Noatak National PreservePage 8 of 68
Surviving the Arctic: How Plants, Animals and People Adapt in Alaska’s Northern Parks
On February 12, 2014, at Howard Pass in Noatak National Preserve, the temperature was -42°F and the average wind speed 71 mph, a wind chill of -97°F. Cold is only one of the Arctic's challenges, say James P. Lawler, Jeff Rasic and Peter Neitlich of the National Park Service in the opening article of an Alaska Park Science issue on the Arctic parks. In winter the sun is gone for close to a month at Howard Pass, and in midsummer it stays above the horizon for a month. Caribou have funneled through the pass for thousands of years, and in 2003 the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, whose range includes it, numbered approximately 490,000; hunters have gathered there just as long, and it holds one of the densest concentrations of archeological sites in northern Alaska.
Devil Mountain, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve (NPS photo).
Five parks, one road
The Park Service manages five parks that lie partly or entirely in the Arctic tundra biome, north of tree line: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Kobuk Valley National Park and Noatak National Preserve. Together they cover 19.3 million acres, approximately 25% of the land the Park Service manages nationwide. They are undeveloped, with free-flowing rivers and extremely few facilities; the only road is a 23-mile gravel industrial road across the northern end of Cape Krusenstern National Monument. Habitats range from dry alpine tundra and lowland wet tundra to boreal forest, coastal tundra, lagoons and estuaries.
Fifteen thousand people live in northwestern Alaska, and many travel through the parks to continue a long tradition of subsistence. Inupiat people in Shishmaref, Wales, Deering and Kotzebue harvest sea mammals and fish; people in Anaktuvuk Pass, Kobuk, Shungnak and Ambler travel inland rivers and mountains for caribou, sheep, fish and berries. The article adds that time on the land is also time spent connecting with friends, relatives, places and stories, and that protecting the ecology, history, archaeology and subsistence lifestyle of the U.S. Arctic is why these parks were established.
Staying put: plants and hibernators
Open water tends to moderate climate, and inland temperatures are more extreme than coastal ones, but pack ice largely limits the sea's effect, so even the coastal Arctic parks can be intensely cold, with little precipitation, in winter. Living things can adapt where they are or move.
Plants cannot move, so they hug the ground, where they catch heat the earth has absorbed and escape the drying wind. Some insulate: the tussock-forming sedge Eriophorum keeps the previous seasons' dead leaves to trap warm air next to its green growth and to keep captured nutrients close, since decomposition is slow in the cold. Others use hair, which the authors compare to fleece, or wax, which protects against abrasion by snow crystals in winter and by dust and sand in summer and slows drying; water is only usable by plants as a liquid, and in these parks it is mostly snow and ice.
Arctic alpine forget-me-not, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve (NPS photo).
Some animals stay and cut their energy needs. Arctic ground squirrels can hibernate up to nine months of the year, letting body temperature fall below freezing and the brain cool to just above it. Muskoxen do not hibernate but reduce their metabolic rate by one third compared with summer, and the Common Redpoll goes through controlled bouts of hypothermia at night.
Moving on: migrants
| Animal | Journey |
|---|---|
| Caribou | Some individuals have covered more than 3,000 miles in a year. In northwestern Alaska, caribou move from North Slope calving areas to coastal and mountain areas for midsummer relief from insects and then south to the Seward Peninsula, an annual migration of approximately 1,900 miles |
| Gray whale | The eastern stock feeds all summer in the Chukchi, Beaufort and northwestern Bering Seas, swims south in the fall past Cape Krusenstern and Bering Land Bridge, and winters off Mexico's Baja Peninsula to breed and calve; some start north by mid-February, approximately 10,000 miles in all |
| Northern Wheatear | Slightly smaller than an American Robin, it nests in the Brooks Range, then flies west to Russia and across southwest Asia to sub-Saharan Africa, over 18,000 miles round trip |
| Bar-tailed Godwit | A medium-sized shorebird nesting on the coast of northwestern Alaska that flies to New Zealand over open ocean, since it cannot land and feed on the water: 7,200 miles, eight days in the air, in one push |
Bearded seals also move with the pack ice, using it as a platform for resting between feeding bouts and for delivering pups; in winter they stay in open leads and by breathing holes they keep open with their claws.
People: at least 13,000 years
People have lived in Arctic Alaska for at least 13,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age, when the Bering Land Bridge was intact and steppe bison, horses, tundra lions and mammoths crossed a dry, cold steppe. Their adaptations were mostly behavior, know-how, technology and social strategy rather than physiology. Some of the earliest-dated archeological sites in Alaska are in Noatak National Preserve, often in narrow mountain passes where caribou migrations converged and could be intercepted, and where some of the planet's most extensive, high-quality toolstone lies. Glassy, sharp-edged rocks such as chert are abundant in the Brooks Range, and the workshop sites are littered with millions of pieces of flaking debris.
Ancient stone cache, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve (NPS photo).
At Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Congress named the archeological record as the main reason for protecting the land. Thousands of features, remains of ancient houses, camp sites and food storage pits, dot the low coastal plain. What matters most, the authors say, is how they are arranged: more than 100 beach ridges built up over the past 4,000 years as currents deposited sand and waves and wind piled it up in rows parallel to the shore. New ridges formed seaward, and because people always camped on the ridges nearest the shore, the record reads like a history book with the earliest chapters farthest inland. The sites document evolving techniques of seal, walrus and whale hunting, and innovations including warm houses with cold-trap entrance tunnels, skin boats, toggling harpoons, oil lamps, dog sleds, pottery vessels and the ulu. The authors say archeologists are racing to understand how coastal erosion and thawing permafrost threaten to erase these records, and to plan how to save the most significant sites.
Sources
- National Park Service, Alaska Park Science, Volume 16, Science in Alaska's Arctic Parks, Alaska's Northern Parks: The Wonder of the Arctic, by James P. Lawler, Jeff Rasic and Peter Neitlich, National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words.