The scientific phenomenon in which carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean changes the water’s ph balance, making it more acidic. Often referred to as “the sister problem to climate change.” Organisms that build calcium carbonate shells for themselves are the first to be negatively effected by OA as they are unable to pull the carbonate they need from [..]

The amount of light or radiation reflected by a surface of the Earth. Using a spectroradiometer, albedo is calculated by dividing reflected light by incident light. A change in albedo is crucial to the many glacier examples used to prove the existence of climate change because it drastically affects the water temperature, sea level, glacial melt an [..]

The resulting effect of human activity on any object. Here, it is used as a categorical descriptor of climate change.

The frozen portion of the Earth’s surface that is the second largest component to climate change. It includes snow, river and lake ice, sea ice, glaciers and ice caps, ice shelves, ice sheets and frozen ground. It is a significant aspect of climate change study due to how crucial and visible its transformations are.

The term “elder” carries varying definitions in Alaska Native communities. In some cases, like the one presented by the National Resource Center for American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Elders, an Elder is a member of the community who is 55 or older. But as the Center later explains in their report on the Health Status of Alaska Nati [..]

A technique implemented by native fishers of the Prince William Sound used to catch salmon. A fine-filament net is floated along the surface of the water between a fishing boat and a buoy; it drapes underwater using a heavy lead line and intersects the pathway of migrating salmon. The holes in the net are variable depending on the season and specie [..]

The Lincoln-Peterson index is an animal population estimator used by researchers on the Copper River for estimating the salmon population.

Derived from the words permanent and frost, permafrost is a classification of soil or ground. It can be classified as continuous, discontinuous and sporadic depending on how much of the land it covers. In general, permafrost gets colder and thicker — up to 1500 meters — farther north and in some cases can melt and refreeze. Thawing of permafrost ca [..]

Seining is a method of fishing that uses a dragnet (seine).  There are two types of seining methods: Danish seining, and the most common of the two, purse seining.