Field Notes from Alaska: Go Behind the Scenes with Scientists Conducting Arctic Research

April 2022

Head shot of a white, middle aged man wearing glasses, helmet, and headphones with attached microphone.

Stan Wullschleger on one of the daily helicopter commutes to the team’s remote Alaskan research site. [Courtesy Stan Wullschleger/ORNL]

Stan Wullschleger, director and principal investigator for the U. S. Department of Energy’s Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiment–Arctic project, recently led a team of 140 scientists from four national laboratories and several universities on a week-long Arctic expedition to conduct extensive fieldwork in remote parts of Alaska. The data Wullschleger and his team collected will be used to advance Earth system models that predict how thawing permafrost in a warming Arctic will affect regional and global climate systems.

You can read more about the team’s experiences in the blog Wullschleger kept during the trip: https://www.ornl.gov/organization-news/advancing-understanding-arctic-ecosystems-means-doing-science-10degf.