Documents

After the Ice is a three-part video series that captures the stories of Indigenous communities immensely challenged by sea ice loss in Alaska’s Bering Sea region. Funded by the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH), sea ice scientists partnered with the Bering Sea Elders Group, an association of Alaska Native elders representing 39 Iñupiat and Yup’ik tribes in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and Bering Strait region, to create the films. The videos can be viewed on the SEARCH website, the Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA) website, or beginning in early October 2020 the series will be broadcast by Alaska Public Media and available to stream for free at PBS.org.

Alaskan Eskimo Exploitation of the Sea Ice Environment. Richard K. Nelson. Fort Wainwright, AK: Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, Aerospace Medical Division, Air Force Systems Command, 1966.

All About Sea Ice is a website by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSDIC) that offers a glimpse of the characteristics and different forms of sea ice, why it is so important to our environment, and popular scientific methods used for studying it. It presents a basic description of what sea ice is and how it forms, provides data analysis and scientific discussion of things like the thermodynamics and physics of sea ice, and discusses how sea ice affected explorers who struggled to reach the poles. The website also includes links to other related sea ice science material.

Arctic Sea Ice Trafficability: New Strategies for a Changing Icescape. Dyre Oliver Dammann. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Alaska Fairbanks, August 2017.

Arctic Thaw: The People of the Whale in a Changing Climate (http://peterlourie.com/upcomingnorthpole.htm) is a children's book by Peter Lourie who also developed the Arctic Stories website with video storytelling of voices from the Arctic.

“Assessing the Shorefast Ice: Iñupiat Whaling Trails off Barrow, Alaska.” Matthew L. Druckenmiller, Hajo Eicken, John C. George, and Lewis Brower. In SIKU: Knowing Our Ice, Documenting Inuit Sea Ice Knowledge and Use, edited by Igor Krupnik, Claudio Aporta, Shari Gearheard, Gita J. Laidler, Lene Kielsen Holm, New York: Springer, 2010, pp. 203-228.

For 54 years, Bob and Carrie Uhl maintained a subsistence lifestyle at Cape Krusenstern near Kotzebue, Alaska. Summers were spent in a tent (and later in a tiny cabin) on the beach at Sisualik, where they were able to fish and hunt marine mammals. In the winter, they moved inland to a more sheltered cabin where trees provided wood for heat, a stream running under the winter ice provided water, and moose and caribou provided food. Bob kept a daily journal of resource observations of the Cape Krusenstern area from 1990 to 2004. These journals provide an important long-term record of things like the timing of freeze-up and break-up of the ice of Kotzebue Sound and Hotham Inlet, the safety of the ice trail between Sisualik and Kotzebue, the changing ice conditions, and daily temperature and winds. Bob generously gave permission for the National Park Service to edit and publish his journals in order to better share this invaluable insight into a vanishing lifestyle. They are available through the Cape Krusenstern National Monument website.

Characteristics of Winds, Currents, and Sea Ice Motion near Barrow, Alaska. A small poster compiled by the Sea Ice Group at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in collaboration with Hokkaido University of Japan summarizing observations from October 2009 to July 2015 of the effects of winds and ocean currents on sea ice motion near the coast of Utqiaġvik, Alaska (formerly known as Barrow). Primary authors are Josh Jones, Andy Mahoney, Hajo Eicken, Yasu Fukamachi, Kay Ohshima, Craig George, and Billy Adams.

"Effects of Changing Sea Ice on Marine Mammals and Subsistence Hunters in Northern Alaska from Traditional Knowledge Interviews." Henry Huntington, Lori Quakenbush, Mark Nelson. Biology Letters. Vol. 12, Issue 8 (August 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0198, accessed August 30, 2017.

Experts Workshops to Comparatively Evaluate Coastal Currents and Ice Movement in the Northeastern Chukchi Sea; Barrow and Wainwright, Alaska, March 11-15, 2013. Report edited by Mark Johnson, Hajo Eicken, Matthew Druckenmiller, and Richard Glenn. University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, 2014.
With contributions on Iñupiaq knowledge from: Billy Adams, Linda Agnassaga, Ransom Agnasagga, Raymond Aguvluk Jr., Ben Ahmaogak Jr., Mary Ellen Ahmaogak, Roy Ahmaogak, Cora Akpik, Max Akpik Sr., Marjorie Angashuk, Jim Allen Aveoganna Jr., Frank Bester Jr., Lewis Brower, Fred Ekak, Craig George, Charlie Hopson, Nora Itta, Artie Kittick, Joe Mello Leavitt, Alva Nashoalook Jr., Eli Nukapigak, Thomas Nukapigak, Tommy Olemaun, Margaret Opie, Billy Oyagak, Enoch Oktollik, Ronald Oviok, Ida Panik, Jack Panik, Billy Blair Patkotak, Rossman Peetok, Julius Rexford Sr., Bob Shears, Michael Tagarook.

Field Techniques for Sea Ice Research. Edited by Hajo Eicken. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2009.

Harvest of the Sea: Coastal Subsistence in Modern Wainwright. Richard K. Nelson. A Report for the North Slope Borough's Coastal Management Program. Barrow, AK: North Slope Borough, 1981.

Subsistence Hunters and Scientists Working Together to Help Alaskan Coastal Communities Adapt to a Changing Climate is an article by Lisa Sheffield Guy of the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, May 16, 2017. It describes how the Sea Ice For Walrus Outlook (SIWO) project provides weekly reports on spring sea ice and weather conditions that integrate scientific and local knowledge into a tool that is used by both groups, and provides links to the SIWO and other related websites.

"Ice conditions on Alaska’s Beaufort Sea Coast:  Extending the Observations."  Ron Metzner and Lewis Shapiro. Northern Engineer, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 22-27, 35.

Ikaaġvik Sikukun is a research project that couples state-of-the-art geophysical observations from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) with a community-engaged research approach to bridge scientific and indigenous understanding of sea ice change in the Alaska Arctic. The research team is a partnership between academic researchers and the Native Village of Kotzebue. The study plan begins and ends with the involvement of community members to help craft research questions, collect observations and synthesize research findings. The project addresses key questions concerning the mechanisms and impacts of rapid changes taking place in the Arctic while ensuring that answers incorporate traditional ways of knowing and are relevant to local needs. Ultimately, the findings will contribute to predictive assessments of the changing cryosphere of Kotzebue Sound, and the implications of such change for the ecology and the Iñupiaq way of life that is dependent upon it. 

Inuit Knowledge of Sea Ice in a Geophysical Setting is a website prepared by Dan Elsberg of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks as part of a student course project, circa 1999. It discusses traditional indigenous knowledge and perceptions of sea ice within a geophysical framework. It presents phenomena and ice types observed by Inuit hunters and travelers and then explores the geophysics behind these topics, and also defines terms in use by scientists who study sea ice.

Literature Review of Eskimo Knowledge of the Sea Ice Environment. Richard K. Nelson. Fort Wainwright, AK: Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, Aerospace Medical Division, Air Force Systems Command, 1966.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center, at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, serves as a national information and referral center in support of snow and ice research. They promote understanding of the earth's frozen regions and collaborate with scientific researchers to provide storage of and access to a broad range of data.

Small Pictorial Glossary of Sea Ice Terms and Evolution was created in 1999 by Dr. Hajo Eicken of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks for a course he was teaching on sea-ice geophysics. It provides a short illustrated overview of some of the most important sea-ice terms and processes he felt it was important for his students to understand.

Qiñiqtuagaksrat Utuqqanaat Iñuuniaġniŋisiqun: The Traditional Land Use Inventory for the Mid-Beaufort Sea, Volume 1. Barrow, AK: North Slope Borough, Commission on History and Culture, 1980.

Time series maps and bar graphs showing how the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover for different years and months compares to averages from 1979 to 2015 on the Satellite Observations of Arctic Change website from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

A collection of 67 videotapes of Dr. Hajo Eicken’s Sea Ice Field Course in Barrow, Alaska titled: "Field Techniques for Sea Ice Research International Polar Year 2007-2009.” Recorded by Maya Salganek. Available at the Alaska Film Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks as AAF-13001 through AAF-13067. For more information, see the catalog record for the collection in the library's on-line catalog.

The Sea Ice Glossary is a website by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSDIC) that provides definitions and explanations of general and scientific terms related to sea ice.

"Sea Ice Prediction Has Easy and Difficult Years." Lawrence Hamilton. Witness the Arctic, Vol. 18, Issue 2 (Spring 2014).

Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) is a collaborative program of Arctic researchers, funding agencies, and others that facilitates synthesis of Arctic science and communicates it to society as we respond to a rapidly changing Arctic. SEARCH currently focuses on how shrinking land ice, diminishing sea ice, and degrading permafrost impact Arctic and global systems. SEARCH’s interdisciplinary action teams work to listen to and inform agencies, decision‐makers, and Arctic residents. SEARCH includes the Sea Ice Action Team, the Sea Ice Prediction Network, and the Sea Ice for Walrus Outlook (SIWO) project.

The Meaning of Ice: People and Sea Ice in Three Arctic Communities, edited by Shari Fox Gearheard, Lene Kielsen Holm, Henry P. Huntington, Joe Mello Leavitt, Andrew R. Mahoney, Margaret Opie, Toku Oshima, and Joelie Sanguya, Hanover, NH: International Polar Institute Press, 2013.

“Trails to the Whale: Reflections on Change and Choice on an Inupiat Icescape at Barrow, Alaska.” Matthew L. Druckenmiller, Hajo Eicken, J.C. “Craig” George, Lewis Brower. Polar Geography, Vol. 36, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2013, pp. 5-29.

Kiŋikmi Sigum Qanuq Ilitaavut - Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary. Winton Weyapuk, Jr. and Igor Krupnik, compilers. Advisors: Pete Sereadlook and Faye Ongtowasruk. Editors: Igor Krupnik, Herbert Anungazuk, and Matthew Druckenmiller. Washington, D.C.: Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution, 2012.