By: Grace Dumas, News of the North
The University of Alaska Southeast spotlighted rapid Arctic environmental change at its Evenings at Egan lecture Friday, featuring UAS’s new professor of forest ecology, Dr. Logan Berner.
His research tracks how northern ecosystems are reshaping in a warming world.
Berner, who grew up in Gustavus and studied as an undergraduate at UAS before returning as faculty.
“Growing up on the edge of Glacier Bay National Park, you know, you’re right there on the edge of the Arctic.” Berner said, “Seeing glaciers receding and these mounting impacts of climate change in Southeast Alaska was something that really drew me to the science of forest ecology and global change ecology.”
Berner said the Arctic has warmed three to four times faster than the rest of the planet, in recent decades.
“This long term warming trend has had all sorts of impacts on these northern ecosystems, which are otherwise the coldest ecosystems that we have on our planet.” Said Berner, “Not surprisingly, as temperatures rise, we see all sorts of ecological impacts occurring. We see trees and shrubs expanding across northern landscapes. We see impacts on wildlife as habitat changes, and all of that then influences people who live in the North as well as broader global society.”
Berner said caribou populations have declined by more than 60% across much of the Arctic in recent decades as expanding shrubs outcompete lichens crucial to winter forage
However, he said species tied to woody habitat, moose and beaver, are pushing north and, in some cases, reaching Alaska’s Arctic coast.
“It’s not all necessarily doom and gloom in terms of wildlife change, right? while caribou might be really suffering under these warmer, shrubbier environments, moose and beaver are thriving.” He said, “The animals that are historically more used to living in the boreal forest, it’s been possible for them to expand northward, up into the Arctic tundra, as those northern landscapes have become progressively dominated by woody plants.”
While Berner says not all change is negative for wildlife, the pace of transformation requires careful attention.
Berner’s work combines field ecology, satellite remote sensing, and ecological informatics to understand terrestrial ecosystems in the warming world.
His past research projects included field work in various parts of Alaska, as well as northern Canada, Finland, and Russia.
Though his work primarily centers the Arctic, Berner says Juneau serves as a point of research at the ‘edge of the Arctic.’
“If you go up into the mountains around town, these are Arctic tundra ecosystems, they’re fingers of mountain ranges that push out of the Arctic and have many of the same plant communities as you find in the more polar north.” Berner said, “Juneau really is part of the Arctic ecologically. Juneau offers a unique opportunity to study those changes in those kinds of ecosystems at the edge of the Arctic, and there are certainly folks at UAS who are studying various aspects of ecosystems around Juneau, from changes in Glacier dynamics, outburst floods, to wildlife populations, to the kind of biogeochemistry of rivers. There’s a lot of research that happens at UAS focused on understanding ecosystems at the edge of the Arctic.”
UAS’s Evenings are free to the public and have accessible attendance options including livestreams.
The series concludes Dec. 12 with a “Winter Fire Showcase” of local writers and artists.
