DESIGNING GEOSCIENCE LAB COURSES RELEVANT TO WESTERN ALASKA

The geography of Western Alaska embraces many unique and remote locations that make designing geoscience lab courses both new and exciting even if logistically overwhelming. Much of the region has been mapped geologically but few students and educators have visited the vast region because the limited road network, expensive air or water transportation, and few retail outlets. Add to this, the low population density and limited infrastructure, organizing and conducting science programs can become logistically difficult and costly. However, over the past 5 years University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) College of Rural and Community Development (CRCD) has taught on average 8 different undergraduate lab based science courses each year, mostly through four small rural campuses located in Bethel, Dillingham, Kotzebue, and Nome. For other institutions, these same rural UAF campuses can use its contacts and local knowledge and serve as facilitator for programs that want to gain access to the untapped geoscience resources of the region.

For example, the UAF Bristol Bay Campus Environmental Science Lab also holds an annual summer field methods class where students learned how to collect scientific data in Nushagak estuary during one of the largest remaining salmon runs on Earth. The field courses investigate the estuary’s geomorphology, water quality, ecology, and sediments. Because field based field studies like this are uncommon, they provided valuable information in a region that has little baseline data. So not only do students gain important academic skills, they collect data in regions needing a better understanding of landscape sensitivity, ecosystem functions and human interactions.

It is becoming recognized that Western Alaska provides landscapes that academics worldwide desire to use for field camps, geoscience education, and research activities, but due to the high costs and difficult logistics, western Alaska is under used. The UAF rural campuses have much experience doing science and could cooperate with organizations that wish to work in Alaska. Such collaboration would benefit students, educational institutions, and other partners.