Background Articles

Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.

Within a set of glaciers and mountains near Juneau, there’s seismic activity almost every day in the summer. They’re called ice quakes. They’re not as widely understood as earthquakes, but researchers are monitoring them closely.

Thick-billed murres are feeling the heat from climate change — more so than other Arctic species, new research has found. The black-plumed Arctic seabirds nest for hours on exposed cliffs, making them particularly vulnerable to sun and warming temperatures, according to Emily Choy, a McGill University biologist. Choy’s research focused on a colony of murres

The U.S. Forest Service said it plans to approve Coeur Alaska’s plan to expand facilities at the Kensington Gold Mine, extending the life of the mine by another 10 years.

There are about 17,000 glaciers in the province and and they're an important source of fresh water. Canada Research Chair in Glacier Change, Brian Menounos, says rapid melt could have substantial implications for ecosystems and hydropower.

A contractor tore down six structures in the past few weeks, part of a process to remove erosion-threatened places that began almost a decade ago.

B.C. Liberals label Premier John Horgan's "level of personal responsibility" comment as callous, given the grand scale of heat wave deaths reported Wednesday

Airplane designers say the electric vehicle revolution will soon be coming to commercial aircraft, and Ravn Alaska plans to be on the leading edge.

A marine biologist at the University of British Columbia estimates that last week's record-breaking heat wave in B.C. may have killed more than one billion intertidal animals living along the Salish Sea coastline.

This feature will be particularly perilous because it's so rare in this part of the world. Sixty per cent of British Columbians do not own an air conditioner in their households.

A researcher's quest to understand a mysterious mass extinction leads to cud-chewing culprits.

Despite seeing snow fall across the Norton Sound and Nome earlier this month, summer weather seems to have arrived in Western Alaska.

Researchers have recently found that several long-lasting human-made contaminants have been building up in Arctic lakes, polar bears and ringed seals and other wildlife. These contaminants belong to a family of chemicals called polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and are used in food packaging, waterproof clothing and firefighting foams.

Global climate warming is most severe in the Arctic. One consequence is a widespread reduction in permafrost. Continuous, stable permafrost can act as a physical glue that helps anchor unstable slopes. Increasingly, scientists are reporting collapse of rock slopes in the High Arctic.

“We’re dropping in elevation because we live on ice cubes,” says a scientist trying to map permafrost.

Micah Hahn, an assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Alaska Anchorage, says while it might seem obvious that wildfire smoke causes health impacts, there had actually never been a nuanced, scientific look at those impacts. The biggest impact was for asthma-related emergency department visits. This was really across the board and across age groups and in geographic areas.

It's long been suspected that wild turkeys are to blame for Maine moose tick infestation. A new study proves that theory wrong.

While the Kenai Peninsula is relatively lucky that the ecosystems here are fairly intact, there are still a handful of invasive species making their way into the streams, fields and gardens here.

Fearing that runoff from the December rains might have carried contamination to Henderson Farm in Haines, the American Bald Eagle Foundation has told its renters they won't be able to farm their plots this year.

Warming seas appear to have led to a large reduction in the number of puffins around Iceland in recent decades.