00;00;00;07 - 00;00;15;00 Lia Hello and welcome to Alaska Voices. I'm Lia Ferguson from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and I'm joined today by Micah Hahn, a professor and researcher of environmental health from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Micah! Welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. 00;00;15;01 - 00;00;16;05 Micah Great. Thanks, Lia. 00;00;16;06 - 00;01;04;12 Lia We've spent the last few years gathering place based conversations about Alaska, Alaskans and climate adaptation. We collected stories from all around the state and sometimes outside the state, and allowed the topics to arise naturally, going wherever the conversation took them. Sometimes we listened to two friends recalling a memorable experience, sometimes three relatives sharing their visions for communities, and sometimes two scientists talking about the changes they've seen in the systems they study. But most of all, we just wanted our conversation partners to connect over what was important to them so that we, as listeners, might learn a little more about the friends, scientists, and community members that surround us when we clipped out pieces of these recordings to share. We checked with everyone to make sure we understood what they said and held true to the spirit of their conversation. 00;01;04;19 - 00;01;57;28 Micah Today we will focus on the theme of family. Over the years, we've sat down to record conversations between parents and children, siblings, grandparents, cousins, as well as families who choose one another and families of animal companions. The first two conversations we'd like to play are between a father and his daughters. Jeremy Litell is a research ecologist for the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center and the Department of Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. In 2018, he sat down with his daughter Merridy, to reflect on their time together in the field and their shared observations of our changing environment in Alaska. She was ten years old at the time. This conversation was recorded by Ryan Toohey. It is called father daughter. Fieldwork. 00;01;58;00 - 00;02;12;25 Jeremy My name is Jeremy Littell. My age is 44. I am a research ecologist for the Elastic Climate Science Center and the Department of Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, and my relationship to my partner is I'm her dad. 00;02;12;26 - 00;02;47;12 Merridy My name is Merridy Littell. My age is ten, and my relationship to my partner is I'm his daughter. I work with my dad on my science projects. This year we were trying to figure out if there was a Wolverine at three points in the Campbell tract that we got from a map that two people at Fish and Game, Mike Harrington and Dave Salford, gave us. We got the points from where the Wolverine was active most. 00;02;47;13 - 00;02;57;23 Jeremy Yeah. So they collared her in 2012 right. And they didn't know if she's still there because they took the collar off. So they wanted to know if she was still there. Your Wolverine had a name. 00;02;57;26 - 00;03;01;12 Merridy For 66 because her tag number was 66. 00;03;01;13 - 00;03;04;20 Jeremy Should we tell how you got started on this? 00;03;04;22 - 00;03;19;24 Merridy Oh, yeah. So I found my interest in wolverines when I saw two wolverines in the wild. Dad had been doing field work for 17 years and never seen a wolverine. On my first trip out there, bam! Not one, but two wolverines in the wild. 00;03;19;25 - 00;03;44;23 Jeremy We were up in the two front Range because we have a site there, too, for our tree line temperature work, and that I share with Mary. And we always go every year to change out the sensors there. We had dropped our packs and had some food, and then gone around behind some trees to put out some sensors. And while we were doing it, I thought maybe that's not such a good idea to leave our packs behind. 00;03;44;24 - 00;03;50;13 Jeremy And I thought, well, at least I better go back and get the bear spray. And so she followed me back around the trees. 00;03;50;13 - 00;03;51;08 Merridy With the dog. 00;03;51;09 - 00;04;08;17 Jeremy I saw this little brown face poking out through the grass in. My first thought was, there's the baby, where's the mother? And I grabbed Mary and I pulled her in and I was like, okay, we better grab our things here and pay attention. And then I was like, well, wait a minute, that's not quite right. And then I thought, well, it's really low to the ground for a bear cub. 00;04;08;23 - 00;04;22;06 Jeremy And the more I liked, I thought, I know what that is. And then Mary saw it. We sat there and watched for a little bit, and then another one came through, and luckily the wind was in our favor. I don't think they ever winded us. It wasn't even 50 yards. It was pretty special. 00;04;22;07 - 00;04;47;14 Merridy We're doing this project for the science fair, and we're also doing it for fishing game so that they can get information on what animals are living there. We started in late December and and in late March we were in Far North Bicentennial Park, which is a big place, but the points were spread out a lot. 00;04;47;16 - 00;05;06;10 Jeremy Yeah. So these are all foothills of the to get there, very popular places to run and ski and bike. But they also happen to have good animal habitat and be relatively accessible and interesting for the things that we're, we're working on. How did we choose which transportation mode would get us there? 00;05;06;12 - 00;05;27;27 Merridy The snow conditions. So if the snow is really deep, we used snowshoes when we were inexperienced. We just walked and that did not work very well. If the conditions were good for biking, like not too deep snow, we would bike. And if they were too deep snow, but not deep enough snow for snowshoeing because walking would be too slow. 00;05;27;28 - 00;05;28;16 Merridy We skate. 00;05;28;18 - 00;05;32;00 Jeremy Your favorite way to get there was how? Biking. But it's a fat bike. 00;05;32;01 - 00;05;32;20 Merridy It's a fat bike. 00;05;32;21 - 00;05;45;21 Jeremy Yeah. Four inch tires riding on the snow. Yeah. When we got there, though, we parked the bikes in the woods and then walk into the actual field site. How did you decide where we should put the cameras in the first place? 00;05;45;28 - 00;06;17;13 Merridy We decided that by where there was the most muscle activity. A muscle is a mammal that has musky scent glands. Some common mustelids are otters, skunks, and weasels. For camera one we had in the general area found a lot of animal tracks, and the second one we found a set of muscle tracks going through this clearing. And so we decided to put a camera in there. 00;06;17;15 - 00;06;23;19 Merridy That was actually the one that we did not get as many photos from. We only got like two from that one. 00;06;23;22 - 00;06;38;13 Jeremy Yeah. It turns out that Martin tracks that have been out there for a while and have some sun on them, looking awful lot like Wolverine tracks, and we were super excited for a while thinking, oh, we're going to see some some Wolverine evidence, right? But it turned out to be a Martin. Martin. 00;06;38;14 - 00;06;44;22 Merridy Yeah, a very large Martin. Yeah, that peed all over everything. 00;06;44;25 - 00;07;09;22 Jeremy Some traits are conserved among the whole Mustelidae family, right? You know, often when I participate with just me or with colleagues, it's a very different environment, different focus. When somebody, they're learning. It's almost like time dilates a little bit. Things happen slower and you can kind of enjoy it more. There's not the pressure to generate tons and tons of data. 00;07;09;23 - 00;07;17;16 Jeremy There's not really any pressure. It's much more fun environment in some ways. If we do another year of this, how what would you change? 00;07;17;17 - 00;07;47;03 Merridy I would definitely want to include where we saw the Wolverines, because that would tell us if they were still there. Some reasons why they might be there would be that there are a lot of moose there. So that could lead to more moose carcasses because wolverines survive off carcasses. I participated in a science technology, engineering math competition where you had to invent something and you didn't actually have to build it, but you had to explain it with documents. 00;07;47;05 - 00;08;04;06 Merridy But we invented a drone with an infrared sensor that would sense fresh bodies of this kind of gross roadkill and pick them up with a claw and then carry them back to a truck, the Roadkill People's truck. 00;08;04;07 - 00;08;15;20 Jeremy And originally, I love this part of the design. Originally, the concept was also that it would keep that carrion from going to waste by turning it into edible food. Right. 00;08;15;21 - 00;08;24;10 Merridy Yeah. And now it just picks up little things like squirrels, because it would have been too hard to design to chop up like moose. 00;08;24;14 - 00;08;34;29 Jeremy Maybe that's why we didn't find route 66 if she got Ahold of your drone. 00;08;35;01 - 00;08;38;07 Merridy That would be dead useful for you for over. 00;08;38;08 - 00;08;59;23 Jeremy Wolverine would love to have a carrion finding drone, right? Well, here's to here's to many more science adventure outings. 00;08;59;26 - 00;09;12;01 Micah Wow. I really loved hearing about the roadkill drone and also just Meredith Time reflecting in general with Jeremy, and I actually have him in the room today, so we get to hear directly about his own reactions. Hey, Jeremy. 00;09;12;02 - 00;09;13;03 Jeremy Hey, Micah. Thanks. 00;09;13;03 - 00;09;15;27 Micah So what is it like hearing young Mary? 00;09;16;00 - 00;09;41;20 Jeremy In a couple of ways? It seems like that was so long ago, because so much has happened since then. That was in the before times. Right before the pandemic, before high school, before college. It's been a while. And at the same time, it's clear that even then, her interest in the facts and in science and also the fun of the process just come through so clearly. 00;09;41;22 - 00;09;45;08 Micah How did you know that she was ready for coming to the field with you? 00;09;45;08 - 00;10;08;12 Jeremy I think she just told me she was already quite capable at navigating outside and, you know, running, skiing, biking. She was able to traverse the kinds of distances that we were talking about, which were not extreme by any means, but were enough that you want a kid to be ready so that they're having some fun anyway. And she just was interested. 00;10;08;12 - 00;10;36;08 Jeremy She wanted to know that curiosity and almost a need to experience more of the world. That was evident before she could speak, before she could really walk even. And I think all we did was recognize that and try to encourage it or make space for it. And really, that's all you can do to some degree, is to make space for just how they naturally are, you know, in the world. 00;10;36;08 - 00;10;52;18 Jeremy And as a dad with two girls, you know, where we've come from historically and you can see what's possible. And I think both my wife and I have tried since the beginning to make sure that that space is as open as it can be for them. 00;10;52;19 - 00;11;12;21 Micah I have two young kids before and a two year old, and of course I want to get them outside all the time and something I think about and don't really know how I'll decide or know as they get older is balancing the risks of going outside, especially in remote Alaska, with, you know, having them experience what it's like. 00;11;12;22 - 00;11;15;24 Micah How have you thought about that with your girls as they've been growing up? 00;11;15;26 - 00;11;36;19 Jeremy I mean, it's ever present, particularly here. Part of it is trying to be aware as much as possible of what the risks are being ready for most of the ones you're likely to encounter, including bears and other wild animals. Right. And then just trying to minimize that risk without making them afraid. They're observing enough. They pick up on it. 00;11;36;19 - 00;11;54;10 Jeremy That day we had a dog with us, too, which is both extra set of eyes and sometimes a liability, right, depending on the dog. And that dog in particular was aware of such things. He's not the kind that would bring a bear back. We have to be aware. But we also, I think, are obligated almost to have them out there in the world. 00;11;54;10 - 00;11;59;21 Jeremy And we have to do it in ways that are safe for them until they're able to make their own decisions. 00;11;59;22 - 00;12;08;27 Micah That's a good point. Inevitably, they're going to be by themselves at some point. So I guess I would rather them have experienced these things when I can be there to kind of guide them. 00;12;09;00 - 00;12;17;21 Jeremy When they're really little. A good way to do it is to have a couple families worth the kids, because you're always going to be so loud that everything else is going to know you're there before you're there. 00;12;17;23 - 00;12;29;23 Micah Yeah, I wonder if it was so natural because Mary ended up enjoying doing a lot of things that you guys like to do in terms of being outside and exploring in science. What if she hadn't turned out that way? 00;12;29;24 - 00;12;58;26 Jeremy Well, that's the flip side is in some ways they don't have any choice, right? Because that's what we do. Probably they also then see us in one of the places that drives us, right, that lights up joy for us or makes us happier in what we do. And they see the positive sides of it. They also get to experience how other people, or in our case, other creatures, other places, or, you know, it makes the world a more knowable and welcoming place. 00;12;58;28 - 00;13;02;07 Jeremy If they experience a really wide range of things. 00;13;02;10 - 00;13;21;01 Micah As an epidemiologist, I, you know, working with humans a lot. And so, you know, actually there are a couple opportunities, like I have a project in this summer and I was like, oh, maybe it could be fun to bring them along for something like that. And I mean, my mom was a vet growing up. She had her own clinic, and I worked there from a very young age. 00;13;21;01 - 00;13;42;20 Micah So I was really engaged in her day to day and know exactly what she does and what it looks like. And I guess, you know, my dad was a physician. You know, we lived in rural East Tennessee. And if he had to make house calls on the weekend, that's when I was with him. You were talking about how it's different when you're out in the field with your kids, or really any one else that's in a learning mode. 00;13;42;26 - 00;14;02;01 Jeremy I had a lot of time in wild places and in the wilderness before I was actually practicing as any kind of scientist, even a grad student. And so it's sort of, I think, easier or maybe more natural for me to sort of transition back and forth. There's the times when we're there. We don't know how long the weather window is. 00;14;02;04 - 00;14;27;14 Jeremy The data are important. It costs a lot of money to get there. And so we feel the pressure to do as much as well as possible. And then it's a little bit different when you're trying to introduce somebody to that process or that place. And if that's the main objective and the data can wait and or, you know, you get another opportunity to come back, it changes things a little bit. 00;14;27;15 - 00;14;41;18 Jeremy And maybe in ways that are for the better when something clicks and they understand or they get it, or they discover for themselves some piece of it, and that joy is really it doesn't arise as easily, I think, when there's just the pressure to go, go, go. 00;14;41;18 - 00;14;42;19 Micah Go, go. You're on a mission. 00;14;42;21 - 00;14;49;26 Jeremy If the mission is joy, not datum per dollar. Yeah, then that changes the whole demeanor of it. 00;14;49;28 - 00;15;17;20 Micah When we first recorded Jeremy and Mary in 2018, it captured one moment in their family's story. The next conversation will share was recorded six years later, last December, when Mary was home in Anchorage from college. Jeremy and Mary were joined by may've married his younger sister and Jeremy's youngest daughter. Listening to the two conversations, side by side offers a chance to hear how perspectives, relationships, and conversations within a family evolve over time. 00;15;17;23 - 00;15;37;02 Micah This conversation is called ten years of family fieldwork, and I had the pleasure of recording it. 00;15;37;04 - 00;15;45;21 Maeve Hi, my name is Maeve Littell. I'm 12 years old. Jeremy is my dad and Mary is my sister, and we all live in Anchorage, Alaska. 00;15;45;23 - 00;15;52;22 Merridy Hi. My name is Merridy Littell. I am 18 years old and is my sister, and Jeremy is my dad. 00;15;52;24 - 00;16;00;28 Jeremy And I'm Jeremy Littell. I'm 52 years old. It's December the 30th, 2025 and I'm married and makes dad. 00;16;01;00 - 00;16;11;04 Maeve We were walking along from our field site and there is just this random wasp nest on the ground that looks empty. 00;16;11;05 - 00;16;14;04 Jeremy The first person past the wasps nest didn't see it, I think. 00;16;14;05 - 00;16;15;11 Merridy Right? I didn't see it. 00;16;15;12 - 00;16;20;01 Maeve I know you spotted it, but you kept on walking and I didn't see it. Oh, okay. 00;16;20;03 - 00;16;20;11 Merridy Yeah. 00;16;20;12 - 00;16;38;14 Jeremy And then I thought it was an abandoned nest. And so I was going to go pick it up because it's fun to look at them then. Interesting to see how they've constructed them. And I was very curious about how the wasps might have done that in this high elevation shrub environment. We're used to seeing them down in the forest. 00;16;38;15 - 00;16;46;22 Jeremy Right. And so I got closer and as I leaned over to pick it up, then they all started to pour out of it. And that's when everybody started to run. 00;16;46;27 - 00;16;52;05 Maeve None of us got stung. None of the dogs got stung. But we did lose two leashes. 00;16;52;10 - 00;17;18;29 Merridy And then you went back to go look for those leashes. And we sat on the side of the hill on the tundra, and I was bored. So I pulled out my phone and I knew that colleges will often report whether you got credit for your AP exams before the AP exams come out. So I went and I looked to see if I'd passed my AP exams and I had, which I was very happy about. 00;17;18;29 - 00;17;25;00 Merridy And then dad came back and we had lost neither of the dogs, but we had not found the leashes. 00;17;25;03 - 00;17;35;07 Maeve Since Cassie was still a puppy. Didn't we have to use like the parachute cord you had tied around your pocket knife? 00;17;35;11 - 00;17;55;23 Jeremy Yeah. As we got into Glen Alps, near where all this occurs, that's where a lot of people go to hike. And there's a leash law. So we put the dog on a court. And so all of this is taking place in the front range of the two mountains, right outside of Anchorage. And when MAV says there's a field site. 00;17;55;26 - 00;18;05;19 Jeremy Oh, yeah. This is that we've returned to most years for the last decade. And what's there at that field site? 00;18;05;20 - 00;18;17;09 Merridy We have air temperature sensors up in some trees. We have surface temperature sensors, and we have soil temperature sensors that measure the temperature year round. 00;18;17;09 - 00;18;29;09 Maeve And sometimes people like, well, find them or a bear will find them and we won't be able to get data back. But most of the time we've been able to get data. 00;18;29;11 - 00;18;56;13 Jeremy That's right. The ones on the surface in particular, get found pretty frequently by bears or other creatures, and sometimes we find them smudged and other times we don't find them at all. So those sensors are there to record air, soil surface temperature. And they also in the wintertime when they're buried by snow, they can tell us whether there's snow there or not, not how much snow, but whether it's covered or not. 00;18;56;13 - 00;19;15;20 Jeremy And all of those things we're looking at because the tree line is right there at that elevation. And so those sensors are distributed in the tree line, where I was curious about the controls on spruce and mountain hemlock and shrub expansion upslope. 00;19;15;25 - 00;19;22;16 Maeve There's a lot of different spots for the sensors to write, like trees, bushes, that kind of stuff. 00;19;22;17 - 00;19;23;20 Jeremy Tell me more about that. 00;19;23;21 - 00;19;27;08 Maeve We put it either like near the ground, but also sometimes in the trees. 00;19;27;09 - 00;19;45;02 Jeremy Yeah. So the air temperature ones go up in the trees to try and keep them from getting buried by snow. And also the trees act as a shield in the summertime for the solar radiation. Right. So they give us a better estimate of air temperature, although it's not as good as like the weather station. They have done it. 00;19;45;04 - 00;19;46;16 Jeremy National Weather Service.. 00;19;46;16 - 00;19;49;06 Merridy Sometimes we have to climb the trees. Yes. 00;19;49;07 - 00;19;50;06 Maeve That was funny. 00;19;50;06 - 00;20;07;16 Jeremy So the front range of the two has a lot of snow. In particular, it has a lot of snow that blows it around and trees act like a snow fence. And so we have to put them up as high as we can in the summertime, so that they're not below the snow surface in the wintertime. It's sort of a hanging wet meadow. 00;20;07;19 - 00;20;09;00 Jeremy Plenty of moose. 00;20;09;03 - 00;20;10;18 Merridy Yeah. The moose see us a lot. 00;20;10;20 - 00;20;14;22 Jeremy And one time that we talked about before we wolverines saw us. 00;20;14;23 - 00;20;29;24 Merridy That was the first time, I think one year I counted eight moose. We went in October. Right as they're coming down from the higher mountain valleys and all sitting around and huffing at us. Luckily, we haven't gotten charged. 00;20;29;29 - 00;20;40;06 Jeremy So we've gotten to go back most years. Some years we haven't to retrieve the sensors and download the data and replace new ones. And Meredith, you've been going since you were, what. 00;20;40;07 - 00;20;40;20 Merridy Nine. 00;20;40;26 - 00;20;45;08 Jeremy 8 or 9? Yeah. And then maybe you got to go for the first time last summer. Or was that. 00;20;45;08 - 00;20;52;00 Maeve Yeah. Well, there was the one time a couple years ago and it was like, I think Fairbanks, where we had one. 00;20;52;03 - 00;20;53;00 Merridy Yeah, we went on a road. 00;20;53;02 - 00;20;53;17 Maeve Trip. 00;20;53;22 - 00;20;58;13 Merridy Partially to go get your sensors, but this was the first time you'd been to this specific. 00;20;58;16 - 00;21;03;18 Maeve Like around Anchorage. Yep. I remember it was very soggy. 00;21;03;20 - 00;21;06;10 Jeremy Why did you want to come with us to the field site? 00;21;06;12 - 00;21;07;12 Maeve Because it's fun. 00;21;07;13 - 00;21;08;23 Jeremy Yeah. Did you know that? 00;21;08;23 - 00;21;10;26 Maeve I've heard you guys tell this story before. 00;21;10;27 - 00;21;11;17 Jeremy But your feet got. 00;21;11;17 - 00;21;15;02 Jeremy Wet and. 00;21;15;04 - 00;21;15;29 Jeremy Why else? 00;21;16;00 - 00;21;34;26 Maeve I don't know, it's just really fun to crash and bash through the woods and, like, it kind of reminds me of geocaching. You're searching for something. And when we go home, and if the batteries are dead, we have to ship them off so they can still get the data. If the veterans aren't dead, then we get to see the data. 00;21;35;01 - 00;21;41;05 Maeve And I don't know, it just sounded like it was fun and it was fun. And I have to go back again this summer. 00;21;41;08 - 00;21;58;11 Jeremy We definitely have to go back. That's one of the benefits of having instruments out there, is that you get to go back, right. A lot of our field sites in Alaska are so remote that we visit them once a year, if that, and the travel is difficult and expensive and nobody else gets to go and it's sort of inaccessible. 00;21;58;11 - 00;22;21;28 Jeremy Whereas one of the benefits of having something close to the road system and nearby is that if somebody comes through, we can take them out on just a day trip, and as long as they're capable of accessing it, we can show them some of how this place works. And it's different. We're sort of right on the edge of the rainforest and the boreal forest and not quite the Arctic, and it's really a different place. 00;22;21;28 - 00;22;42;17 Jeremy And so we can take people up there and say, yeah, look, we get almost as much snow as the temperate rainforest edge just around the corner from here. But also mountain hemlock is a tree that meets the edge of its distribution. Just right north of here. We're basically living at the edge of Mountain Hemlocks Distribution, and it goes all the way south to the Sierra Nevada from here. 00;22;42;19 - 00;22;53;13 Jeremy And people don't expect to find it here. They think, oh, that's spruce. This is spruce land. And it is it's mostly spruce. But the tree line here is a mix. And so it's kind of fun to be able to take people up and show them that as well. 00;22;53;14 - 00;22;56;10 Merridy Yeah. Makes a good l0 rest day hike. 00;22;56;11 - 00;22;57;25 Jeremy You might have to explain that. 00;22;57;25 - 00;23;24;04 Merridy So I train for cross-country skiing pretty much year round. And that's often been one of the factors that makes it hard to get out to the field site some years. But that nice, you know, seven mile hike three and a half, three and a half out unless we get lost. Makes for a really nice day of easy movement that's below normal training pace, but still gets the blood moving and gets you out in the outdoors. 00;23;24;07 - 00;23;36;09 Jeremy And so we've actually had some folks hop in with us and help us out, and it's turned into sort of a social aspect of the ski community, not just research community. 00;23;36;11 - 00;23;59;18 Merridy Yeah, it's definitely been kind of an introduction into the scientific world for a number of people, or at least an introduction into research itself. I know it's been that for me. And MAV, I mean, I did one of my first science fair projects using data from this field site, but it's also kind of shown me how scientific research is a process. 00;23;59;18 - 00;24;04;19 Merridy It can be a flawed process, and also that it can be fun. 00;24;04;21 - 00;24;09;25 Jeremy Yeah, especially the field work side of it can be a lot of fun. Sometimes the data entry and correction is not as much fun. 00;24;09;25 - 00;24;10;08 Maeve But that. 00;24;10;08 - 00;24;10;23 Merridy Is fun. 00;24;10;24 - 00;24;11;07 Jeremy Yeah, good. 00;24;11;08 - 00;24;38;28 Merridy I found it fun. I'm pursuing a degree in social science with a concentration in basically political science. And when I did my paper for my Environmental Systems and society's class, I took some of your data. I compared it to the ERA five model, and I found it really fun to just work in those spreadsheets. I mean, I learned a lot about Excel from that project and how to write a scientific paper. 00;24;38;29 - 00;25;00;23 Merridy That was fun for me. And I think that part of that being fun was that I gotten to learn a lot of the skills very early on. I mean, that temperature sensor project that I did for the science fair was in, what, fourth grade, I think maybe fifth grade. And so from a young age, I've had the opportunities to practice those skills. 00;25;00;23 - 00;25;07;12 Merridy So when it came time to do it in an academic setting, I was already confident and was able to just have a lot of fun. 00;25;07;15 - 00;25;11;29 Jeremy When you said it was fun to see and correct the data, what's fun about it? 00;25;12;00 - 00;25;42;04 Maeve It's just like you get to see, like all of this data that's been collected over the year, and then you can look at that data, maybe even put it on a graph and look at how things have been changing, especially if you have graphs from times before you started doing this field work. And it's just kind of fun to compare and contrast and plot it on graphs and that kind of thing. 00;25;42;11 - 00;25;52;07 Jeremy If we ask ourselves, why would we keep making these measurements? Why should we? Who cares about these changes in the To? 00;25;52;10 - 00;26;25;10 Maeve Everyone should care about it, because there are going to be people who think that the changes won't affect us, but there are already changes that are starting to affect us, like permafrost, thawing temperatures, rising sea levels going up. And those centers can help us measure that. And if we can act now, there will be more things to look forward to in the future. 00;26;25;12 - 00;26;50;20 Merridy I think on a more specific level, we start the hike to go get these sensors from Glen Alps, and with climate change impacting the environment, Glen Alps could look very different in 100 years, right? Anchorage goes out there to ski, to hike, to snowmobile. I don't think as much to hunt, but there are sometimes hunts back in the judges. 00;26;50;21 - 00;27;35;14 Merridy And we, I think, as a community, are uniquely positioned to appreciate what nature has to offer us. And Arthur site is also uniquely positioned to understand the changes to that natural environment that we all recreate in. I think that there is inherent value to having wild places, whether they directly benefit us or not. I don't think that it should necessarily be those wild places job to prove that they have inherent worth to us just to exist. 00;27;35;15 - 00;27;50;02 Merridy So I think that tracking changes that we have inflicted upon these places that have inherent worth is very important. And that can start with just understanding changes in air, surface and soil temperature. 00;27;50;03 - 00;28;22;28 Jeremy These are part of a network from Sitka spruce Mountain hemlock tree lines in Southeast Alaska, up through the mountain hemlock and white spruce tree lines of south central Alaska, and into the pure spruce tree lines of the Alaska Range and the White Mountains north of Fairbanks. Those are really different environments a temperate rainforest or humid forest. Some call it a temperate forest, and then a boreal forest, almost in an Arctic setting. 00;28;23;00 - 00;28;55;22 Jeremy And the range of changes in those is really quite varied. And so you're right, part of it is to understand the range of changes in those wild places. And all of them are wild places where people go for different purposes, everything from berries and caribou to their own sustenance. And understanding how they're changing is partly an interesting scientific problem and an ecological problem and a climatic and physical problem, but also a social one as well, to some degree. 00;28;55;27 - 00;29;35;25 Merridy I mean, we know that having access to green spaces, meaning spaces where there aren't a lot of buildings, there isn't a lot of infrastructure, and especially wild places, has really big impacts on the health and mental well-being of people. And so the ability to preserve those places starts with understanding how they're changing. Science really is social. I mean, the work that we are doing is maybe in a very small way, impacting the well-being of the people in the places where we live. 00;29;35;28 - 00;29;44;19 Jeremy What is the next ten years look like? What do we do with this place, this thing we've been doing, this field state? What's its future? 00;29;44;25 - 00;29;54;25 Maeve I'd say that we probably will be still going back in ten years. I'll be older than Melody is now. 00;29;55;02 - 00;29;56;14 Merridy Yep. It'll be 22. 00;29;56;15 - 00;29;58;13 Maeve Yeah, and you'll be. 00;29;58;15 - 00;30;00;12 Merridy 28. 00;30;00;14 - 00;30;02;15 Maeve And dad will. 00;30;02;16 - 00;30;07;09 Jeremy Be not yet retired. Probably not finished yet. 00;30;07;11 - 00;30;37;04 Merridy And I would hope that this is still a place where we can take people to go participate in the process of science, and where we can participate in the process of science ourselves. I think about all of the opportunities that I've had to interact with science from an early age, and the ability that we've had to give that opportunity to other people, but also the fact that this is a very, very unique opportunity that I've been given, and I'm really grateful for it. 00;30;37;04 - 00;30;46;28 Merridy But I also think about, you know, a lot of people don't have that opportunity, and so how can we get them that opportunity? 00;30;47;01 - 00;30;54;29 Jeremy I'm glad you're willing to consider another decade of wet feet, mosquitoes and wind to go do it. 00;30;55;00 - 00;30;59;12 Merridy I will take more mosquitoes for more snow that I can ski on. 00;30;59;13 - 00;31;10;04 Maeve There was so little snow that the tour of Anchorage last winter, instead of being a long 25 K trail, they had us do five K laps. 00;31;10;05 - 00;31;47;10 Jeremy The changing snow is affecting us all in ways that are sometimes the same as a mountain hemlock, and in other ways much different than a mountain hemlock. And so it's this connection with the process, right? You girls are talking about your skiing and the way the snow quality and persistence affects that. And it's those experiences that give us that process, knowledge and understanding to better study it, but also then to better estimate what impacts it's going to have on society, on other creatures, on other processes. 00;31;47;10 - 00;31;50;22 Jeremy And it's more holistic if we do it that way. 00;31;50;25 - 00;32;04;11 Merridy You are the person in this room who is most likely to be on this earth for the longest. You are growing up in different decades than we did. 00;32;04;12 - 00;32;05;02 Maeve Don't jinx it. 00;32;05;03 - 00;32;18;15 Merridy I won't jinx it. What is your opinion? What is your take on how humans are impacting the climate, and also how our systems, our governmental or economic systems are impacting the climate? 00;32;18;15 - 00;32;44;27 Maeve So in class my science class, we recently watched a movie at the tooth called 2040. It was made in 2018 and it was like, if we could pull our act together right now, what could the world look like in 2040? Which would be, what, eight years after I graduated high school? It's a very optimistic view where we aren't producing as much carbon. 00;32;44;29 - 00;33;28;09 Maeve There's public transport, things like that. But if we don't pull our act together, this could also look like a place where there's tons and tons of carbon in the atmosphere. Temperatures rise. We don't get as much snow as we have, but pulling our act together means, at least to me, trying to reduce carbon missions, getting technology working that can reduce the carbon that's already in the atmosphere, but then also creating a world where once we have reached that point, we don't go back. 00;33;28;11 - 00;33;31;17 Maeve To our old ways of emitting carbon. 00;33;31;18 - 00;33;47;12 Merridy That's something that often gets left out of the climate conversation, probably because we aren't there yet, but that doesn't make it less important. How can we create sustainable societies and then keep those societies sustainable? 00;33;47;17 - 00;34;14;18 Maeve We already have those technologies implemented in places around the world, but they're not as efficient as they could be. I feel like because the sun doesn't always shine, we need a way to collect as much sunlight as we can, and the wind doesn't always blow. So we would need a way to harvest those energies in moments that we can. 00;34;14;20 - 00;34;31;10 Maeve But then when we can't, we would need to rely on other places that maybe not aren't even in our community. That might be halfway around the world where the sun is shining, where the wind is blowing. 00;34;31;11 - 00;34;40;08 Merridy So I'm hearing that global cooperation and adaptability are going to be key to creating a sustainable future. 00;34;40;09 - 00;34;55;11 Maeve Exactly. 00;34;55;13 - 00;35;01;09 Micah What's it like hearing college educated? Has she surprised you with anything she's learned in class? 00;35;01;10 - 00;35;30;13 Jeremy She was really sick the end of first semester, and had decided that linear algebra was the part that had to go, and really continued more on the social science political science course, but then happened to be taking a natural resources course taught by somebody with a forest and climate background. And so things that she heard from me, but maybe with slightly different intonations. 00;35;30;14 - 00;35;31;22 Micah Not her. Not her dad. 00;35;31;24 - 00;35;51;18 Jeremy Right, exactly. And so she kind of shined in that course and liked it a lot. So natural resources policy type stuff was in the forefront. And it was really like that course seemed like a summary of my entire undergraduate education all in one course. It was like, wow, it's all so transdisciplinary now. And, you know, like the role of people in a holistic system was a part of it. 00;35;51;18 - 00;36;11;14 Jeremy I was like, wow, okay. That's great. The Meredith that we heard from years ago in that first interview is still there. Very much curious, very much. Okay, here's what's next. Very much. Here's what you're telling me and here's what could be right. So taking those next steps. And so some things are different and surprising and others are maybe not that surprising. 00;36;11;15 - 00;36;27;12 Micah I liked Mavs reference to geocaching. We've looked up all the geocaching in our neighborhood, and every time I run over that bridge or go by that tree I like in the back of my mind, I'm like, oh, I know there's a secret right there. I imagine just maybe they're out with friends. They're like, oh, we have a sensor over there. 00;36;27;17 - 00;36;52;21 Jeremy It changes your geographical picture of the world. When you know something about a spot like it becomes sort of the pivot point or almost like the center of a little orbit, and you're like, everything is relative to that. And people who spend a lot of time in a place like the Chugach Front Range, you know, like we all have a set of trails or a set of points or a peak or 3 or 5 or whatever it is that we orient around. 00;36;52;22 - 00;37;05;28 Jeremy And so their orbit center is a little bit different. You have meaning that has, well, literally latitudes and longitudes and elevations to it. And that changes how you walk in the world. 00;37;06;00 - 00;37;10;27 Micah How did you feel to hear them talk about how fun it is to play with spreadsheets? 00;37;10;29 - 00;37;17;17 Jeremy I was I was surprised, not thinking, wow, okay, the next generation. Yeah, I was gonna do all that for him. 00;37;17;18 - 00;37;20;24 Micah Oh, a good point, right? Like, yeah. Oh gosh. 00;37;20;26 - 00;37;50;15 Jeremy I like it that it wasn't drudgery to figure out how you go from data to information. Right. The idea that the observations are what they are, but they don't mean anything until we put them in context to hear Mavs comment about the data that came before you were even involved, or something to that effect. It's like that was part of what initially got me into ecology research in the first place was the idea that long term observation had such power and why, for example, tree ring work captivated me too. 00;37;50;16 - 00;38;10;00 Jeremy Because here's something that's been in the same spot for six, eight, 900, a thousand years witnessing that climate. And it can't tell us the same way we talk to each other, but it can tell us things. And for me, that concepts always been super powerful. But for them to say essentially that a spreadsheet is a vehicle for doing that, it's like, yeah, that's right. 00;38;10;01 - 00;38;35;05 Micah People's understanding of data is going to change so much because you do learn messing with the data. Doing that exploratory process is so much of analysis and deciding where you're going to go. And if you just go from like raw spreadsheet, you plop it in and then you come out with results on the other side, like, how much is that going to change the science process? 00;38;35;06 - 00;38;52;12 Jeremy We're more subject to confirmation bias when the AI is finding stuff in there. We're like, yeah, that fits with what I thought would happen. Okay, I believe it. The flip side of that, that happens when we're engaging with our own data is we do have hypothetical biases as we go in, we have how we think the system works. 00;38;52;12 - 00;39;11;05 Jeremy And then when we see that not confirmed, I think a lot of our better insights come from like, wait, wait a minute. That's why is that not. And following that through. And that's the creative, intuitive spark that I don't know for sure, but it seems like it'd be a lot harder to get AI to do that part for us. 00;39;11;06 - 00;39;11;23 Jeremy Right? 00;39;11;24 - 00;39;38;17 Micah Your daughters obviously know so much about climate change just from talking with you. And I'm sure your wife also and, you know, doing this, their own long term observations. And to me, I think despite that, they still seem so optimistic about humanity and I that's awesome. And it makes me excited and, you know, optimistic for the future. But you're always trying to balance like it's not the future generations responsibility. 00;39;38;18 - 00;39;40;22 Micah Like you can't just say like, oh, they got this. 00;39;40;22 - 00;40;03;02 Jeremy I think we've raised them. And you pointed out that my wife has a role in this too, and that's very much the case. We've raised them to be capable and to consider deeply the full dimensions of things when they when they can, and that fairness and awareness of how others are experiencing it is every bit as important as knowing something about it. 00;40;03;03 - 00;40;32;12 Jeremy Right? It's not enough just to know things. You have to also then try to take in like who wins, who loses, what is the context? And they're both really good at that, quite possibly better than I am even at this early stage. And so I think they are optimistic and that's great. And we we need that. But at the same time, I think it's a measured optimism in that they always seem to be aware to of it's not just how they experience it, like there's always someone else out there experiencing a different side of it. 00;40;32;13 - 00;40;50;14 Jeremy I mean, Meredith's interest in some form of law, natural resources law or something like that seems to very much be informed by some of those disparities and may've is now starting to say, well, I think I also want to be a lawyer. There's been talk of Supreme Court justices and things like this. 00;40;50;14 - 00;40;52;05 Micah So yes. Go, girls. 00;40;52;06 - 00;41;04;04 Jeremy Exactly. And they're reading their foundational documents all the time and saying, hey, wait a minute, that's not what you know. So they're awesome. Yeah, they're taking their scientific capabilities and using them on the language in the public discourse. 00;41;04;07 - 00;41;11;14 Micah And critical thinkers in all fields. So that's awesome. Thanks for joining us today, Jeremy. It was awesome to reflect with you a little bit. 00;41;11;15 - 00;41;15;09 Jeremy Thank you. Micah. And thanks to Alaska Voices. We had a lot of fun doing this. 00;41;15;13 - 00;42;04;07 Lia It has been so lovely to hear from the Littells, and I'm really excited to see what Maeve and Merridy get up to. And our next conversation is about a different kind of family. Not all families are defined by relatives. Sometimes they're built through mentorship, shared work, and years spent learning alongside one another. And this next conversation, an older and younger scientist reflect on their work using trained bear dogs to do wildlife work in Alaska's North Slope. Along the way, they talk about partnership, learning across generations and the special role the dogs play in connecting people to the science. This conversation is called tracking bear dens with dogs and drones, and was recorded by Jesse Robertson. 00;42;04;09 - 00;42;22;23 Nils My name is Nils Pedersen. I'm 38 years old. We're at the food building here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. My relationship to Dick Shideler is he's a long term mentor of mine. He's a Kirlian Bear dog handler within our programs, and he's also a friend. 00;42;23;00 - 00;42;33;06 Dick My name is Dick Shideler. I'm 78 and Nils is a longtime friend and fellow Karelian bear dog handler and a colleague. 00;42;33;12 - 00;42;54;22 Nils Traditionally, the way curly and bear dogs abused for hunting is working on leash. When you cut the track of a moose or something, the dog gets on that track, release the dog and they're going to follow along sniffing. And then when they find the moose, for example, they're going to bark at it. So we're taking that innate drive that the dogs have and applying it for conservation purposes. 00;42;54;25 - 00;43;26;10 Nils You know how I first really became aware of Dick Schiller and his work was through polar bear den detection, because he was using his dogs to find polar bear dens in the North Slope oil field. You know, you could find the dens reliably and then set up a mile buffer zone around a known polar bear den, so that if company was looking to do off road exploration or put an ice road in through this area, that they could avoid that den, reroute or wait until after those bears had emerged in order to continue that activity. 00;43;26;11 - 00;43;42;12 Nils So bears are happy. The management is happy. The oil companies are happy, maybe not thrilled that they can't do their activity there at this time, but they'd rather know rather than have something bad happen. Whether that means disturbing a polar bear, or could even create a safety hazard for folks working up there. 00;43;42;12 - 00;44;08;07 Dick And that kind of just got started, really. Incidentally, I had the dogs up there, and often our field season lasted until bears went into their dens and some of our collared grizzly bears den very close to the road system, or sometimes even right in the oil field. And so just to sort of see what the reaction would be, I'd walk or ski out to those locations with the dogs and see what they would do. 00;44;08;09 - 00;44;46;03 Dick And inevitably, you know, they would tell me the bear was there, even though I knew it was in the area because of the radio signal, you know, they would dig and bark, and then I'd call them off because we didn't want to disturb the bears anymore. And it just turned out that another friend of ours named Craig Param, who was a Fish and Wildlife Service polar bear biologist at the time, had sort of heard about this, and we sort of combined forces on this and made the grizzly bear part of it, not just incidental, but an actual then detection project, and then also the polar bear then project. 00;44;46;03 - 00;45;05;26 Nils In 2014 started a graduate program here at the university. And Dick Schiller was on my committee. He was a co I on the research that we were doing. Part of that was working with a data set that Dick had of grizzly bear human interactions there on the North Slope oil fields, sightings of grizzly bears reported from security officers. 00;45;05;26 - 00;45;22;08 Nils In particular, we were looking at using artificial dens, little dens we'd built with heaters inside of them, and then forward looking infrared cameras that would detect the heat coming up out of that den, and then using drones to get a perspective above the den. 00;45;22;11 - 00;45;51;15 Dick The industry had been using forward looking infrared based off of a large aircraft platform for several years. And one of the things that had happened is that sometimes these infrared surveys didn't show a bear, and then the bear would pop out later on in the industry, maybe had a project nearby within that buffer, and they'd either have to shut down or really modify their activities until the bears left. 00;45;51;16 - 00;46;16;21 Dick And so we just decided, let's test this. So we set up a bunch of near-shore barrier islands as a test zone. And we started taking the dogs out there. And what we found out was that the dogs were not only more effective than the flare, the flare would miss bear dens, but it would also show objects under the snow. 00;46;16;21 - 00;46;40;28 Dick And this is surprising, like buried barrels, things like that that you wouldn't expect. So one of the things we found is a the dogs would actually ground truth the flare. They would get a few bears that the flare didn't pick up. They'd find those dens. And then in addition to that, they would not give you a false positive was a lot of fun. 00;46;41;00 - 00;47;08;04 Dick It didn't seem like fun always at the time because we were out there 40 below with a wind howling and can't see much. But our physical comfort wasn't that hot because we were on snow machines. The dogs were fine with it. They loved it. It's got some drawbacks that you can't take the dogs for the big, long projects that involve, say, miles and miles of seismic lines or ice roads. 00;47;08;09 - 00;47;35;17 Dick Actually, you could do it, but it would just require a lot more thinking about how you use the dogs, because dogs are animals. So after a while they're going to get tired, and maybe they aren't going to be sniffing to their full capability. And one of the ways, as an intermediate where Nils came in with the drone project is we were looking for another system for the infrared that didn't involve having to get a lot of aircraft. 00;47;35;18 - 00;47;58;18 Dick And, you know, you had to plan a defense. And the day you were going to fly Fleer, which doesn't do well in blowing snow and fog. We hired a helicopter and a test project as part of that. We spent a week up there sitting on the ground with this helicopter, costing us thousands of dollars in a flare unit, costing thousands of dollars, and couldn't turn a rotor because of the weather. 00;47;58;24 - 00;48;13;20 Dick And ultimately, we didn't get the job done because of that. Whereas with something as nimble as a drone, once you figure out the techniques, you can wait on the weather and then you can follow up with the dogs if you find hotspots or not. 00;48;13;21 - 00;48;34;25 Nils Soledad, my 13.5 year old female, she went into the field for the first time when she was nine months old, working grizzly bears in Alberta. And once we had an idea of what we were looking for with our artificial dens and our infrared drone, we wanted to ground truth it and ended up looking for some grizzly bear dens out there and using Soledad to find them. 00;48;34;25 - 00;48;56;19 Nils And my my perspective on that, of course, is that the dog was much more effective and much easier to use than the drone, which had a lot of technological complications. But I think a combination of the two is a really nice way of doing things. You know, one thing the dog doesn't give you is a nice picture of a bank of snow with a thermal heat signature coming off of it there. 00;48;56;19 - 00;49;01;00 Nils And that's a really nice thing to have, is that photo with the coordinates and everything. 00;49;01;04 - 00;49;26;15 Dick So I think that we learned a lot about that project, and those lessons haven't necessarily been applied Industries, pretty much just operating with the forward looking infrared still. And part of that was I had the only two dogs that were doing that. I'm retired from that stuff and probably can't write a snow machine that long any more. But now Nils has got dogs that'll do it. 00;49;26;15 - 00;49;30;27 Dick So I mean, I'd like to see more of that done. I think it's really valuable. 00;49;31;03 - 00;49;48;19 Nils Folks up in the oil fields there. You know, by and large, those folks are up there to work there, away from their family and their dogs. It's really nice for them to have some time to visit with a dog that's up there. Even better, it's a working dog that's here to help keep you safe. And no one wants to pet your drone, you know? 00;49;48;20 - 00;49;58;06 Nils But they may want to bet your dog. 00;49;58;08 - 00;50;01;04 Micah I love that the dogs did better than the infrared. 00;50;01;07 - 00;50;23;17 Lia There are things that make people happy in this world, and I think dogs doing what they love to do is one of them. Yeah, and it was great to hear the things that make people excited about going out into the field and excited about science and just sort of the ways that we adapt in Alaska. 00;50;23;18 - 00;50;53;29 Micah It was similar to the experience that Jeremy and Meridian Babe had in bringing other people out to the field, and it was great for the folks, the non-scientists, to sort of engage a little bit and learn what was going on, but also for the scientists, like it was nice to see other people interacting. And it seems like Nils and Dick had a similar experience when they had the dogs with the oil workers and got a chance to sort of show off what they've been doing in the field and and see how it connects back to the oil operation, actually. 00;50;54;00 - 00;51;03;18 Lia Well, Micah, thank you so much for hosting this episode with me and for interviewing Jeremy. It has been really fun. 00;51;03;19 - 00;51;07;14 Micah Yeah, no, it was such a pleasure. Thanks for letting me take this role. 00;51;07;16 - 00;51;17;04 Lia In our next episode of Alaska Voices, we will focus on the theme of community. We'll leave you with a short clip of a conversation between Mary Burton and Jeff Adams. 00;51;17;04 - 00;51;35;08 Mary I was riding my bike back home, and I saw a helicopter go over with a bucket, and I thought, oh, there's a fire somewhere, and I could kind of see smoke. And that, oh, it seems pretty close to town. And then I come up on Yankovich and all of a sudden there's people outside and they don't quite know where the fire is, but can kind of see the smoke. 00;51;35;08 - 00;51;40;21 Mary And there's a trooper there. And then I watched a fire truck go into our driveway. 00;51;40;24 - 00;52;03;07 Lia Alaska Voices is a place for communities to connect through conversation. This podcast was created with support from the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center, and was the brainchild of Jesse Young Robertson and Bob Bolton. The Alaska CASC is committed to providing regionally relevant science for Alaska's changing climate. Alaska voices would not be possible without the efforts of an amazing group of people. 00;52;03;14 - 00;52;27;04 Lia Our producer and audio engineer is Kelsey Schanberg of Mossy Stone media. The Alaska Voices team includes Myka Hahn at the University of Alaska Anchorage and Lia Ferguson, Mike DeLue Suzanna Caldwell, Anika ord, and Georgia Houde at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. We would also like to thank the musicians whose songs we heard today. Our theme is Arctic Evening by Marcel Dupree's. 00;52;27;05 - 00;52;56;23 Lia We also played Wind on My Legs by Mon Plazir, De Lʼherb Su Les Pieds and Balance by Komiku. The Beauty of Maths and the Lʼetoil Danse part two by Mayden and the Sighful Branches by Axeltree with the Creative Commons Attribution license. All the songs you heard today are from the Free Music Archive. If you are interested in more conversations or information, please visit our website at Alaska Voices for Alaska Voices I'm Lia Ferguson.