Earlier springs, later freeze-ups: what Skagway and Nome residents see in the seasons

Spring is arriving earlier and fall later, residents of both Skagway and Nome told a National Park Service project on observed change in Alaska's national parks. In Skagway the shift helps gardeners. In Nome, a shorter cold season is cutting into the time people can safely travel on ice and hunt. The accounts below are paraphrased from the project's interviews.

Fall colors on the tundra of Seward Peninsula. NPS photo.

Why timing matters

The signs and timing of the seasons are a finely tuned process, driven by the interplay of temperature and daylight, which triggers plant and animal responses. A small shift in either can mean vegetation no longer grows in a place, or appears at another time of year. Animals that eat those plants may then struggle or move, and the park service notes the consequences can reach the whole ecosystem, including people. In Nome the shorter cold season also has significant effects on the freezing of coastal sea ice.

Gardening in Skagway

Gardeners watch the soil and air temperature, the sun, and the first frost, which ends the growing season. The time between the last freeze and the first freeze decides what to plant. As Skagway warms, spring comes earlier, winter later, and home gardeners get a longer season.

• One gardener said longer seasons mean better harvests.
• Another said fruit trees had blossomed remarkably for two years running, and that the season used to be too short for apples to turn sweet on the tree.
• A third gardener described a trend from 1987 to 2017 toward warmer, drier weather, so that plants suited to a moist maritime climate struggled one hot, dry year and needed far more watering. This gardener recalled only one comparable year, around 1988.
• One gardener said more plants were being lost over winter without snow cover for insulation.

Ice, hunting and food in Nome

Freeze-up forms ice on rivers, lakes and the ocean, and break-up is when it melts in spring. Shorter winters mean a shorter ice season, which limits snowmachine travel and access for subsistence activities, and a shorter subsistence season can mean an empty freezer for families who rely on seasonal traditional foods.

Frozen tundra landscape with tripod trail marker. NPS photo.

Residents said rivers and lakes that once offered good ice fishing at a given time no longer freeze solidly, and that later freeze-up and later snow mean waiting longer to use a snowmachine, while thin ice makes cross-country travel risky.

Caribou and seals

Caribou on the Seward Peninsula gather in the fall to migrate to northern wintering grounds. That used to happen after freeze-up, when hunters could reach the herds by snowmachine or dogteam. Now the herds may leave before freeze-up, and hunters in Nome said caribou of the Western Arctic Herd pass through certain places less often or later, which makes a hunt a waste of fuel if it fails.

Sealing with a harpoon from a boat. NPS photo.

The pattern is similar for seals. Without sea ice, seals are not present near Nome, or the ice is too thin for hunters to reach them. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 lets Alaska Natives legally hunt seals, walrus, whales and polar bears. One hunter said that when the ice broke up early in 2013, 2014 and 2015 the worry was for marine mammals, but the problem turned out to be hunters' access to them, since the animals adapt. Hunters now go farther to find good ice to butcher a walrus on, which is more expensive and more dangerous.

Coastal erosion

An eroding bluff near Ikpek Lagoon in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. NPS photo.

Ice on the ocean and along the shore in winter protects the coast from wave action in storms. A shorter ice season gives bluffs, lagoons and beaches less time under that protection. Residents said ice leaves earlier and forms later, leaving more time for erosion, and that without ice storm waves are more intense.

Sources

• National Park Service, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, "Seasonal Change," from the series Observing Change in Alaska's National Parks (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/akprojjukeseasonalchange.htm); the residents' quotations are paraphrased and unnamed; rewritten in hubnx's own words.