Arctic ecosystems. Students will keep field books with drawing for various aspects of ecosystems (toposequences, chronosequences, and plant drawings). Although there is considerable emphasis on plant taxonomy and plant communities, we try not to weigh students down with worries about memorizing names. They should recognize as many plants with their Latin names as possible in the short time that we have in the field, but also learn how to find the names when they need to know them, how to recognize and describe plant communities, and most importantly realize the relevance of vegetation to many aspects of Arctic systems. We will also pay special attention to birds and insects and their relationship to the many arctic habitats that we will encounter.

1.2 Student Learning Outcomes

  • A broad understanding of North America arctic ecosystems, including climate, soils, plant communities, paleo-history, plant production, and energy flow. This will be achieved through lectures, daily readings and discussions in the field.

  • A thorough introduction to permafrost, its distribution, characteristics, effects on distribution of plant communities and landforms, and vice versa. This will be achieved through readings regarding permafrost, and during permafrost coring exercises, a visit to the Permafrost Tunnel and examination of periglacial landforms in the field.

  • Linkages between soil and key environmental factors, including toposequences, chronosequences, permafrost conditions, snow conditions, soil chemistry, bedrock geology, surficial geology, glacial history, and landscape age. This will be achieved during a variety of field exercises and experiences that will arise as the course progresses.

  • How to recognize approximately 100 common plant species of the boreal, alpine, and arctic regions of Alaska, which will be gained through identification of plants in the field, and with individual plant collections and drawings of plants.

  • Up-to-date information regarding the response of Arctic ecosystems to climate change and infrastructure related factors, such as increased summer warming, changing permafrost conditions, thermokarst, altered snow regimes, road dust, off-road vehicle trails, and road-related flooding.

  • Overview of Arctic ecosystem research conducted at the Toolik Field Station, Imnavait Creek, and other sites along the Dalton Highway.

1.3 Catalog Description and Course Description

Soil geography along an ecological transect in selected areas of Alaska. Hands-on experiences with soil morphology and exploration of the relationships between soil genesis and other ecological factors including vegetation, geology, landform, climate and hydrology. Includes discussion of soil classification and land use interpretations. Students must provide their own camp gear, be able to walk on uneven or rocky ground and be physically fit for field work.

Comprehension of the major factors governing the properties and behavior of soils, and the associated climate, hydrology and ecology on a transect between Anchorage and Deadhorse, AK is essential to understanding the soil classification and permafrost dynamics associated with environmental change.

The class is a mix of lectures, fieldworks, practical sessions, and special events. Hands-on activities include soil description and classification, vegetation characterization as well as coring and sampling of frozen soils.