University of Alaska Museum of the North

The view from here is always fine.

BUZZING WITH BEES - Katie Spellman and Christa Mulder want to know which plants bees like best, invasive weeds or native berries. Weed seeds hang onto tire treads or hitch a ride on pant legs to find new territories, but these plants also have a combination of traits that allow them to outcompete native species.

During research for her UAF master’s project, Spellman investigated the movement of invasive plant species into areas burned by a record-breaking amount of wildfires in 2004. “I noticed white sweetclover (Melilotus albus) was the most abundant species along roadsides near the burns and that the sweet clover patches were just buzzing with bees.”

Blueberries and lowbush cranberries come back vigorously after fires, but they require insect pollination to produce fruit. Avid berry pickers themselves, Spellman and her advisor, Mulder, wondered whether the invasive white sweetclover might impact the berry production.

“We set up a big experiment where we added flowering sweetclover – very carefully so as to not start an invasion – to blueberry and lowbush cranberry patches and looked at how the pollination and berry production changed in those patches. We got some very interesting and surprising results.”

The researchers found that the invasive plants were acting like a magnet, drawing the pollinators away from the berry flowers. What they didn’t know was which parts of Alaska actually had long periods of flowering overlap.

For answers, the researchers turned to the Herbarium at the University of Alaska Museum of the North and to citizen scientist volunteers. The herbarium has more than 22,000 lichens, mosses, and vascular plants that thoroughly characterize the flora of Alaska and adjacent regions of Canada and the Russian Far East. This archive gave the researchers a good idea of when cranberry, blueberry, and white sweet clover flowered in the past. They also needed to know how berry and sweetclover flowering overlaps in the present, so they asked volunteers to adopt five blueberry, lowbush cranberry, or white sweetclover plants and watch them as they progress from bud to fruit.

Last summer, 89 volunteers monitored 50 different sites across Alaska.

Spellman and Mulder found that cranberry typically has a longer period of overlap with white sweet clover than blueberry does. This kind of data can hint at which berry picking regions could be most vulnerable to the impacts of invasive plants.

Formal and informal educators who want to get involved in a plant monitoring project can take a one-credit professional development course with UAF Summer Sessions called “Invasive Plants of Alaska for Educators” from June 24-26.

Anyone interested in helping monitor berries or invasive plants can contact Spellman at katie.spellman@alaska.edu.

It was one o’clock when we got to the top. I was ahead all day and was the first ever to set foot on Mt. Denali. - Walter Harper

THE FIRST ASCENT - One hundred years ago, Walter Harper, an Athabascan man from Interior Alaska, was the first person to stand on top of Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. He was joined by his teammates, Harry Karstens, Robert Tatum, and Hudson Stuck.

I had made a flag and raised it. First of all after we all shook hands with congratulations, Arch deacon offered a prayer of thanks.  Then the instruments were read and I raised the flag and Arch d photographed it. - Robert Tatum

These photos from Stuck’s Book “Ascent of Denali” are featured in our exhibit, Denali Legacy: 100 Years on the Mountain.

if it w[h]ere not the final climb I should have stayed in camp but being the final climb & such a promising day I managed to pull through I put Walter in lead an kept him there all day with never a change. - Harry Karstens

Also on display are the pick ax in the top left photo, the flag made of bits of materials along the trail in the top right photo, the original climbing journals, and a thermometer used to record the minimum temperatures on the mountain.

I had no sensation in my feet at all until nearly noon: and even my lynx mitts could not keep my hands warm.- Hudson Stuck

MAKING TRACKS - Earth Sciences Collection Manager Julie Rousseau prepares dinosaur track specimens for the teaching collection.

“We make these replicas to use for teaching and outreach,” Rousseau said. “That way, the public can handle the specimen without risk of breaking the original. Good casts show as much morphological details as the original specimens, and we can paint them so they look like the original too.”

Some facts!

-Each specimen is a natural rock cast of the original footprint of a dinosaur.

-Both of these specimens were found on the North Slope in Early Cretaceous rocks from the Nanushuk Formation. They are about 94 to 112 million years old.

-It’s sometimes difficult to tell exactly what species of dinosaur left the footprint, but we can usually tell which group of dinosaur the track maker belonged to.

-One (UAMES 32218 = Smaller one, dark grey) was collected on the Colville River in 1998. It is from a herbivorous dinosaur.

-The other (UAMES 15692 = Bigger one, brownish) was collected on Slope Mountain in 2011. It is from a theropod (meat-eating) dinosaur.