A Discovery Guide for the independent traveler who wishes to visit the Mendenhall Glacier by bus and foot. Inspired by our friend Mike Blackwell.
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2009 | Richard Carstensen | 2 pages, 3 MB
DiscoverySoutheast.org
JuneauNature
Richard Carstensen's natural and cultural history site at Discovery Southeast
- Home
- NATURE
- CrittersSoutheast fish & wildlife Southeast Alaskans are blessed with 2 websites hosted by dedicated naturalists Bob Armstrong (Juneau) and Matt Goff (Sitka) that are structured mostly taxonomically. Collectively this pair of sitesâin rather different waysâcovers such an extraordinary sweep of kingdoms, phyla, orders, families and species that it would be silly forjuneaunature to emulate these masters. You may notice that I [Richard Carstensen] donât even have a page in this Nature section for Plants. Bob and Matt have done that already. Bobâs site naturebob presents his greatest hits, all free, collected over more than a half-century of still photography and (recently) videography. But itâs not just an image&movie repository. The Videos section of naturebob is annotated with observations on behavior that would escape those of us less attuned to trophics, life-cycles, display, or anatomy, and it links to a wealth of other sources. Mattâs site sitkanature is modestly subtitled âAn aspiring naturalist learns his place.â But donât let that âaspiringâ fool you. This guy long ago earned his naturalistâs merit badge, as our mutual friend Scott Harris puts it. Mattâs also host of the Sitka Nature Showâradio interviews with interesting Alaskans, archived on his website, 90 of em, as ofâŠ
- MammalsBob Armstrongâs nursing-fawn photo on right sums up the defining talent of mammals: warm-blooded, hairy milk-producers. (Well, I guess we guys can only lay claim to the first 2 attributes.) Mammals is divided into Carnivores, Hooved and Rodents. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Not counting marine mammals, we have 57 known species in Southeast Alaska. No attempt is made in Juneaunature to describe or even list them all. A comprehensive introduction is in the Mammals section of The Nature of Southeast Alaska (Carstensen, Armstrong & OâClair), and a more exhaustive treatment with range maps is in MacDonald & Cookâs Mammals and Amphibians of Southeast Alaska.
- BirdsBirds is divided into Songbirds, Other landbirds, and Water birds. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Here, weâre treating basically the species who are so important to Southeast ecology, trophics, and culture that weâd feel negligent not bestowing a page or two. Thereâs little IÂ could contribute in the world of Southeast avifauna that my buddy Bob Armstrong hasnât done better. For birds, and for that matter almost all things taxonomic (amphibians, birds, fish, plants, fungi, insects, other inverts, lichens, fungi, mammals), go to Bobâs fantastic website. An older take on relationships among the class Aves, based upon Welty & Babtistaâs Life of Birds (1988). Every year, genetic findings force revisions to this tree. Those interested in finer details of avian taxonomy should consult more recent charts. For example, loons and grebes are no longer so closely branched. And waterfowl arenât considered so close to herons.
- AmphibiansThe pond breeders Six species of amphibian are considered native to Southeast Alaska. Three anurans (the order of frogs and toads) are western toad, wood frog, and Columbia spotted frog. Three known caudates (the order of newts and salamanders) include rough-skinned newt, long-toed salamander, and northwestern salamander. In addition to these native species, two frogs from the Pacific Northwest have been introduced: Pacific chorus frog and red-legged frog. Reproductive stages of Southeast amphibians. Shown to scale; note shrinkage with metamorphosis. Dates are from Juneau observations: a) toad eggs in strings of jelly; b) wood frog eggs in softball-sized mass; c) newt egg deposited singlyâcoiled embryo soon to hatch; d) toad larva is dark charcoalâdorsal fin starts farther back than on larval frogs; e) frog larva more olive brownâdorsal fin attaches well forward of tail; f) newt larva has antler-like gills; g) toadlet has fat, warty body, and small hind legs; h) froglet has smoother skin and legs are more muscular than on toadlets; i) unlike anurans, newt metamorphs are proportioned like adults.
- FishFish is divided here into marine and anadromous sub-categories. (Purely freshwater fishâwho never visit saltwaterâare limited to a few sculpins and sticklebacks.) Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Biologists have only begun to map the distributions of freshwater mussels in Alaskan lakes. These mollusks have a bizarre life history. Their tiny, toothed larvae attach to gills of sticklebacks, sculpins or salmonids and are sometimes carried to new lakes before the spat release and drop to the bottom. Formerly abundant on loose flocculent covering the shallow margins of Auke Lake, mussels are now hard to find. Mussels are sensitive indicators of water quality.[/caption]
- InvertebratesPacific blue mussels (Mytilus trossulus) seal shut when exposed to air, but open to filter-feed when the tide comes back in.
- Ecology 101
- Landscape ecologyThinking like a mountain; biogeography Cartographers are generally big-picture thinkers. Especially since the advent of GIS (Geographic Information Systems), which interfaces between maps and databases, we can ask increasingly sophisticated questions of our maps. In 2001, I created the following cartoon of a bearâs landscape movements in collaboration with Kim Titus of the Department of Fish & Game, based upon his studies of telemetered bears. Since that time, wildlife studies have become ever more sophisticated, following, for example, the hourly movements of collared deer through intimately mapped terrain. The brown bearâs year 1) Emergence Late-March through May. Most dens are in the high country. 2) Spring Bears descend in search of sedges, skunk cabbage, and deer carcasses. Key habitats include south-facing avalanche slopes, fens, and especially tidal marshes. 3) Early summer Breeding season. Until midsummer, bears are dispersed from sea level to alpine ridges. Tidal sedge flats, subalpine meadows, upland forests, and avalanche slopes are the principal foraging habitats. 4) Salmon By mid-July, most bears move into riparian forests and tidal estuaries for pink and chum salmon. Small, shallow reaches areeasiest to fish, claimed by dominant individuals. Some sows with cubs never use the streams. 5) Berries Beginning in mid-September,âŠ
- ProductivityIn terms of annual tonnage, timber and salmon far outweigh all other Southeast commodities. We define productive watersheds, as those thatĂÆĂrelative to their biogeographic provinceĂÆĂrapidly grow very large trees and associated fauna, and/or host exceptional runs of salmon. This kind of productivity often appears to spring from the nature of underlying bedrock, with carbonate rocks at the rich end, and granitics toward the lean end of the spectrum. But, as ecologist Mary Willson points out, itâs important to be clear that timber or fish productivity âdoesnât translate directly into productivity of anything else, because habitat structure and exposure and plant defensive compounds and a zillion other things may regulate other community components.â For example, shrub production is often inversely proportional to forest canopy production. So it could be thereâs higher production of some shrub-nesting birds and blueberry parasites in the types of scrubby-forest watersheds weâve defined [in the 2005 summary report] as âless productive.â Diversity within many taxa (e.g. bryophytes) is also probably higher in our âless productiveâ watersheds. Even more relevant (and confounding) for this essay; some conditions that are productive of certain fish species need not be productive of forests. Anan Creek watershed has extraordinary pink salmon productivityâŠ
- Resilience & fragilityDevotion to the future â âSustainable growthâ is a self-contradictory termsâan oxymoron. Continued, indefinite growth on this planet or any subset of the planet is a physical impossibility. Eventually, limits of some type (space, food, waste disposal, energy) must be reached; the point at which that will happen is the only aspect open to debate. . . . [Humans must] live on the income from natureâs capital rather than on the capital itself.â G. Meffe and R. Carroll, Principles of Conservation Biology. Young, post disturbance forests (checked here) are more suitable for human use than the ancient cedar types, lower right, that dominate todayâs timber program. In 2005, Bob Christensen, Kenyon Fields and I started the Ground-truthing Projectâwhat we called the âeyes and ears in the woods for the Southeast conservation community.â Central to that project was learning what parts of our environment are most and least susceptible to human use. My engagement in the Ground-truthing Project lasted through 2009. For Bob, however, that was just the beginning. For a taste of what heâs been up to lately, visit his website for the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, promoting resource stewardship, energy independence, food sustainability, economic self-reliance, and storytelling in Hoonah, Hydaburg,âŠ
- Life spanOverlooked elders. Compared to many large, hollow-centered yellow cedars farther south on the Tongass, Juneauâs cedars are relative youngsters. The extracted increment core suggested this 16-incher on south Douglas Island probably didnât colonize until the late 1600s. Just a teenager in yellow-cedar years! The older I get, the more I think about the importance of species age in ecology. In the 3rd edition of The Nature of Southeast Alaska, I added a sidebar called Harvesting longevity, about often-overlooked antiquities. Hereâs the first and last paragraph from that cross-taxon tour through mollusks, groundfish, trees, and deer: âWhether studying clams, fish, deer or trees, northern researchers and naturalists frequently learn that life-span data from southern climes are inapplicable here. Underestimating longevity has serious consequences, especially for wild flora and fauna treated as commercial, sport, or subsistence species. . . . . . âHarvestââa term borrowed from agricultureâis of dubious merit when applied to seas or forests where cycles of birth-to-death are less visible, less understood, and less amenable to control. The consequence of overharvest is quickly obvious to a farmer, who sinks or swims financially on personally owned land. But when âharvestingâ wild âresourcesâ from public lands and waters, itâs harder toâŠ
- SuccessionSuccession describes a habitatâs growth from emergence to great age. Primary succession happens after catastrophic disturbanceâglaciation, volcanic-island-creation, etc.âessentially removes all living material. Hereâs a series for post-glacial succession in Ăakâw TĂĄak, inland from little lake, (Mendenhall Valley), inferred from a chronosequence on mesic surfaces. Succession on poorly- or excessively-drained surfaces is quitedifferent: A Postglacial barrens with lichens, moss & dwarf fireweed. â B Alder/willow thicket with small spruce saplings. â C1 Thickets still productive but overtopped by cottonwood & spruce. â C2 Cottonwood & spruce close canopy over senescing thickets. â D Spruces overtop senescing cottonwoods. Small shade-tolerant hemlocks in subcanopy. Depauperate, mossy understory. Only after ~200 years does blueberry fill in. â E After many centuries without stand-replacing disturbance, hemlock-dominated old growth develops, distinguished from D by gappy canopy, rich, patchwork of shrub & subcanopy layers, plentiful deer forbs & abundant standing & down dead wood. Check out the Succession illustration below for comparison of secondary succession after logging and streamside flooding.
- TrophicsWho eats who? Southeast food pyramids When you catch a fish, do you open its stomach to learn about its last few meals? If you hunt grouse or mallards, do you examine crops? Before enjoying the first tenderloin from guwakaan, the peace keeper (Sitka black-tailed deer), do you search for plant fragments on the back of its tongue, or open the rumenâthat magic sack that converts the mostly-humanly-inedible flora of our bioregion into the tastiest meat on the planet? One of the oldest books in my natural history library is American wildlife & plants: A guide to wildlife food habits. Martin, Zim & Nelson, 1951. The reason it remains relevant 65 years later, while other ecological works of the period have been supplanted, is that nowadays people look askance at shooting a couple hundred herons just to see whatâs in their stomachs. (43% non-game fish, 25% âuseful species,â 8% each of insects & crayfish, 5% mice & shrews, 4% herps) The trophic diagram below shows why salt marshesâconstituting less than 1% of our land massâare so essential to resident and migratory species from land and sea. Dashed arrow lines lead from eaten to eater:
- Habitats
- TerrestrialTerrestrial habitats has 3 subcategories: Forests, Wetlands, and High country. Explore those sub-categories or find general information on Terrestrial Habitats below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map. Hereâs how we introduced the Habitats section of Nature of SE AK, 3rd edition. âAmount and distribution of water is the logical way to differentiate Southeastâs many [terrestrial] habitats. These range from ocean, lakes, ponds, and rivers, to frequently submerged salt marshes and stream flood zones, to perennially saturated bogs and other freshwater wetlands, to the usually drenched rain forest and alpine tundra. After a rare two-week drought, itâs sometimes possible to sit in the forest understory without soaking our pants. Then rain resumes. Terrestrial landscape. A cartoon I first created for Friends of Admiralty to show habitats used by a brown bear over the course of a year. Some habitats are defined by solidified waterâglaciers and high-country snowfields. The term âterrestrialâ as applied to certain Southeast Alaskan habitats is somewhat generous; it actually means âoccasionally free of water.â   Carstensen, Armstrong & OâClair (2014) The primary control on terrestrial habitat is drainage or substrate permeability. In rainy Southeast, where waterlogged soils prevail, soil drainage is a keyâŠ
- AquaticStreams, rivers, ponds, lakes This section is divided into Stillwater and Moving water subsections. The latter have been much better studied in our region, due largely to their importance to salmon. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Freshwater aquatic diversity in Antler River basin, north of Juneau.
- CoastalThe land-sea interface Coastal habitats is divided into Estuaries and Intertidal. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map.. Alaska Shorezone Project aerial oblique. Dickâs Arm, outer coast of Glacier Bay National Park, 20050721. The coastline of Southeast Alaska is not only among the worldâs most spectacular and intact; itâs now among the most thoroughly documented. As of 2010, almost every linear foot of shoreline in Southeast has been captured in lovely oblique still imagery, like the shot above, and in video. The Alaska Shorezone Project flew the entire mainland and archipelago at low elevation, always during low tides. A flight index map on their website guides you to your desired imagery.
- Geology
- Bedrock geologyBedrock geology is a vast subject. Of greatest interest to naturalists are ways in which underlying rock types, alignments, fracture patterns, and variable resistance to erosion explain the shape of the land and the distribution of natural communities. Here are some of the common bedrock types of Southeast Alaska.
- Surficial geologyâFleshâ atop of the âbonesâ of bedrock geology The Surficial geology section is divided into Alluvial landforms & processes, Glacial history & landforms, Glacial rebound & coastal landforms, and Mass wasting. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map. Surficial geology is the study of loose, unconsolidated material overlying the bedrock foundation. These layers were deposited, rearranged and eroded by glaciers, fluctuating sea level, streams, landslides, and bulldozers. While bedrock geologists tend to think in time-frames of millions of years, the surficial story is usually faster paced, taking place over millennia and mere centuries. Surficial versus bedrock geology While bedrock geologists tend to think in time-frames of millions of years, the surficial story is usually faster paced, taking place over millennia and mere centuries. On the surficial geology map, [LINK] Iâve divided landforms into 5 age groups (geol_age field): triassic: applied only to a couple bare-bedrock roches moutonees near Mendenhall Glacier early holocene: marine, glacial and alluvial formations dating back to shortly after the great ice age, ~10,000 years ago neoglacial: dating to just the last few millennia little ice age: mostly formed since peak of the lastâŠ
- CrittersSoutheast fish & wildlife Southeast Alaskans are blessed with 2 websites hosted by dedicated naturalists Bob Armstrong (Juneau) and Matt Goff (Sitka) that are structured mostly taxonomically. Collectively this pair of sitesâin rather different waysâcovers such an extraordinary sweep of kingdoms, phyla, orders, families and species that it would be silly forjuneaunature to emulate these masters. You may notice that I [Richard Carstensen] donât even have a page in this Nature section for Plants. Bob and Matt have done that already. Bobâs site naturebob presents his greatest hits, all free, collected over more than a half-century of still photography and (recently) videography. But itâs not just an image&movie repository. The Videos section of naturebob is annotated with observations on behavior that would escape those of us less attuned to trophics, life-cycles, display, or anatomy, and it links to a wealth of other sources. Mattâs site sitkanature is modestly subtitled âAn aspiring naturalist learns his place.â But donât let that âaspiringâ fool you. This guy long ago earned his naturalistâs merit badge, as our mutual friend Scott Harris puts it. Mattâs also host of the Sitka Nature Showâradio interviews with interesting Alaskans, archived on his website, 90 of em, as ofâŠ
- CULTURE
- Enter the Europeans
- Tlingit geography and historyFrom Richard Carstensen: Culture embedded in nature For the past 30 years, Iâve grown steadily more fascinated by Tlingit and Haida geography; the history and migrations of kw_âans, clans, and houses, and the ways in which natural and cultural history intersect. From February to May, 2013, I participated in a course for high school students by Goldbelt Heritage Foundation, entitled Why do we live here? Our essential question; What factors went into the selection of village sites for _âakâw and Tâaak__ ancestors? One of the most powerful educational experiences of my career, it deepened my interest in the locations of ancient settlements. I now feel that these are the most important places in Southeast Alaska for all of us to know and understand. In coming years I hope to substantially expand this section of juneaunature on Tlingit geography and history. Even from my limited perspective as a Southeast naturalist, the subject has so many fruitful avenues of investigation.
- Naming places
- Why do we live here?
- Restoration
- Dodging nature’s tantrumsReports on surprising (& potential) âgravity eventsâ What do snow avalanches, mudslides, mountainside bedrock detachments and glacial outburst floods have in common? I guess theyâre all âgravity eventsâ. In all cases, serious stuff perched above vulnerable lowlands somehow becomes mobilized. I used to say âbad stuff,â but thatâs judgemental. Gravity, like wolves and wildfire, is both destroyer and creator. My page on mudslide path-7, near downtown parking garage, shows context for proposed new apartment complex In LingĂt Aani, the trigger for these tantrums is usually hard rain or alpine blizzard, sustained over several days. Jökulhlaups, too, are like slo-mo avalanches, but their trigger is a back-watered lake who suddenly discovers subglacial plumbing. Since each of these gravity events has made national news over the past several years, one might hope weâve become more attentive to and foresightful of such hazards. Obviously, during storms, but also, more proactively, in choice of homesites, roads, and cruiseship destinations. Fortunately, we have great new tools for measurement and visualization. After catastrophic discharges, which seem to be accelerating throughout LingĂt AanĂ and the world, LiDAR allows usâespecially when âbefore-&-afterâ missions are fortuitously pairedâto quickly investigate the biotic (point cloud) & abiotic (bare earth) contexts. SinceâŠ
- PLACES
- Ăakâw-Tâaaáž”Ăș watersheds (Juneau area)
- 1 DaxanĂĄak (Berners)DaxanĂĄak, between, between 2 points (Berners Bay) When I came to Juneau in the late 1970s, Berners Bay became, as for other outdoorsy-but-low-budget 20-somethings, my âaffordable wilderness.â Iâd launch my decked canoe at Echo Cove and spend up to a month at a time exploring the forests and tidelands of DaxanĂĄak,. I didnât yet know its real name, so called it by the maiden name of George Vancouverâs motherânot knowing or caring how that label came to lie upon a feature George himself never saw (Bridget Berners scored bigtime in Berners Bay). For the same reasons this bay âworkedâ logistically for a wanna-be naturalist of limited means, it continues to offer realistic options for teachers wanting students to know the thrill of expeditionary adventure in a time of budgetary cutbacks. No helicopter? No problem! ESE up Gilkey River, September, 2012 Bare earth hillshade from the new IfSAR DEM (delivered fall, 2015). My surficial geologic units are an extension from RD Millerâs 1972 classification for the area from Juneau to Mendenhall Valley.
- 2 Châeetâ TaayĂ (Cowee)Châeetâ TaayĂ, murrelet fat, on Wooshkeetaan land, is the real name of âCowee Creek,â named by Euros for a LeeneidĂ shaman. A description of Cowee-Davies, relative to the other 9 watersheds studied during our CBJ Natural History Project, is basically all superlatives: wildest, biggest, fishiest, beariest, most forested-glaciated-uplifted and most ecologically indispensable to our borough. Its most popular attractions today are trails threading the lovely lower meadows. But the upper watershed is equally rich and spectacular. Châeetâ Taayi, murrelet fat (Cowee Creek): CBJâs largest, wildest, most productive watershed. Home of HĂ©en Latinee Experimental Forest
- 3 AsxâĂ©e-Lâux (Eagle-Herbert)Nexus! AsxâĂ©e-Lâux, twisted-tree/milky water (Eagle & Herbert Rivers) meet below Glacier Highway, 28 miles north of Juneau (thumbnail, right). Itâs an astoundingly productive and beautiful confluence. LiDAR topography at mouth of Asxâee, twisted tree (Eagle River). Colored for elevation. Upper edge of bright green is limit of high tide at peak of Little Ice Age. On a rare clear day in late October, 2015, with my 3DR Solo quadcopter, I âflewâ the flats just west of their confluence. Toward the end of this 1-minute video, youâll see an anomalous-looking mowed-grass mound that also clearly shows on the preceding bare-earth mapâremnant from the days when it was okay to mine gravel from the banks of our finest salmon streams. Bob Armstrong says at salmon time many bears fish here, apparently mostly at night. They also dig for rootsâof which species we havenât determined. EagleRiver-bear-flats
- 4 EeyĂĄkâw (Amalga-Peterson)Lovely risen valley, uplift features, pocket beaches Hydrologically speaking, the tiny, 0.6-square-mile Amalga Meadows watershed is an appendage of Peterson Creek watershed; its meandering, unnamed stream drains south into the Salt Chuck. Historically, however, Amalga Meadows were more strongly associated with the greater Herbert-Eagle watershed, because of the horse-tram connection at Eagle River Landing. SSE toward Eagle Valley Center from Amalga Meadows Luknax daayi, no translation (Petersen Creek 25-mile) No LingĂt name is given in published atlases for this important stream flowing into EeyĂĄkâw, small rapid (Salt Chuck) at 25-mile Glacier Highway. Waters have been further muddied by the naming of 2 different Peterson Creeksâone here and one at Outer Point. In my interpretive work for CBJ I distinguish them as Peterson-OP and Peterson-25mi. The name Luknax daayi comes from a list given to me by Marie Olson, Wooshkeetaan, who learned it from Cecilia Kunz. Ceciliaâs husband Edward Kunz Sr. had deep roots in this watershed, and at Asxâee, twisted tree, (Eagle River), to the north. Northwest down Luknax daayi to the bridge before the Salt Chuck. Bedrock geology of Luknax daayi watershed, heavily worked by miners in the early 1900s.
- 5 Ăakâw (bay & lake)Juneauâs pre-gold cultural hub The hill to the east of Auke Lakeânamed âHill 560â by my mentor Dan Bishopâis underlain by limey slate and phyllite, Juneauâs most productive parent material for large-tree forest. The steep northwest-facing slopes of this hill are also protected from gales that in most other locations knock down conifers presumptive enough to stick their crowns too high in the air. One of themâthe unfortunate spruce in thumbnail on rightâleaned over the expensive new Auke Lake Trail, and was topped as a precautionary measure, the year after I took this photo. In the LiDAR point cloud it measured over 200 feet tall. 1991 Hydrologist Dan Bishop at portal to the Dan Bishop Bay Creek Trail. Dan was a mentor to early Discovery naturalists. View over Auke Lake to Mendenhall Glacier, September 2012.
- 6 Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en (Montana)Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en, going back clearwater (Montana Creek) Healthiest habitat of greater Ăakâw TĂĄak, (Mendenhall watershed). I first began using this valley for education in the early 1990s, when my ears could still detect the high notes of songbirds. During wetland assessment transects in the mid 1980s, Iâd noticed that the logged-over swamp behind Community Gardens was full of beaver-drowned snags. Sapsuckers had drilled them, and once abandoned, these became home to chickadees, pewees and small owls. Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en is where I first noticed that logging isnât always âbadâ for wildlife. Itâs also where I first realized environmentalists donât usually like it when I say that. (Sorry!) Northwest over Community Gardens. Today, the snags have rotted and toppled, but wildlife habitat is if anything even richer.
- 7 Ăakâw TĂĄak (Mendenhall Valley)Ăakw TĂĄak, inland from little lake (greater Mendenhall Valley) 20180523: On Friday, Discovery Naturalists Steve Merli, John Hudson and I will accompany 50 teachers and staff from Dzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle School across tidal flats at the bottom of TâĂĄa Shuyee, board squared at end (Mendenhall Valley). Weâll start at the end of the Peninsula Road and get picked up at Industrial Boulevard. The walk traverses lovely salt marsh and uplift meadows at peak of spring migration. SW over lower the flats to Ăakâw TĂĄ, little lake bay (Auke Bay). On the right, willow-alder wetlands advance onto raised tideland. In left mid-distance, Widgeon Ponds sit on compacted silt. For navigation, I prepared a geopdf that you can load to the app Avenza, described in Tools>Field navigation Its basemap is a high-res bare earth from the 2013 CBJ LiDAR, called refugehillshade.pdf. East over mouth of Steep Creek to the Visitor Center, April, 2002. Not surprising we have no LingĂt place names for these features that were ice covered until the mid-1900s.
- 8 ShaanĂĄx Tlein (Lemon)EixâgulâhĂ©en, warm springs creek Charley Switzer, a big-hearted philanthropist that historians remember as a âone-man Glory Hole,â was probably one Important White Guy who deserved to have something named after him. Preferably, though, a street or building, and not this little trout stream precious to the LeeneidĂ. Jake Cropley told Goldschmidt & Haas (1998): âJust north of Lemon Creek there is a small creek called EixâgulhĂ©en. This was a very good stream, especially for a late run of dog salmon, but also for cohos. There were 3 or 4 smokehouses there belonging to the Auk people, but they were crowded out by the road. The fox ranchers have gone up there and fished out this creek. . . The Native people used to go up Lemon Creek to get goat and bear, and to trap mink, marten, wolverine and lynx.â Trails and stream channels near Dzantikâi Heeni Middle School, on 2006 air photos, CBJ.
- 9 Dzantikâi HĂ©eni (Gold)Our (formerly) unnoticed front yard In 2015, Cathy Pohl did a little bird study of the Gold Creek delta, with an eye (and ear) to what changes we might expect with construction of the proposed Sea Walk outside Egan Expressway. All kinds of cool stuff going on out there. But because weâre so cut off from our waterfront by traffic, few of us downtown residents recreated on little flounder creek. That changed suddenly in 2018 when the Sea Walk opened. Now, our marine âfront yardâ beckons as invitingly as our goaty âback yard.â What a cool place to live! Hereâs a clip Cathy shot of a heron stalking gunnels in the Fucus beds:
- 10 ChaasâhĂ©eni (Sheep)After Dzantiâki HĂ©eni (Gold) watershed, ChaasâhĂ©eni, humpy creek (Sheep) watershed was the most heavily mined basin in Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂ. Thane Mine and lower ChaasâhĂ©eni, then and now. Dotted lines mark off forest types interpreted on page 11 of our report on the Repeat Photography project.
- 11 X’ĂĄat’ T’ĂĄak (NE Douglas Island)Mature deciduous forest colonizing abandoned mining town Of my own initiative I would never have expended much interpretive energy on Treadwell. Nothing about it feels ânatural.â Whatever beach it once had is buried under sand, that makes it Juneauâs favorite place to let dogs off leash. They also rampage through the understory of the unAlaskan-feeling deciduous forest, colonized after a series of forest fires (what?!, in Southeast?!) seared the whole place to mineral soil. Because of dogs, and cats cruising at night, what might be a unique community of elsewhere-rare breeding songbirds is what ecologists call a âsink,â where more birds die or waste their reproductive energies than are born. But as with every place Iâve ever studied, for either love or money, Treadwell captured my imagination. Trees grow out of the tops of crumbling concrete buildingsâa place of hope and inspiration. (Maybe mining folks donât see it that way?) It reminds me of the jungle at Palenque, where bat falcons perch atop Mayan ruins, and the piss and bellow of howler monkeys makes it inadvisable to linger too long under the drip line of verdant, victorious strangler figs. Historic structures routes compared to todayâs trail complex. Hereâs Treadwell asâŠ
- 12 Aangooxa YĂ© (Fish)Islandâs dominant watershed; only road-accessed high country Discovery Southeast naturalists have used Fish Creek estuary for teaching animal tracking and sign interpretation to thousands of elementary school students since 1989. The diverse habitat mosaic and good connectivity concentrates wildlife. Dredge Pond breached in the Thanksgiving Day storm of 1984ânow a major king salmon fishery. Deer cabbage turning along Heavenly Overlook Trail, Eaglecrest. Bedrock and surficial geology of Fish Creek watershed. Fish Creek fault runs through Auke Lake on the mainland, and continues SE through Seymour Canal on Admiralty Island.
- 13 ណaalahĂ©enakâu (Peterson-Outer)KaalahĂ©enakâu, inside a personâs mouth (Peterson Creek) In August, 1794, rowing through Ăakâw, AanĂ, Joseph Whidbey must have noted a LâeeneidĂ village or at least summer fish camp near what we today call âOuter Point.â I say âmust have,â because his original journals disappeared after confiscation by his commander George Vancouver. In his second-hand account of the Ăakâw encounters, Vancouver (who was sick on the outer coast and never saw Ăakâw country) casually mentioned âthe point on which the northern village is situated,â as if it had before been mapped or described. From my league-by-league cross-referencing of Vancouver and Menzies journals, this âpointâ was clearly the northern tip of Sayeik, spirit helper: âwhich after the Bishop of Salisbury, I named Douglasâs Island.â GV Hmmmph! Only one of dozens of IWGNs (important white guy names) honoring distant dead dignitaries, by another white dude who never laid eyes on our home. And where, exactly, was that âvillage?â Surficial geology of the Outer Point area, based upon USGS map by R.D. Miller, 1975. Even the surviving place namesâ KaalahĂ©enakâu, inside a personâs mouth, and DeishĂș Ăakâw, little lake at end of trail-âare shrouded in mystery, their stories lost to time. What is theâŠ
- Southeast Alaska biogeographic provinces
- 3 Glacier Bay ProvinceSĂtâ Eeti GeeyĂ, bay in place of the glacier (Glacier Bay) experienced the most dramatic Little Ice Age (~1550â1850AD) in the world. The province was covered by mile-deep ice in the upper reaches, sloping smoothly down to a berg-spewing glacial terminus in Icy Strait (a name no longer descriptive). During the past 2 centuries many tidewater glaciers have receded onto land. Recolonizing plants and animals followed, and after them, indigenous sealhunters, scientists and tourists. Today, ice covers 700 square miles of a land surface of 2,619 square miles or 27% of the province. Surficial geology of lower Glacier Bay, based on IfSAR bare earth
- 4 Greater Chilkat Watershed AtlasThe Chilkat has more great glacial rivers than any other biogeographic province. âChilkatâ is a close-enough approximation of the LingĂt name JilkĂĄat, cache, to retain as our title for this unique, transitional province. If XutsnoowĂș provice is the geometric âheartâ of LingĂt AanĂ, Chilkat province is about as âedgeyâ as they get. Thanks to the rainshadow effect of SĂtâ EetĂ GeeyĂ, bay taking the place of the glacier (Glacier Bay), Chilkat province hosts more elements of the boreal interior bioregion than any other in Southeast. Northeast along BC-AK border (swath in right foreground) near Pleasant Camp. Using the IfSAR-generated bare-earth layer delivered in October, 2015, I extended Juneauâs surficial geology mapping northward up Lynn Canal My retake of this classic early Haines scene is just slightly south of the original. The most dynamic area is Sawmill Wetland, site of todayâs airport, visible way upriver. In 1929 there was apparently little vegetation anywhere on the flats, which were all swept by JilkĂĄat, cache (Chilkat River) during high flows. What was then an overflow channel became Sawmill Creek, heading near the Lukaax.ĂĄdi village of YandeistâakyĂ©.
- Featured Chilkat landscapesSubregions of GCW mapped in more detail Greater Chilkat Watershed contains dozens of fascinating landscapes that are âatlas-worthyâ in their own right. Here we offer closeup views and some stories of 19 Featured landscapes from residents and explorers who know them well. Understanding any place begins with learning its history. Visually, we can approach this through ground-based and aerial photographs, going back in some cases for more than a century. Oral accounts go back further. And sciences, such as archeology and glaciology, track landscapes through deep time. Components of these Featured Landscape descriptions include: â page-flippers â repeat photography (RP) â stereopairs â geopdfs As of mid-2021 we have draft atlases for 19 Featured landscapes, numbered here from coast, roughly northwestward into the boreal interior. Ultimately this map will be hyperlinked; clicking on a box will take you to that page.
- 3 DeishĂș (Haines)Atlas for vicinity of Haines Home to most residents of Greater Chilkat Watershed, we have many historical views that can be assembled into âpage-flippers,â repeat-photography before-afters, and 3D stereopairs. This map for the isthmus and downtown area can be downloaded as a geopdf for navigation in Avenza
- 9 Ăa ka (Chilkat Lake)Lake outlet and confluence with GathĂ©eni, sockeye stream (Tsirku River) Where indecisive (sometimes reversing!) outflow from this xx-mile long lake meets GathĂ©eni, sockeye stream (Tsirku River) lies a fluvial geomorphologistâs smorgasbord and a fish managerâs nightmare.
- 10 TlĂĄkw.aan (Klukwan/Tsirku fan)TlĂĄkw.aan, eternal village (Klukwan/Tsirku fan) Because of its isolation from coastal waters plied by invading steampowered warships, TlĂĄkw.aan remained the most powerful village in LingĂt AanĂ long after most came under Russian, British or American rule.
- Featured Chilkat landscapesSubregions of GCW mapped in more detail Greater Chilkat Watershed contains dozens of fascinating landscapes that are âatlas-worthyâ in their own right. Here we offer closeup views and some stories of 19 Featured landscapes from residents and explorers who know them well. Understanding any place begins with learning its history. Visually, we can approach this through ground-based and aerial photographs, going back in some cases for more than a century. Oral accounts go back further. And sciences, such as archeology and glaciology, track landscapes through deep time. Components of these Featured Landscape descriptions include: â page-flippers â repeat photography (RP) â stereopairs â geopdfs As of mid-2021 we have draft atlases for 19 Featured landscapes, numbered here from coast, roughly northwestward into the boreal interior. Ultimately this map will be hyperlinked; clicking on a box will take you to that page.
- 5 Ăak’w ProvinceFormerly named Lynn Canal Province, I âprenamedâ it after the inhabiting KwĂĄan, to dispense with IWGNs. Itâs enormous and unwalkable by mere human beings, extending from the granitic highlands across from DeishĂș, end of trail (Haines) south to TleixsatanjĂn, hand at rest (Heintzleman Ridge) LingĂt names on IfSAR terrain model We have no known LingĂt name for this magnificent river flowing into DaxanĂĄak, between 2 points (Berners Bay). Maps call it (for undocument reason) Antler River. Repeat photo pair below: WulixâĂĄasi HĂ©en, cascading river (Katzehin), is fed by Meade Glacier[1]. The Lukaax.adi must have been intimately familiar with this northernmost ice-river draining the Juneau Icefield, because it advanced about to the corner visible in the distance on the 1929 oblique. Hiking up valley for trapping and goat-hunting would have been easy on the barren river bars, at least during low flow. Whatever name they called it by has apparently been lost to history. My retake lines up the opposing points fairly well, but was at lower elevation. Although considerable recession has occurred, this is still an active glacial river, with a mostly-barren flood plain. Only in a few protected side pockets and on some point bars has substantial reforestation occurred.âŠ
- 6 T’aakĂș ProvinceOur backyard transboundary corridor The largest Southeast province spans 2,678 square miles, of which glaciers cover 422, 16% of total land area. TâaakĂș has several translations. Commonest is flood of geese. Along with AalsĂ©ix, resting (Alsek River) and ShtaxâhĂ©en, water biting itself, (Stikine), Taku River is one of just 3 primary lowland corridors from BC into Southeast. Taku watershed drains about 5,000 square miles of British Columbia, equal in size to the combined Alsek/Tatshenshini, and exceeded only by the Stikineâs (~19,000 sq mi). Receding Norris Glacier in center (no recorded LingĂt name). Lobe of advancing TâaakĂș KwĂĄan SĂtâi, Taku peoplesâ glacier (Taku) on right. Grizzly Bar in foreground. This outwash flat supports sparse woodland on excessively drained coarse sediment. Subalpine firâan interior conifer âextends downriver to Grizzly Bar, one of its few lowland occurrences in Southeast. Receipt of the new IfSAR-generated bare-earth layer in October, 2015, inspired me to extend Juneauâs surficial geology mapping toward the Canadian border. TâaakĂș KwĂĄan place names are from Thornton & Martin, 2012. The provinceâs standout feature is the river itself. Lowland connectivity gives TâaakĂș Province 36 mammal species, second only to Chilkat Province in diversity. (Ăakâw Province is third). Itâs also probable that theâŠ
- 11 East Xunaa ProvinceHome of Xunaa KĂĄawu East Xunaa is our northernmost island province, including most of Chichagof as well as TĂĄasâ Daa, double-headed tide around it (Lemesurier) and WunachĂch, back of porpoise (Pleasant Island). Geologically, almost all of the province lies within the Alexander Terrane, which, farther to the southeast, contains the famous caves and (vanished) giant trees of northern TĂ an, sea lion (Prince of Wales). As on TĂ an, carbonate rocks are common in East Xunaa Province, with high-quality karst scattered primarily throughout the eastern portion. The western province is predominantly granitic with thinner soils and less productive forest, so logging has concentrated around Hoonah. Bedrock and surficial geology of the Hoonah area, on IfSAR-generated bare earth. Tree size and logging in East Xunaa Province. Logging (pink) has concentrated on the eastern portion where limey parent material supported more large-tree forest (dark green). Â
- 14 XutsnoowĂș ProvinceHome of XĂłots Although this hundred-mile long island is not named for an individual, Iâve long thought of it as the ultimate IWGN (important white guy name), honoring a whole roomful of IWGs. At least its tallest summitâEagle Peak, 4650 feet, thumbnail, right) escaped being named for another bureaucrat who never saw it. East across Eey Tlein, big tidal currents (Kootznahoo Inlet), behind AangĂłon, isthmus town (Angoon).[/caption] Tree size and logging in XutsnoowĂș Province. Relatively small fraction of the original large-tree forest (dark green) has been cut. By the way, in the interests of equal-opportunity place-name debunking, consider this quote from Harold Jacobs, in a chapter called Xoodzidaa KwĂĄan; inhabitants of the burning wood fort. (Will the time ever come? Hope & Thornton, eds, 2000). Note that x and x-underlined are pronounced differently: âThe name XootsnoowĂș (âBrown Bear Fortâ) is sometimes wrongly interpreted as the name for Angoon KwĂĄan, this having been done by people who, my informants have told me, âDo not have a great command of the language or the history of the area.â Actually, the name comes from xoodzi, (which is burning wood or charred remains) not xoots (brown bear). This confusion with xoots has led toâŠ
- 20 North TĂ an ProvinceTĂ an, sea lion (Prince of Wales) is the 4th largest island in the United States. North TĂ an biogeographic province falls entirely within the Alexander geologic terrane, which hosts most of our finest karst landformsâworld-class caves and limestone spires like Mount Calder (thumbnail, right). Deeply penetrating fiords nearly divide the island in several places. TĂ an and its western satellite islands fall within Southeastâs climatic âbanana belt.â Sea level snow is generally ephemeral. XâĂ a SĂ©edakâw, little channel by the point (Point Baker) Place names and bedrock geology on IfSAR topography
- Ăakâw-Tâaaáž”Ăș watersheds (Juneau area)
- TOOLS
- Field sketchingArt as a portal into nature.
- Photography
- Drone PhotographyUAVs (unpersoned aerial vehicles) RC: In November, 2014, I bought my first quadcopter, something Iâd been dreaming about for several years. Viewing hundreds of youtubes and vimeos of low-elevation flights over forests and beaches and mountains all over the world, I was impressed but also felt a little competitive. Those were awesome terrain perspectives, I thought, but almost all pretty tame. None would compare, I figured, to flying, say, up a wild Alaskan salmon stream, or circling a snow-clad 200-foot spruce. Bob Armstrong shot of my (late-lamented) 3DR Solo, heading northeast up LâĂłox, silty water (Herbert River), Oct 2015. This is an expensive hobby![/caption] It turns out thereâs a kinda steep learning curve to this drone photography. For one thing, I was a complete newbie to film, period. For another, drones, um, crash. But all that trial and error is forgotten when you get back from a successful flight, download the gopro, and watch the Southeast landscape glide below through Ravenâs eyes. Hereâs a stitched-together sequence taken on the divide between Bear Creek and Lawson Creek watersheds, behind Crow Hill, above Douglas: bear-lawsonflight from Discovery Southeast JuneauNature on Vimeo. Especially with âfirst-person viewâ (when you can see what the cameraâŠ
- Motion-camWhen weâre not there I got into motion cameras in 2015 while staying with my father in Rochester New York. It was displacement-activity, actually, out of frustration on learning that my childhood wilderness was actually just inside the 5-mile no-fly radius of Rochester Airport. So much for crowâs-eye perspectives! Instead, I adopted owlâs-eye perspectives, perched low on treetrunks in the land of coons and white-tails. What a relevation! Within a week, I had face-to-face video of a turkey tom who fell in love with the shiny lens cover of my Bushnell Aggressor. (couldnât find any models with more peace-nik branding). I learned more about deer than a decade of direct observation could have taught me. One stormy night, I even filmed a coyote, confirming that some of those hairy turds had indeed been too large for fox. Back in Alaska, I refocused on Sitka black-tailed deer. Steve Merli and I are using motion cams to study elevational movements up and down the mountainside, as seasons pass and hormones fluctuate. In February, 2018, I put together a talk with my friends Bob Armstrong and Hank Lentfer, summarizing what weâd learned from our very different experiences with these new tools. Link isâŠ
- Repeat PhotographyRepeat photography Sometimes abbreviated RP, repeat photography is the art and science of precisely retaking historical photographs in order to document, analyze and understand change. We prioritize well-captured and reliably relocated scenes, offering opportunities to examine successional change in vegetational communities, and in some cases landform evolution. Abandoned gold-rush town of Dyea, near Skagway. 2005 retake of 1899 photo, by Kathy Hocker and Karl Gurcke. Â The map below shows locations of historic photosâboth ground-based (red triangles) and aerial obliques (black arrows)âmostly by the US Navy in 1926 & 1929. Symbols point in the direction the photo was taken. Clicking on an arrow opens a pop-up with information about the photo and a thumbnail. Clicking on that thumbnail opens a medium-resolution view. Thanks to support from Kim Homan, formerly with the Southeast Alaska GIS Library, for posting this collection. The host is ESRIâs ArcGISonline. By clicking âview larger mapâ you move to their site. View Larger Map
- Stereo PhotographyIf you properly size stereo-pairs such as the examples below on your computer monitor (about 70 mm across one of the paired images), you can hold a pocket stereoscope to the screen and the landscape will âpop up.â But those lenses typically magnify by 2x, and at that power, youâll see the pixel-grid, giving a disappointingly grainy view. Tablets, however, have smaller pixels that donât show under 2-power magnification. Hereâs a procedure that takes advantage of high resolution and rich color on Android and Apple tablets: Paired images of Juneauâs Community Gardens area. Old-fashioned pocket stereoscope over Samsung 10-inch tablet. For stereo-viewing, no printed color photos can match the resonance of a backlit aerial on a good tablet. In future posts, Iâll share some of the ABCs of creating and using stereograms. For now, Iâll only note that stereo-interpretation has been a key tool in my recent consulting work, thanks largely to tablets. Returning from the field, I drop the dayâs GPS track, waypoints, and autolinked photopoints onto one of the 2 paired images. Then, habitat-mapping is enhanced by an order of magnitude more spatial information than when tracing polygons over a flat, 2D image. Bog and scrub forest onâŠ
- TelephotographyUltrazooms and digiscoping iPhone attached to Kowa spotscope with a two-piece Phone Skope adapter. For still photography, you can learn to hold your phone up to a tripod-mounted scope or even to one eyepiece of your binoculars. But this attachment helps a lot for stabilized, 4K video. If you already own a good scope, this may be a better solution than investing in a dedicated ultrazoom camera. 2021, Goatlandia: Iâm no expert on long-range photography, but it seems as though this should be given equal weight in JuneauNature>Tools>Photography to drone-, stereo-, repeat- and motioncam categories. As I improve my stills and video of mountain goats, this seems like a good place to describe new tricks and toys.
- Tracking
- Mapping & GIS (Geographic Information Systems)The 21st-century cartographer New tools for old naturalists In March, 2015, I (Richard Carstensen) gave a fireside presentation at the Mendenhall Visitor Center on game changing technologies for field and office. In the field, what most excites me recently is UAV photography. In the office, advances revolve around GIS, and the cartographic program ArcMap. As of spring, 2014, I was part of a team that got to use the first widespread LiDAR coverage in the Alexander Archipelago. Toward the end of this 31-minute talk, I also give examples of IfSAR technology, which has subsequently become available for nearly all of Southeast. New tools for old naturalists from Richard Carstensen on Vimeo. If I could give one piece of advice to a high school student contemplating a career in forestry, fisheries, wildlife biology, geology, or any social science with a geographic component, it would be to take a course in GIS (geographic information systems).
- Field NavigationBushwacking, map and compass, GPS First a caveat about technology, adapted from a sidebar in our course manual What would Raven see: The downside of gadgets Sitka anthropologist Richard Nelson remembers that when younger Inuit first began to use compasses, the elders worried. The compass, they claimed, was weakening peoplesâ intimacy with their treeless northern landscape. No longer could hunters orient themselves by the concordance of subtle natural signs, such as the way snow deposits in prevailing winds. The compass was, in a sense, weakening peoplesâ relationship with their environment. Today the compassâonce âcutting edgeââis now increasingly left behind by outdoorspeople armed with more advanced navigational tools. As of 2015, even dedicated GPS units are being displaced, because our phones and watches âcan do all that.â But does ever-advancing technology place even more buffers between the navigator and the terrain? We might bear this cautionary note in mind as we explore the use of technology in this course. Few would suggest we abandon useful tools such as compasses or GPS units. But we should remember Ravenâs perspective. Do our tools sharpen or dull our perceptions? Trails are cool. Iâve written a 72-page guidebook about them. But on page 65, IâŠ
- Journaling & Blogging
- Acrobat & PDFsTips on navigation in pdfs I remember a conversation with the all-wise Ken Melville, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, in which I excitedly shared my progress converting years of handwritten nature journals to searchable pdfs, illustrated with scans from my old 35mm slides, and retrofitted with maps from GIS. He listened with amusement, then asked: âAnd what do you think, Richard, will be the pdf of 2050?â If I was really serious about saving my work for future generations, he advised, I should print everything I create on archival paper, and lock it into a fireproof safe. By way of illustrating the naivete of dependence on digital-archiving (an oxymoron?), Ken told me about movies he made as a college student on some antiquated medium that almost nobody in the world was capable of retrieving, 4 decades later. Sample pdf viewed in Acrobat Pro, with header configured for ease of navigation. Regular (unpro) Acrobat Reader offers most of these tools. Right click on header to customize, throwing away unused tools and loading these super-useful ones. From left to right: Binocular search tool is AWESOME: gives you a list of sentences where the word occurs. â xxxx  â xxxx  â xxxx  âŠ
- Ground-truthingDocumenting habitat Beginning in 2005, Bob Christensen and I [Richard Carstensen] developed a protocol for rapid field assessmentânew-age ground-truthingâthat builds on timeless naturalistsâ skills and adds cutting edge technologies as these emerge. [caption id="attachment_1727" align="alignnone" width="600"] Office tent at Emerald Bay, June, 2005. Distant generator on long extension cord is powering 2 laptops and recharging batteries from cameras, GPS units and radios. Kenyon Fields photo.
- Landmark TreesThe Landmark Trees Project is an effort to find, describe and understand the most magnificent remaining forests of Southeast Alaska. Founded by Sam Skaggs and led by Richard Carstensen, the project documented 76 one-acre sites across the Tongass between 1996 and 2005. [caption id="attachment_2394" align="alignnone" width="371"] Largest known tree on Mitkof Island. Landmark Tree sites are scored according to dimensions of the largest tree and wood volume of the surrounding acre. Theyâre also assessed for ecological values such as winter deer and summer bear habitat. The project has involved Alaskans from Ketchikan to Hoonah. We found trees up to 11 feet in diameter, and 250 feet tall. Our highest scoring stand is on limestone bedrock (karst), but most of our sites grow on stream and river deposits (alluvium). Most of those streams have salmon, and therefore, of course, bears. Our search takes us far from beaches and roads, into the most remote and sensitive bear concentrations of the Tongass. Most of our highest-scoring stands are feeding places for brown and black bears that rarely encounter people in those areas, and we donât want that to change. Locations of many LT sites should not be made public. So how can LandmarkâŠ
- SCHOOLSSchools of Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂ: site materials This section is being added in fall of 2020, for descriptions of each school in our district, and (scroll down) more general background materials on natural history themes. Discovery has a long history with these schools. Indeed, we were there for the founding of several. JuneauNature is working with the District to provide air-photo historical series and other natural & cultural history content for every school site, featuring not only the building but nearby field trip destinations (yellow boxes on these maps) where our naturalists have led student outings for decades. CBJ schools, NW to SE Valley schools: 1) Auke Bay Elementary 2) University of Alaska Southeast 3) Mendenhall River Elementary 4) Floyd Dryden Middle 5) SĂtâ EetĂ ShaanĂĄx (GV) Elementary 6) Thunder Mountain High 7) Riverbend Elementary 8) Dzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle Channel schools: 9) Yada.at KalĂ© (JD) High 10) YaakoosgĂ© DaakahĂdi 11) Montessori Elementary/Middle 12) Charter Elementary/Middle 13) Harborview Elementary 14) SayĂ©ik (Gastineau) Elementary From the cartographerâs perspective, these schools can be separated into âValleyâ (or out-the-road?) schools and âChannelâ (or J-D cities?) schools. Valley Schools Auke Bay Elementary is in the watersheds of Lake Creek, and streams like Ăakâw NoowâŠ
- Glacier hubDeveloping in conjunction with Discoveryâs Glacier App that we hope to roll out this summer. Resources listed below will cover all things glacial: bedrock sculpting, surficial landforms (erosion and deposition), post-glacial succession, wildlife, and the ways glaciers influence our lives, for better (ice skating!) and worse (outburst floods). Speaking of which, letâs fly up to the source of that hopefully temporary problem . . . Â
- Connor-Carstensen landforms courseReading the landscape of Southeast Alaska Aug 28: For the 2022 UAS fall semester, Geologist Cathy Connor and I are offering a field-intensive course, modeled after the little book we wrote together in 2013. This page will list resources already on JuneauNature, plus new materials developed specifically for the class. Letâs start with a custom geopdf, centered on Ăakâw, little lake (Auke Lake), and University of Alaska Southeast campus, launchpad for our quest to understand the shape of Ăakâw & Tâaaáž”Ăș AanĂ. Custom geopdf for Ăakâw. Download this, along with a color infrared 2013 aerial covering the same area. On our first class, weâll load the navigational app Avenza to our phones, and test out this geopdf. You can get familiar with it on walks around the lake, or on the trail to housing. In addition to recording tracks, this app allows you to create photopoints and zip them, with track, into a Google Earth kmz for sharing and archiving.Thisâll become standard procedure on all of our adventures this fall. Download this bare earth geopdf, (10MB) And a 2013 color infrared for the same area 12MB) One of the best ways to study changes over time is with what IâŠ
- Schools of Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂcbj school district
- Auke Bay ElementaryAuke Bay Elementary School Discovery has worked with Auke Bay School since our first teacher workshops in the early 1990s. Judy Maier, one of our founding âmentor teachersâ from Harborview days, began teaching at Auke Bay and embarked on the students-&-elders project that culminated in publication of A step back into old Auke Bay Field sites in easy walking distance from Auke Bay School and the University. Auke Bay Elementary is in the watersheds of Lake Creek, and streams like Ăakâw Noow and Waydelich. Tiny Bay Creek trickles along the edge of the school grounds and is accessed by trail from the playground. Few have recorded LingĂt names, except Gaat HĂ©eni, sockeye stream, draining Aakâw, little lake. Orthomosaic from ArcGIS Online, taken 20190629
- Mendenhall River ElementaryMendenhall River Elementary School Discovery has worked at Mendenhall River School since our first teacher workshops in the early 1990s.Our first naturalist here was Davey Lubin, the Nature Dude, who sometimes arrived in class attired in skunk cabbage and other native flora. Field sites in easy walking distance from Mendenhall River School. Green outline on left is Discovery Southeastâs new conservation reserve. MRS is only moments on foot from the vast Recreation Area, where students can experience beaver workings, and study post-glacial recolonization. Orthomosaic commissioned by CBJ. Acquired June, 2013.
- SĂt’ EetĂ ShaanĂĄxSĂtâ EetĂ ShaanĂĄx (Glacier Valley) Elementary School. This was the third school Discovery sent a naturalist to, after Harborview (me) and Mendenhall River School (Dave Lubin). For 30 years since, the forest framing Jordan Creek [noTN?] at the foot of Thunder Mountain has been Steve Merliâs office. Thousands of 3rd-to-5th-graders have had their first rich off-trail experience in these woods. The large alluvial fan above SĂtâ EetĂ ShaanĂĄx and Floyd Dryden, logged in the 1940s, once grew the most magnificent forest in Ăakâw AanĂ CBJ-commissioned orthophoto, June, 2013
- Riverbend Elementary SchoolRiverbend Elementary School Riverbend and Thunder Mountain High School are minutes from a footbridge accessing the confluence of Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en (Montana) with Wushi lâuxâu HĂ©en (Mendenhall). This opens extraordinary opportunities for study of hydrology, geomorphology, succession, and wildlife habitat. Riverbend and Thunder Mountain on hillshade generated from LiDAR digital elevation model. Footbridge accessed field sites on June, 2013 orthomosaic.
- Dzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle SchoolDzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle School Discovery was there for the opening of this school in 1995. Iâd recently âretiredâ from Nature Studies (grades 3 through 5), by then in the capable hands of master naturalists Dave Lubin and Steve Merli, and transitioned into Middle School projects, beginning with Maggie Jacobyâs class at Floyd Dryden. I also followed Marie Drake teachers Jan Pohl and Susan Joling when that school closed and migrated to Dzantikâi HĂ©eni.
- Harborview Elementary SchoolHarborview Elementary School Five downtown schools are in 12-square-mile Dzantikâi HĂ©eni (Gold Creek) watershed. Most urban of CBJ schools, theyâre correspondingly most challenging for quick access on foot to wild land, particularly in upper grades with quicker period rotations. But Evergreen Cemetery works for many purposes. And the new Seawalk is a huge asset for outdoor education. All of our current schools and everything outboard of Willoughby Avenue is fill, mostly from AJ Mine. CBJ-commissioned orthomosaic, June, 2013. Imagery was flown prior to construction of the Sea Walk (added however, on hillshade above), which has subsequently become a major recreational and educational asset, within easy walking distance from downtown schools. At Discovery, we hope to soon offer focused interpretive materials for this site at the mouth of Dzantikâi HĂ©eni, little flounder creek,
- Yada.at KalĂ© (JD) HighResources for our downtown high school Downtown schools from Brave Outlier, the 160-foot spruce in foreground. Y=Yada.at KalĂ©; Y&M=YaakoosgĂ©-DaakahĂdi&Montessori; H=Harborview. This is how beautiful face sees us. Oct-17th Rather belatedly, Iâm adding a page for beautifully-adorned face (JDH), on the occasion of STEAM-2022, the 3-day gathering of educators from Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂ and beyond.
- SayĂ©ik (Gastineau) ElementarySayĂ©ik (Gastineau) Elementary SayĂ©ik, spirit helper, is in XâĂĄatâ TâĂĄak (Bear Creek) watershed, best of our local schools for studies of deer habitat. The deep, headward-cutting canyons of little Bear Creek now finger into deltaic deposits of ShgĂłonaa HĂ©enakâu (Lawson Creek) from a time of higher sea level when this much bigger stream flowed out through todayâs XâĂĄatâ TâĂĄak, beside the island (downtown Douglas) and Anax Yaa Andagan YĂ©. where sunâ rays hit first (Douglas Boat Hbr). Hillshade from 2013 LiDAR CBJ-commissioned orthomosaic, June, 2013
- Schools of LingĂt AanĂschools throughout the archipelago
- Nature near the schools: thematic workshopsâTheme-basedâ workshop materials In the early 1990s, Discovery received federal funding to offer teacher workshops locally and throughout northern-&-central LingĂt AanĂ. Most were âsite-based,â focused on the immediate surroundings of each school. But we also offered classes on 5 subjects or âthemesâ important to our Nature Studies programs. Nature Studies is offered throughout the school year in all CBJ elementary schools, so our programs focused on seasonally appropriate topics. Autumn, as plants senesce, is a great time to think about seed distribution. Winter is the best season for animal tracking. And in spring, we welcome back our migratory birds. Below are slideshows and other resources developed during our 5 âthematic workshops: â seeds â natural communities â landforms â tracking â birds
- School-history pageflippersAirphoto historical series for school surroundings
- Recent teacher outingsRecent DSE teacher training classes & expeditions Discovery began offering recertification classes for teachers within a few years of our founding, in the early 1990s. Teachers visited the âcandelabra treeâ in Kanakâaa, skinny (Seymour Canal) during our June, 2017 expedition.
- Middle School STEAM groupJuneauNature resources for SHIâs MS STEAM CoP Our proposed route will pass from Ăakâw into XutsnoowĂș AanĂ just south of TĂĄaxâaa HĂ©eni, mosquito stream (Greens Creek). Blue, yellow and red dots on this map are named places, towns/camps and fort sites. Zoomed in, my maps populate with LingĂt over translation over (colonial name) And if you recognize all those acronyms, congratulations; youâre definitely a Southeast educator. Which also means youâre one of Discovery Southeastâs heroines/heroes. Our core mission is supporting you in bringing place-based, hands-on education to the youth of LingĂt AanĂ. If youâre a non-teacher, and glazed over at that intimidating 4-piece shorthand, hereâs why I abbreviated it: Sealaska Heritage Instituteâs Middle School Science Technology Engineering Arts & Math Community of Practice. (whew!). Iâm embarrassed to say I was unaware of this group until a couple weeks ago. MS STEAM CoP is a coalition of Middle School teachers from schools throughout the archipelago who meet regularly over ZOOM and sometimes in the rowdy real world. For example . . . In late March, 2023, Iâm gearing up for a weekend catamaran trip from Ăakâw TĂĄ, little lake bay (Auke Bay) to ChatlkoowĂș, halibut tail (Angoon ferry terminal). Weâll haveâŠ
- Media types
- Videos
- Books & booklets
- Pamphlets
- Maps
- Newsletters
- Research reports
- Bishop-EnvironaidPapers by Dan Bishop, hydrologist Between 1974 and 1991, Dan Bishop, proprietor of Environaid, was probably the most widely respected environmental consultant in Southeast Alaskaâthe go-to advisor for any project idea involving water. His publications were delivered to agencies, NGOs and developers but rarely archived in journals, or otherwise available to naturalists, scientists or outdoorsfolk. UAS Egan Library has some in printed form, but theyâre not scanned for digital download. Iâve long aspired to change that. Henceforth, this subpage of JuneauNature>Media types will be a growing source for Bishop materials. Scroll down to see them listed chronologically. As of early 2023, I have the raw materials to assemble fairly high-res pdfs of the 25-or-so most useful papers. For a sense of the geographic and disciplinary range of Danâs work, a good starting point is my 7-page list of Environaid land-water reports. Download list here (2MB)  Left: Photo from USFS archives, when Dan worked at Forestry Sciences Labs.  Right: Dan and daughter Gretchen on a stream near Haines airport, on contract for ADOT In 1985 I was a long-haired hermit caretaking the scout camp at AsxâĂ©e, twisted tree (Eagle River). Not a fan of civilization, I was nevertheless conscripted intoâŠ
- Essays & documents
- Journals
- PowerpointsDownloadable presentations for teachers & naturalists 2020: Powerpoints are a recent addition to JuneauNature media. Iâm uploading some fairly âhistoricalâ presentations, created originally as 35-mm slideshows. With advent of digital imagery and projection, I scanned them and converted, for easier distribution andâhopefullyâmore adaptable to a wide variety of educatorsâ needs.
- Book Reviews
- Home
- NATURE
- CrittersSoutheast fish & wildlife Southeast Alaskans are blessed with 2 websites hosted by dedicated naturalists Bob Armstrong (Juneau) and Matt Goff (Sitka) that are structured mostly taxonomically. Collectively this pair of sitesâin rather different waysâcovers such an extraordinary sweep of kingdoms, phyla, orders, families and species that it would be silly forjuneaunature to emulate these masters. You may notice that I [Richard Carstensen] donât even have a page in this Nature section for Plants. Bob and Matt have done that already. Bobâs site naturebob presents his greatest hits, all free, collected over more than a half-century of still photography and (recently) videography. But itâs not just an image&movie repository. The Videos section of naturebob is annotated with observations on behavior that would escape those of us less attuned to trophics, life-cycles, display, or anatomy, and it links to a wealth of other sources. Mattâs site sitkanature is modestly subtitled âAn aspiring naturalist learns his place.â But donât let that âaspiringâ fool you. This guy long ago earned his naturalistâs merit badge, as our mutual friend Scott Harris puts it. Mattâs also host of the Sitka Nature Showâradio interviews with interesting Alaskans, archived on his website, 90 of em, as ofâŠ
- MammalsBob Armstrongâs nursing-fawn photo on right sums up the defining talent of mammals: warm-blooded, hairy milk-producers. (Well, I guess we guys can only lay claim to the first 2 attributes.) Mammals is divided into Carnivores, Hooved and Rodents. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Not counting marine mammals, we have 57 known species in Southeast Alaska. No attempt is made in Juneaunature to describe or even list them all. A comprehensive introduction is in the Mammals section of The Nature of Southeast Alaska (Carstensen, Armstrong & OâClair), and a more exhaustive treatment with range maps is in MacDonald & Cookâs Mammals and Amphibians of Southeast Alaska.
- BirdsBirds is divided into Songbirds, Other landbirds, and Water birds. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Here, weâre treating basically the species who are so important to Southeast ecology, trophics, and culture that weâd feel negligent not bestowing a page or two. Thereâs little IÂ could contribute in the world of Southeast avifauna that my buddy Bob Armstrong hasnât done better. For birds, and for that matter almost all things taxonomic (amphibians, birds, fish, plants, fungi, insects, other inverts, lichens, fungi, mammals), go to Bobâs fantastic website. An older take on relationships among the class Aves, based upon Welty & Babtistaâs Life of Birds (1988). Every year, genetic findings force revisions to this tree. Those interested in finer details of avian taxonomy should consult more recent charts. For example, loons and grebes are no longer so closely branched. And waterfowl arenât considered so close to herons.
- AmphibiansThe pond breeders Six species of amphibian are considered native to Southeast Alaska. Three anurans (the order of frogs and toads) are western toad, wood frog, and Columbia spotted frog. Three known caudates (the order of newts and salamanders) include rough-skinned newt, long-toed salamander, and northwestern salamander. In addition to these native species, two frogs from the Pacific Northwest have been introduced: Pacific chorus frog and red-legged frog. Reproductive stages of Southeast amphibians. Shown to scale; note shrinkage with metamorphosis. Dates are from Juneau observations: a) toad eggs in strings of jelly; b) wood frog eggs in softball-sized mass; c) newt egg deposited singlyâcoiled embryo soon to hatch; d) toad larva is dark charcoalâdorsal fin starts farther back than on larval frogs; e) frog larva more olive brownâdorsal fin attaches well forward of tail; f) newt larva has antler-like gills; g) toadlet has fat, warty body, and small hind legs; h) froglet has smoother skin and legs are more muscular than on toadlets; i) unlike anurans, newt metamorphs are proportioned like adults.
- FishFish is divided here into marine and anadromous sub-categories. (Purely freshwater fishâwho never visit saltwaterâare limited to a few sculpins and sticklebacks.) Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Biologists have only begun to map the distributions of freshwater mussels in Alaskan lakes. These mollusks have a bizarre life history. Their tiny, toothed larvae attach to gills of sticklebacks, sculpins or salmonids and are sometimes carried to new lakes before the spat release and drop to the bottom. Formerly abundant on loose flocculent covering the shallow margins of Auke Lake, mussels are now hard to find. Mussels are sensitive indicators of water quality.[/caption]
- InvertebratesPacific blue mussels (Mytilus trossulus) seal shut when exposed to air, but open to filter-feed when the tide comes back in.
- Ecology 101
- Landscape ecologyThinking like a mountain; biogeography Cartographers are generally big-picture thinkers. Especially since the advent of GIS (Geographic Information Systems), which interfaces between maps and databases, we can ask increasingly sophisticated questions of our maps. In 2001, I created the following cartoon of a bearâs landscape movements in collaboration with Kim Titus of the Department of Fish & Game, based upon his studies of telemetered bears. Since that time, wildlife studies have become ever more sophisticated, following, for example, the hourly movements of collared deer through intimately mapped terrain. The brown bearâs year 1) Emergence Late-March through May. Most dens are in the high country. 2) Spring Bears descend in search of sedges, skunk cabbage, and deer carcasses. Key habitats include south-facing avalanche slopes, fens, and especially tidal marshes. 3) Early summer Breeding season. Until midsummer, bears are dispersed from sea level to alpine ridges. Tidal sedge flats, subalpine meadows, upland forests, and avalanche slopes are the principal foraging habitats. 4) Salmon By mid-July, most bears move into riparian forests and tidal estuaries for pink and chum salmon. Small, shallow reaches areeasiest to fish, claimed by dominant individuals. Some sows with cubs never use the streams. 5) Berries Beginning in mid-September,âŠ
- ProductivityIn terms of annual tonnage, timber and salmon far outweigh all other Southeast commodities. We define productive watersheds, as those thatĂÆĂrelative to their biogeographic provinceĂÆĂrapidly grow very large trees and associated fauna, and/or host exceptional runs of salmon. This kind of productivity often appears to spring from the nature of underlying bedrock, with carbonate rocks at the rich end, and granitics toward the lean end of the spectrum. But, as ecologist Mary Willson points out, itâs important to be clear that timber or fish productivity âdoesnât translate directly into productivity of anything else, because habitat structure and exposure and plant defensive compounds and a zillion other things may regulate other community components.â For example, shrub production is often inversely proportional to forest canopy production. So it could be thereâs higher production of some shrub-nesting birds and blueberry parasites in the types of scrubby-forest watersheds weâve defined [in the 2005 summary report] as âless productive.â Diversity within many taxa (e.g. bryophytes) is also probably higher in our âless productiveâ watersheds. Even more relevant (and confounding) for this essay; some conditions that are productive of certain fish species need not be productive of forests. Anan Creek watershed has extraordinary pink salmon productivityâŠ
- Resilience & fragilityDevotion to the future â âSustainable growthâ is a self-contradictory termsâan oxymoron. Continued, indefinite growth on this planet or any subset of the planet is a physical impossibility. Eventually, limits of some type (space, food, waste disposal, energy) must be reached; the point at which that will happen is the only aspect open to debate. . . . [Humans must] live on the income from natureâs capital rather than on the capital itself.â G. Meffe and R. Carroll, Principles of Conservation Biology. Young, post disturbance forests (checked here) are more suitable for human use than the ancient cedar types, lower right, that dominate todayâs timber program. In 2005, Bob Christensen, Kenyon Fields and I started the Ground-truthing Projectâwhat we called the âeyes and ears in the woods for the Southeast conservation community.â Central to that project was learning what parts of our environment are most and least susceptible to human use. My engagement in the Ground-truthing Project lasted through 2009. For Bob, however, that was just the beginning. For a taste of what heâs been up to lately, visit his website for the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, promoting resource stewardship, energy independence, food sustainability, economic self-reliance, and storytelling in Hoonah, Hydaburg,âŠ
- Life spanOverlooked elders. Compared to many large, hollow-centered yellow cedars farther south on the Tongass, Juneauâs cedars are relative youngsters. The extracted increment core suggested this 16-incher on south Douglas Island probably didnât colonize until the late 1600s. Just a teenager in yellow-cedar years! The older I get, the more I think about the importance of species age in ecology. In the 3rd edition of The Nature of Southeast Alaska, I added a sidebar called Harvesting longevity, about often-overlooked antiquities. Hereâs the first and last paragraph from that cross-taxon tour through mollusks, groundfish, trees, and deer: âWhether studying clams, fish, deer or trees, northern researchers and naturalists frequently learn that life-span data from southern climes are inapplicable here. Underestimating longevity has serious consequences, especially for wild flora and fauna treated as commercial, sport, or subsistence species. . . . . . âHarvestââa term borrowed from agricultureâis of dubious merit when applied to seas or forests where cycles of birth-to-death are less visible, less understood, and less amenable to control. The consequence of overharvest is quickly obvious to a farmer, who sinks or swims financially on personally owned land. But when âharvestingâ wild âresourcesâ from public lands and waters, itâs harder toâŠ
- SuccessionSuccession describes a habitatâs growth from emergence to great age. Primary succession happens after catastrophic disturbanceâglaciation, volcanic-island-creation, etc.âessentially removes all living material. Hereâs a series for post-glacial succession in Ăakâw TĂĄak, inland from little lake, (Mendenhall Valley), inferred from a chronosequence on mesic surfaces. Succession on poorly- or excessively-drained surfaces is quitedifferent: A Postglacial barrens with lichens, moss & dwarf fireweed. â B Alder/willow thicket with small spruce saplings. â C1 Thickets still productive but overtopped by cottonwood & spruce. â C2 Cottonwood & spruce close canopy over senescing thickets. â D Spruces overtop senescing cottonwoods. Small shade-tolerant hemlocks in subcanopy. Depauperate, mossy understory. Only after ~200 years does blueberry fill in. â E After many centuries without stand-replacing disturbance, hemlock-dominated old growth develops, distinguished from D by gappy canopy, rich, patchwork of shrub & subcanopy layers, plentiful deer forbs & abundant standing & down dead wood. Check out the Succession illustration below for comparison of secondary succession after logging and streamside flooding.
- TrophicsWho eats who? Southeast food pyramids When you catch a fish, do you open its stomach to learn about its last few meals? If you hunt grouse or mallards, do you examine crops? Before enjoying the first tenderloin from guwakaan, the peace keeper (Sitka black-tailed deer), do you search for plant fragments on the back of its tongue, or open the rumenâthat magic sack that converts the mostly-humanly-inedible flora of our bioregion into the tastiest meat on the planet? One of the oldest books in my natural history library is American wildlife & plants: A guide to wildlife food habits. Martin, Zim & Nelson, 1951. The reason it remains relevant 65 years later, while other ecological works of the period have been supplanted, is that nowadays people look askance at shooting a couple hundred herons just to see whatâs in their stomachs. (43% non-game fish, 25% âuseful species,â 8% each of insects & crayfish, 5% mice & shrews, 4% herps) The trophic diagram below shows why salt marshesâconstituting less than 1% of our land massâare so essential to resident and migratory species from land and sea. Dashed arrow lines lead from eaten to eater:
- Habitats
- TerrestrialTerrestrial habitats has 3 subcategories: Forests, Wetlands, and High country. Explore those sub-categories or find general information on Terrestrial Habitats below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map. Hereâs how we introduced the Habitats section of Nature of SE AK, 3rd edition. âAmount and distribution of water is the logical way to differentiate Southeastâs many [terrestrial] habitats. These range from ocean, lakes, ponds, and rivers, to frequently submerged salt marshes and stream flood zones, to perennially saturated bogs and other freshwater wetlands, to the usually drenched rain forest and alpine tundra. After a rare two-week drought, itâs sometimes possible to sit in the forest understory without soaking our pants. Then rain resumes. Terrestrial landscape. A cartoon I first created for Friends of Admiralty to show habitats used by a brown bear over the course of a year. Some habitats are defined by solidified waterâglaciers and high-country snowfields. The term âterrestrialâ as applied to certain Southeast Alaskan habitats is somewhat generous; it actually means âoccasionally free of water.â   Carstensen, Armstrong & OâClair (2014) The primary control on terrestrial habitat is drainage or substrate permeability. In rainy Southeast, where waterlogged soils prevail, soil drainage is a keyâŠ
- AquaticStreams, rivers, ponds, lakes This section is divided into Stillwater and Moving water subsections. The latter have been much better studied in our region, due largely to their importance to salmon. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map: SITEMAP HERE. Freshwater aquatic diversity in Antler River basin, north of Juneau.
- CoastalThe land-sea interface Coastal habitats is divided into Estuaries and Intertidal. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map.. Alaska Shorezone Project aerial oblique. Dickâs Arm, outer coast of Glacier Bay National Park, 20050721. The coastline of Southeast Alaska is not only among the worldâs most spectacular and intact; itâs now among the most thoroughly documented. As of 2010, almost every linear foot of shoreline in Southeast has been captured in lovely oblique still imagery, like the shot above, and in video. The Alaska Shorezone Project flew the entire mainland and archipelago at low elevation, always during low tides. A flight index map on their website guides you to your desired imagery.
- Geology
- Bedrock geologyBedrock geology is a vast subject. Of greatest interest to naturalists are ways in which underlying rock types, alignments, fracture patterns, and variable resistance to erosion explain the shape of the land and the distribution of natural communities. Here are some of the common bedrock types of Southeast Alaska.
- Surficial geologyâFleshâ atop of the âbonesâ of bedrock geology The Surficial geology section is divided into Alluvial landforms & processes, Glacial history & landforms, Glacial rebound & coastal landforms, and Mass wasting. Explore those sub-categories or find general information below. You can also view the entire JuneauNature hierarchy at this site map. Surficial geology is the study of loose, unconsolidated material overlying the bedrock foundation. These layers were deposited, rearranged and eroded by glaciers, fluctuating sea level, streams, landslides, and bulldozers. While bedrock geologists tend to think in time-frames of millions of years, the surficial story is usually faster paced, taking place over millennia and mere centuries. Surficial versus bedrock geology While bedrock geologists tend to think in time-frames of millions of years, the surficial story is usually faster paced, taking place over millennia and mere centuries. On the surficial geology map, [LINK] Iâve divided landforms into 5 age groups (geol_age field): triassic: applied only to a couple bare-bedrock roches moutonees near Mendenhall Glacier early holocene: marine, glacial and alluvial formations dating back to shortly after the great ice age, ~10,000 years ago neoglacial: dating to just the last few millennia little ice age: mostly formed since peak of the lastâŠ
- CrittersSoutheast fish & wildlife Southeast Alaskans are blessed with 2 websites hosted by dedicated naturalists Bob Armstrong (Juneau) and Matt Goff (Sitka) that are structured mostly taxonomically. Collectively this pair of sitesâin rather different waysâcovers such an extraordinary sweep of kingdoms, phyla, orders, families and species that it would be silly forjuneaunature to emulate these masters. You may notice that I [Richard Carstensen] donât even have a page in this Nature section for Plants. Bob and Matt have done that already. Bobâs site naturebob presents his greatest hits, all free, collected over more than a half-century of still photography and (recently) videography. But itâs not just an image&movie repository. The Videos section of naturebob is annotated with observations on behavior that would escape those of us less attuned to trophics, life-cycles, display, or anatomy, and it links to a wealth of other sources. Mattâs site sitkanature is modestly subtitled âAn aspiring naturalist learns his place.â But donât let that âaspiringâ fool you. This guy long ago earned his naturalistâs merit badge, as our mutual friend Scott Harris puts it. Mattâs also host of the Sitka Nature Showâradio interviews with interesting Alaskans, archived on his website, 90 of em, as ofâŠ
- CULTURE
- Enter the Europeans
- Tlingit geography and historyFrom Richard Carstensen: Culture embedded in nature For the past 30 years, Iâve grown steadily more fascinated by Tlingit and Haida geography; the history and migrations of kw_âans, clans, and houses, and the ways in which natural and cultural history intersect. From February to May, 2013, I participated in a course for high school students by Goldbelt Heritage Foundation, entitled Why do we live here? Our essential question; What factors went into the selection of village sites for _âakâw and Tâaak__ ancestors? One of the most powerful educational experiences of my career, it deepened my interest in the locations of ancient settlements. I now feel that these are the most important places in Southeast Alaska for all of us to know and understand. In coming years I hope to substantially expand this section of juneaunature on Tlingit geography and history. Even from my limited perspective as a Southeast naturalist, the subject has so many fruitful avenues of investigation.
- Naming places
- Why do we live here?
- Restoration
- Dodging nature’s tantrumsReports on surprising (& potential) âgravity eventsâ What do snow avalanches, mudslides, mountainside bedrock detachments and glacial outburst floods have in common? I guess theyâre all âgravity eventsâ. In all cases, serious stuff perched above vulnerable lowlands somehow becomes mobilized. I used to say âbad stuff,â but thatâs judgemental. Gravity, like wolves and wildfire, is both destroyer and creator. My page on mudslide path-7, near downtown parking garage, shows context for proposed new apartment complex In LingĂt Aani, the trigger for these tantrums is usually hard rain or alpine blizzard, sustained over several days. Jökulhlaups, too, are like slo-mo avalanches, but their trigger is a back-watered lake who suddenly discovers subglacial plumbing. Since each of these gravity events has made national news over the past several years, one might hope weâve become more attentive to and foresightful of such hazards. Obviously, during storms, but also, more proactively, in choice of homesites, roads, and cruiseship destinations. Fortunately, we have great new tools for measurement and visualization. After catastrophic discharges, which seem to be accelerating throughout LingĂt AanĂ and the world, LiDAR allows usâespecially when âbefore-&-afterâ missions are fortuitously pairedâto quickly investigate the biotic (point cloud) & abiotic (bare earth) contexts. SinceâŠ
- PLACES
- Ăakâw-Tâaaáž”Ăș watersheds (Juneau area)
- 1 DaxanĂĄak (Berners)DaxanĂĄak, between, between 2 points (Berners Bay) When I came to Juneau in the late 1970s, Berners Bay became, as for other outdoorsy-but-low-budget 20-somethings, my âaffordable wilderness.â Iâd launch my decked canoe at Echo Cove and spend up to a month at a time exploring the forests and tidelands of DaxanĂĄak,. I didnât yet know its real name, so called it by the maiden name of George Vancouverâs motherânot knowing or caring how that label came to lie upon a feature George himself never saw (Bridget Berners scored bigtime in Berners Bay). For the same reasons this bay âworkedâ logistically for a wanna-be naturalist of limited means, it continues to offer realistic options for teachers wanting students to know the thrill of expeditionary adventure in a time of budgetary cutbacks. No helicopter? No problem! ESE up Gilkey River, September, 2012 Bare earth hillshade from the new IfSAR DEM (delivered fall, 2015). My surficial geologic units are an extension from RD Millerâs 1972 classification for the area from Juneau to Mendenhall Valley.
- 2 Châeetâ TaayĂ (Cowee)Châeetâ TaayĂ, murrelet fat, on Wooshkeetaan land, is the real name of âCowee Creek,â named by Euros for a LeeneidĂ shaman. A description of Cowee-Davies, relative to the other 9 watersheds studied during our CBJ Natural History Project, is basically all superlatives: wildest, biggest, fishiest, beariest, most forested-glaciated-uplifted and most ecologically indispensable to our borough. Its most popular attractions today are trails threading the lovely lower meadows. But the upper watershed is equally rich and spectacular. Châeetâ Taayi, murrelet fat (Cowee Creek): CBJâs largest, wildest, most productive watershed. Home of HĂ©en Latinee Experimental Forest
- 3 AsxâĂ©e-Lâux (Eagle-Herbert)Nexus! AsxâĂ©e-Lâux, twisted-tree/milky water (Eagle & Herbert Rivers) meet below Glacier Highway, 28 miles north of Juneau (thumbnail, right). Itâs an astoundingly productive and beautiful confluence. LiDAR topography at mouth of Asxâee, twisted tree (Eagle River). Colored for elevation. Upper edge of bright green is limit of high tide at peak of Little Ice Age. On a rare clear day in late October, 2015, with my 3DR Solo quadcopter, I âflewâ the flats just west of their confluence. Toward the end of this 1-minute video, youâll see an anomalous-looking mowed-grass mound that also clearly shows on the preceding bare-earth mapâremnant from the days when it was okay to mine gravel from the banks of our finest salmon streams. Bob Armstrong says at salmon time many bears fish here, apparently mostly at night. They also dig for rootsâof which species we havenât determined. EagleRiver-bear-flats
- 4 EeyĂĄkâw (Amalga-Peterson)Lovely risen valley, uplift features, pocket beaches Hydrologically speaking, the tiny, 0.6-square-mile Amalga Meadows watershed is an appendage of Peterson Creek watershed; its meandering, unnamed stream drains south into the Salt Chuck. Historically, however, Amalga Meadows were more strongly associated with the greater Herbert-Eagle watershed, because of the horse-tram connection at Eagle River Landing. SSE toward Eagle Valley Center from Amalga Meadows Luknax daayi, no translation (Petersen Creek 25-mile) No LingĂt name is given in published atlases for this important stream flowing into EeyĂĄkâw, small rapid (Salt Chuck) at 25-mile Glacier Highway. Waters have been further muddied by the naming of 2 different Peterson Creeksâone here and one at Outer Point. In my interpretive work for CBJ I distinguish them as Peterson-OP and Peterson-25mi. The name Luknax daayi comes from a list given to me by Marie Olson, Wooshkeetaan, who learned it from Cecilia Kunz. Ceciliaâs husband Edward Kunz Sr. had deep roots in this watershed, and at Asxâee, twisted tree, (Eagle River), to the north. Northwest down Luknax daayi to the bridge before the Salt Chuck. Bedrock geology of Luknax daayi watershed, heavily worked by miners in the early 1900s.
- 5 Ăakâw (bay & lake)Juneauâs pre-gold cultural hub The hill to the east of Auke Lakeânamed âHill 560â by my mentor Dan Bishopâis underlain by limey slate and phyllite, Juneauâs most productive parent material for large-tree forest. The steep northwest-facing slopes of this hill are also protected from gales that in most other locations knock down conifers presumptive enough to stick their crowns too high in the air. One of themâthe unfortunate spruce in thumbnail on rightâleaned over the expensive new Auke Lake Trail, and was topped as a precautionary measure, the year after I took this photo. In the LiDAR point cloud it measured over 200 feet tall. 1991 Hydrologist Dan Bishop at portal to the Dan Bishop Bay Creek Trail. Dan was a mentor to early Discovery naturalists. View over Auke Lake to Mendenhall Glacier, September 2012.
- 6 Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en (Montana)Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en, going back clearwater (Montana Creek) Healthiest habitat of greater Ăakâw TĂĄak, (Mendenhall watershed). I first began using this valley for education in the early 1990s, when my ears could still detect the high notes of songbirds. During wetland assessment transects in the mid 1980s, Iâd noticed that the logged-over swamp behind Community Gardens was full of beaver-drowned snags. Sapsuckers had drilled them, and once abandoned, these became home to chickadees, pewees and small owls. Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en is where I first noticed that logging isnât always âbadâ for wildlife. Itâs also where I first realized environmentalists donât usually like it when I say that. (Sorry!) Northwest over Community Gardens. Today, the snags have rotted and toppled, but wildlife habitat is if anything even richer.
- 7 Ăakâw TĂĄak (Mendenhall Valley)Ăakw TĂĄak, inland from little lake (greater Mendenhall Valley) 20180523: On Friday, Discovery Naturalists Steve Merli, John Hudson and I will accompany 50 teachers and staff from Dzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle School across tidal flats at the bottom of TâĂĄa Shuyee, board squared at end (Mendenhall Valley). Weâll start at the end of the Peninsula Road and get picked up at Industrial Boulevard. The walk traverses lovely salt marsh and uplift meadows at peak of spring migration. SW over lower the flats to Ăakâw TĂĄ, little lake bay (Auke Bay). On the right, willow-alder wetlands advance onto raised tideland. In left mid-distance, Widgeon Ponds sit on compacted silt. For navigation, I prepared a geopdf that you can load to the app Avenza, described in Tools>Field navigation Its basemap is a high-res bare earth from the 2013 CBJ LiDAR, called refugehillshade.pdf. East over mouth of Steep Creek to the Visitor Center, April, 2002. Not surprising we have no LingĂt place names for these features that were ice covered until the mid-1900s.
- 8 ShaanĂĄx Tlein (Lemon)EixâgulâhĂ©en, warm springs creek Charley Switzer, a big-hearted philanthropist that historians remember as a âone-man Glory Hole,â was probably one Important White Guy who deserved to have something named after him. Preferably, though, a street or building, and not this little trout stream precious to the LeeneidĂ. Jake Cropley told Goldschmidt & Haas (1998): âJust north of Lemon Creek there is a small creek called EixâgulhĂ©en. This was a very good stream, especially for a late run of dog salmon, but also for cohos. There were 3 or 4 smokehouses there belonging to the Auk people, but they were crowded out by the road. The fox ranchers have gone up there and fished out this creek. . . The Native people used to go up Lemon Creek to get goat and bear, and to trap mink, marten, wolverine and lynx.â Trails and stream channels near Dzantikâi Heeni Middle School, on 2006 air photos, CBJ.
- 9 Dzantikâi HĂ©eni (Gold)Our (formerly) unnoticed front yard In 2015, Cathy Pohl did a little bird study of the Gold Creek delta, with an eye (and ear) to what changes we might expect with construction of the proposed Sea Walk outside Egan Expressway. All kinds of cool stuff going on out there. But because weâre so cut off from our waterfront by traffic, few of us downtown residents recreated on little flounder creek. That changed suddenly in 2018 when the Sea Walk opened. Now, our marine âfront yardâ beckons as invitingly as our goaty âback yard.â What a cool place to live! Hereâs a clip Cathy shot of a heron stalking gunnels in the Fucus beds:
- 10 ChaasâhĂ©eni (Sheep)After Dzantiâki HĂ©eni (Gold) watershed, ChaasâhĂ©eni, humpy creek (Sheep) watershed was the most heavily mined basin in Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂ. Thane Mine and lower ChaasâhĂ©eni, then and now. Dotted lines mark off forest types interpreted on page 11 of our report on the Repeat Photography project.
- 11 X’ĂĄat’ T’ĂĄak (NE Douglas Island)Mature deciduous forest colonizing abandoned mining town Of my own initiative I would never have expended much interpretive energy on Treadwell. Nothing about it feels ânatural.â Whatever beach it once had is buried under sand, that makes it Juneauâs favorite place to let dogs off leash. They also rampage through the understory of the unAlaskan-feeling deciduous forest, colonized after a series of forest fires (what?!, in Southeast?!) seared the whole place to mineral soil. Because of dogs, and cats cruising at night, what might be a unique community of elsewhere-rare breeding songbirds is what ecologists call a âsink,â where more birds die or waste their reproductive energies than are born. But as with every place Iâve ever studied, for either love or money, Treadwell captured my imagination. Trees grow out of the tops of crumbling concrete buildingsâa place of hope and inspiration. (Maybe mining folks donât see it that way?) It reminds me of the jungle at Palenque, where bat falcons perch atop Mayan ruins, and the piss and bellow of howler monkeys makes it inadvisable to linger too long under the drip line of verdant, victorious strangler figs. Historic structures routes compared to todayâs trail complex. Hereâs Treadwell asâŠ
- 12 Aangooxa YĂ© (Fish)Islandâs dominant watershed; only road-accessed high country Discovery Southeast naturalists have used Fish Creek estuary for teaching animal tracking and sign interpretation to thousands of elementary school students since 1989. The diverse habitat mosaic and good connectivity concentrates wildlife. Dredge Pond breached in the Thanksgiving Day storm of 1984ânow a major king salmon fishery. Deer cabbage turning along Heavenly Overlook Trail, Eaglecrest. Bedrock and surficial geology of Fish Creek watershed. Fish Creek fault runs through Auke Lake on the mainland, and continues SE through Seymour Canal on Admiralty Island.
- 13 ណaalahĂ©enakâu (Peterson-Outer)KaalahĂ©enakâu, inside a personâs mouth (Peterson Creek) In August, 1794, rowing through Ăakâw, AanĂ, Joseph Whidbey must have noted a LâeeneidĂ village or at least summer fish camp near what we today call âOuter Point.â I say âmust have,â because his original journals disappeared after confiscation by his commander George Vancouver. In his second-hand account of the Ăakâw encounters, Vancouver (who was sick on the outer coast and never saw Ăakâw country) casually mentioned âthe point on which the northern village is situated,â as if it had before been mapped or described. From my league-by-league cross-referencing of Vancouver and Menzies journals, this âpointâ was clearly the northern tip of Sayeik, spirit helper: âwhich after the Bishop of Salisbury, I named Douglasâs Island.â GV Hmmmph! Only one of dozens of IWGNs (important white guy names) honoring distant dead dignitaries, by another white dude who never laid eyes on our home. And where, exactly, was that âvillage?â Surficial geology of the Outer Point area, based upon USGS map by R.D. Miller, 1975. Even the surviving place namesâ KaalahĂ©enakâu, inside a personâs mouth, and DeishĂș Ăakâw, little lake at end of trail-âare shrouded in mystery, their stories lost to time. What is theâŠ
- Southeast Alaska biogeographic provinces
- 3 Glacier Bay ProvinceSĂtâ Eeti GeeyĂ, bay in place of the glacier (Glacier Bay) experienced the most dramatic Little Ice Age (~1550â1850AD) in the world. The province was covered by mile-deep ice in the upper reaches, sloping smoothly down to a berg-spewing glacial terminus in Icy Strait (a name no longer descriptive). During the past 2 centuries many tidewater glaciers have receded onto land. Recolonizing plants and animals followed, and after them, indigenous sealhunters, scientists and tourists. Today, ice covers 700 square miles of a land surface of 2,619 square miles or 27% of the province. Surficial geology of lower Glacier Bay, based on IfSAR bare earth
- 4 Greater Chilkat Watershed AtlasThe Chilkat has more great glacial rivers than any other biogeographic province. âChilkatâ is a close-enough approximation of the LingĂt name JilkĂĄat, cache, to retain as our title for this unique, transitional province. If XutsnoowĂș provice is the geometric âheartâ of LingĂt AanĂ, Chilkat province is about as âedgeyâ as they get. Thanks to the rainshadow effect of SĂtâ EetĂ GeeyĂ, bay taking the place of the glacier (Glacier Bay), Chilkat province hosts more elements of the boreal interior bioregion than any other in Southeast. Northeast along BC-AK border (swath in right foreground) near Pleasant Camp. Using the IfSAR-generated bare-earth layer delivered in October, 2015, I extended Juneauâs surficial geology mapping northward up Lynn Canal My retake of this classic early Haines scene is just slightly south of the original. The most dynamic area is Sawmill Wetland, site of todayâs airport, visible way upriver. In 1929 there was apparently little vegetation anywhere on the flats, which were all swept by JilkĂĄat, cache (Chilkat River) during high flows. What was then an overflow channel became Sawmill Creek, heading near the Lukaax.ĂĄdi village of YandeistâakyĂ©.
- Featured Chilkat landscapesSubregions of GCW mapped in more detail Greater Chilkat Watershed contains dozens of fascinating landscapes that are âatlas-worthyâ in their own right. Here we offer closeup views and some stories of 19 Featured landscapes from residents and explorers who know them well. Understanding any place begins with learning its history. Visually, we can approach this through ground-based and aerial photographs, going back in some cases for more than a century. Oral accounts go back further. And sciences, such as archeology and glaciology, track landscapes through deep time. Components of these Featured Landscape descriptions include: â page-flippers â repeat photography (RP) â stereopairs â geopdfs As of mid-2021 we have draft atlases for 19 Featured landscapes, numbered here from coast, roughly northwestward into the boreal interior. Ultimately this map will be hyperlinked; clicking on a box will take you to that page.
- 3 DeishĂș (Haines)Atlas for vicinity of Haines Home to most residents of Greater Chilkat Watershed, we have many historical views that can be assembled into âpage-flippers,â repeat-photography before-afters, and 3D stereopairs. This map for the isthmus and downtown area can be downloaded as a geopdf for navigation in Avenza
- 9 Ăa ka (Chilkat Lake)Lake outlet and confluence with GathĂ©eni, sockeye stream (Tsirku River) Where indecisive (sometimes reversing!) outflow from this xx-mile long lake meets GathĂ©eni, sockeye stream (Tsirku River) lies a fluvial geomorphologistâs smorgasbord and a fish managerâs nightmare.
- 10 TlĂĄkw.aan (Klukwan/Tsirku fan)TlĂĄkw.aan, eternal village (Klukwan/Tsirku fan) Because of its isolation from coastal waters plied by invading steampowered warships, TlĂĄkw.aan remained the most powerful village in LingĂt AanĂ long after most came under Russian, British or American rule.
- Featured Chilkat landscapesSubregions of GCW mapped in more detail Greater Chilkat Watershed contains dozens of fascinating landscapes that are âatlas-worthyâ in their own right. Here we offer closeup views and some stories of 19 Featured landscapes from residents and explorers who know them well. Understanding any place begins with learning its history. Visually, we can approach this through ground-based and aerial photographs, going back in some cases for more than a century. Oral accounts go back further. And sciences, such as archeology and glaciology, track landscapes through deep time. Components of these Featured Landscape descriptions include: â page-flippers â repeat photography (RP) â stereopairs â geopdfs As of mid-2021 we have draft atlases for 19 Featured landscapes, numbered here from coast, roughly northwestward into the boreal interior. Ultimately this map will be hyperlinked; clicking on a box will take you to that page.
- 5 Ăak’w ProvinceFormerly named Lynn Canal Province, I âprenamedâ it after the inhabiting KwĂĄan, to dispense with IWGNs. Itâs enormous and unwalkable by mere human beings, extending from the granitic highlands across from DeishĂș, end of trail (Haines) south to TleixsatanjĂn, hand at rest (Heintzleman Ridge) LingĂt names on IfSAR terrain model We have no known LingĂt name for this magnificent river flowing into DaxanĂĄak, between 2 points (Berners Bay). Maps call it (for undocument reason) Antler River. Repeat photo pair below: WulixâĂĄasi HĂ©en, cascading river (Katzehin), is fed by Meade Glacier[1]. The Lukaax.adi must have been intimately familiar with this northernmost ice-river draining the Juneau Icefield, because it advanced about to the corner visible in the distance on the 1929 oblique. Hiking up valley for trapping and goat-hunting would have been easy on the barren river bars, at least during low flow. Whatever name they called it by has apparently been lost to history. My retake lines up the opposing points fairly well, but was at lower elevation. Although considerable recession has occurred, this is still an active glacial river, with a mostly-barren flood plain. Only in a few protected side pockets and on some point bars has substantial reforestation occurred.âŠ
- 6 T’aakĂș ProvinceOur backyard transboundary corridor The largest Southeast province spans 2,678 square miles, of which glaciers cover 422, 16% of total land area. TâaakĂș has several translations. Commonest is flood of geese. Along with AalsĂ©ix, resting (Alsek River) and ShtaxâhĂ©en, water biting itself, (Stikine), Taku River is one of just 3 primary lowland corridors from BC into Southeast. Taku watershed drains about 5,000 square miles of British Columbia, equal in size to the combined Alsek/Tatshenshini, and exceeded only by the Stikineâs (~19,000 sq mi). Receding Norris Glacier in center (no recorded LingĂt name). Lobe of advancing TâaakĂș KwĂĄan SĂtâi, Taku peoplesâ glacier (Taku) on right. Grizzly Bar in foreground. This outwash flat supports sparse woodland on excessively drained coarse sediment. Subalpine firâan interior conifer âextends downriver to Grizzly Bar, one of its few lowland occurrences in Southeast. Receipt of the new IfSAR-generated bare-earth layer in October, 2015, inspired me to extend Juneauâs surficial geology mapping toward the Canadian border. TâaakĂș KwĂĄan place names are from Thornton & Martin, 2012. The provinceâs standout feature is the river itself. Lowland connectivity gives TâaakĂș Province 36 mammal species, second only to Chilkat Province in diversity. (Ăakâw Province is third). Itâs also probable that theâŠ
- 11 East Xunaa ProvinceHome of Xunaa KĂĄawu East Xunaa is our northernmost island province, including most of Chichagof as well as TĂĄasâ Daa, double-headed tide around it (Lemesurier) and WunachĂch, back of porpoise (Pleasant Island). Geologically, almost all of the province lies within the Alexander Terrane, which, farther to the southeast, contains the famous caves and (vanished) giant trees of northern TĂ an, sea lion (Prince of Wales). As on TĂ an, carbonate rocks are common in East Xunaa Province, with high-quality karst scattered primarily throughout the eastern portion. The western province is predominantly granitic with thinner soils and less productive forest, so logging has concentrated around Hoonah. Bedrock and surficial geology of the Hoonah area, on IfSAR-generated bare earth. Tree size and logging in East Xunaa Province. Logging (pink) has concentrated on the eastern portion where limey parent material supported more large-tree forest (dark green). Â
- 14 XutsnoowĂș ProvinceHome of XĂłots Although this hundred-mile long island is not named for an individual, Iâve long thought of it as the ultimate IWGN (important white guy name), honoring a whole roomful of IWGs. At least its tallest summitâEagle Peak, 4650 feet, thumbnail, right) escaped being named for another bureaucrat who never saw it. East across Eey Tlein, big tidal currents (Kootznahoo Inlet), behind AangĂłon, isthmus town (Angoon).[/caption] Tree size and logging in XutsnoowĂș Province. Relatively small fraction of the original large-tree forest (dark green) has been cut. By the way, in the interests of equal-opportunity place-name debunking, consider this quote from Harold Jacobs, in a chapter called Xoodzidaa KwĂĄan; inhabitants of the burning wood fort. (Will the time ever come? Hope & Thornton, eds, 2000). Note that x and x-underlined are pronounced differently: âThe name XootsnoowĂș (âBrown Bear Fortâ) is sometimes wrongly interpreted as the name for Angoon KwĂĄan, this having been done by people who, my informants have told me, âDo not have a great command of the language or the history of the area.â Actually, the name comes from xoodzi, (which is burning wood or charred remains) not xoots (brown bear). This confusion with xoots has led toâŠ
- 20 North TĂ an ProvinceTĂ an, sea lion (Prince of Wales) is the 4th largest island in the United States. North TĂ an biogeographic province falls entirely within the Alexander geologic terrane, which hosts most of our finest karst landformsâworld-class caves and limestone spires like Mount Calder (thumbnail, right). Deeply penetrating fiords nearly divide the island in several places. TĂ an and its western satellite islands fall within Southeastâs climatic âbanana belt.â Sea level snow is generally ephemeral. XâĂ a SĂ©edakâw, little channel by the point (Point Baker) Place names and bedrock geology on IfSAR topography
- Ăakâw-Tâaaáž”Ăș watersheds (Juneau area)
- TOOLS
- Field sketchingArt as a portal into nature.
- Photography
- Drone PhotographyUAVs (unpersoned aerial vehicles) RC: In November, 2014, I bought my first quadcopter, something Iâd been dreaming about for several years. Viewing hundreds of youtubes and vimeos of low-elevation flights over forests and beaches and mountains all over the world, I was impressed but also felt a little competitive. Those were awesome terrain perspectives, I thought, but almost all pretty tame. None would compare, I figured, to flying, say, up a wild Alaskan salmon stream, or circling a snow-clad 200-foot spruce. Bob Armstrong shot of my (late-lamented) 3DR Solo, heading northeast up LâĂłox, silty water (Herbert River), Oct 2015. This is an expensive hobby![/caption] It turns out thereâs a kinda steep learning curve to this drone photography. For one thing, I was a complete newbie to film, period. For another, drones, um, crash. But all that trial and error is forgotten when you get back from a successful flight, download the gopro, and watch the Southeast landscape glide below through Ravenâs eyes. Hereâs a stitched-together sequence taken on the divide between Bear Creek and Lawson Creek watersheds, behind Crow Hill, above Douglas: bear-lawsonflight from Discovery Southeast JuneauNature on Vimeo. Especially with âfirst-person viewâ (when you can see what the cameraâŠ
- Motion-camWhen weâre not there I got into motion cameras in 2015 while staying with my father in Rochester New York. It was displacement-activity, actually, out of frustration on learning that my childhood wilderness was actually just inside the 5-mile no-fly radius of Rochester Airport. So much for crowâs-eye perspectives! Instead, I adopted owlâs-eye perspectives, perched low on treetrunks in the land of coons and white-tails. What a relevation! Within a week, I had face-to-face video of a turkey tom who fell in love with the shiny lens cover of my Bushnell Aggressor. (couldnât find any models with more peace-nik branding). I learned more about deer than a decade of direct observation could have taught me. One stormy night, I even filmed a coyote, confirming that some of those hairy turds had indeed been too large for fox. Back in Alaska, I refocused on Sitka black-tailed deer. Steve Merli and I are using motion cams to study elevational movements up and down the mountainside, as seasons pass and hormones fluctuate. In February, 2018, I put together a talk with my friends Bob Armstrong and Hank Lentfer, summarizing what weâd learned from our very different experiences with these new tools. Link isâŠ
- Repeat PhotographyRepeat photography Sometimes abbreviated RP, repeat photography is the art and science of precisely retaking historical photographs in order to document, analyze and understand change. We prioritize well-captured and reliably relocated scenes, offering opportunities to examine successional change in vegetational communities, and in some cases landform evolution. Abandoned gold-rush town of Dyea, near Skagway. 2005 retake of 1899 photo, by Kathy Hocker and Karl Gurcke. Â The map below shows locations of historic photosâboth ground-based (red triangles) and aerial obliques (black arrows)âmostly by the US Navy in 1926 & 1929. Symbols point in the direction the photo was taken. Clicking on an arrow opens a pop-up with information about the photo and a thumbnail. Clicking on that thumbnail opens a medium-resolution view. Thanks to support from Kim Homan, formerly with the Southeast Alaska GIS Library, for posting this collection. The host is ESRIâs ArcGISonline. By clicking âview larger mapâ you move to their site. View Larger Map
- Stereo PhotographyIf you properly size stereo-pairs such as the examples below on your computer monitor (about 70 mm across one of the paired images), you can hold a pocket stereoscope to the screen and the landscape will âpop up.â But those lenses typically magnify by 2x, and at that power, youâll see the pixel-grid, giving a disappointingly grainy view. Tablets, however, have smaller pixels that donât show under 2-power magnification. Hereâs a procedure that takes advantage of high resolution and rich color on Android and Apple tablets: Paired images of Juneauâs Community Gardens area. Old-fashioned pocket stereoscope over Samsung 10-inch tablet. For stereo-viewing, no printed color photos can match the resonance of a backlit aerial on a good tablet. In future posts, Iâll share some of the ABCs of creating and using stereograms. For now, Iâll only note that stereo-interpretation has been a key tool in my recent consulting work, thanks largely to tablets. Returning from the field, I drop the dayâs GPS track, waypoints, and autolinked photopoints onto one of the 2 paired images. Then, habitat-mapping is enhanced by an order of magnitude more spatial information than when tracing polygons over a flat, 2D image. Bog and scrub forest onâŠ
- TelephotographyUltrazooms and digiscoping iPhone attached to Kowa spotscope with a two-piece Phone Skope adapter. For still photography, you can learn to hold your phone up to a tripod-mounted scope or even to one eyepiece of your binoculars. But this attachment helps a lot for stabilized, 4K video. If you already own a good scope, this may be a better solution than investing in a dedicated ultrazoom camera. 2021, Goatlandia: Iâm no expert on long-range photography, but it seems as though this should be given equal weight in JuneauNature>Tools>Photography to drone-, stereo-, repeat- and motioncam categories. As I improve my stills and video of mountain goats, this seems like a good place to describe new tricks and toys.
- Tracking
- Mapping & GIS (Geographic Information Systems)The 21st-century cartographer New tools for old naturalists In March, 2015, I (Richard Carstensen) gave a fireside presentation at the Mendenhall Visitor Center on game changing technologies for field and office. In the field, what most excites me recently is UAV photography. In the office, advances revolve around GIS, and the cartographic program ArcMap. As of spring, 2014, I was part of a team that got to use the first widespread LiDAR coverage in the Alexander Archipelago. Toward the end of this 31-minute talk, I also give examples of IfSAR technology, which has subsequently become available for nearly all of Southeast. New tools for old naturalists from Richard Carstensen on Vimeo. If I could give one piece of advice to a high school student contemplating a career in forestry, fisheries, wildlife biology, geology, or any social science with a geographic component, it would be to take a course in GIS (geographic information systems).
- Field NavigationBushwacking, map and compass, GPS First a caveat about technology, adapted from a sidebar in our course manual What would Raven see: The downside of gadgets Sitka anthropologist Richard Nelson remembers that when younger Inuit first began to use compasses, the elders worried. The compass, they claimed, was weakening peoplesâ intimacy with their treeless northern landscape. No longer could hunters orient themselves by the concordance of subtle natural signs, such as the way snow deposits in prevailing winds. The compass was, in a sense, weakening peoplesâ relationship with their environment. Today the compassâonce âcutting edgeââis now increasingly left behind by outdoorspeople armed with more advanced navigational tools. As of 2015, even dedicated GPS units are being displaced, because our phones and watches âcan do all that.â But does ever-advancing technology place even more buffers between the navigator and the terrain? We might bear this cautionary note in mind as we explore the use of technology in this course. Few would suggest we abandon useful tools such as compasses or GPS units. But we should remember Ravenâs perspective. Do our tools sharpen or dull our perceptions? Trails are cool. Iâve written a 72-page guidebook about them. But on page 65, IâŠ
- Journaling & Blogging
- Acrobat & PDFsTips on navigation in pdfs I remember a conversation with the all-wise Ken Melville, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, in which I excitedly shared my progress converting years of handwritten nature journals to searchable pdfs, illustrated with scans from my old 35mm slides, and retrofitted with maps from GIS. He listened with amusement, then asked: âAnd what do you think, Richard, will be the pdf of 2050?â If I was really serious about saving my work for future generations, he advised, I should print everything I create on archival paper, and lock it into a fireproof safe. By way of illustrating the naivete of dependence on digital-archiving (an oxymoron?), Ken told me about movies he made as a college student on some antiquated medium that almost nobody in the world was capable of retrieving, 4 decades later. Sample pdf viewed in Acrobat Pro, with header configured for ease of navigation. Regular (unpro) Acrobat Reader offers most of these tools. Right click on header to customize, throwing away unused tools and loading these super-useful ones. From left to right: Binocular search tool is AWESOME: gives you a list of sentences where the word occurs. â xxxx  â xxxx  â xxxx  âŠ
- Ground-truthingDocumenting habitat Beginning in 2005, Bob Christensen and I [Richard Carstensen] developed a protocol for rapid field assessmentânew-age ground-truthingâthat builds on timeless naturalistsâ skills and adds cutting edge technologies as these emerge. [caption id="attachment_1727" align="alignnone" width="600"] Office tent at Emerald Bay, June, 2005. Distant generator on long extension cord is powering 2 laptops and recharging batteries from cameras, GPS units and radios. Kenyon Fields photo.
- Landmark TreesThe Landmark Trees Project is an effort to find, describe and understand the most magnificent remaining forests of Southeast Alaska. Founded by Sam Skaggs and led by Richard Carstensen, the project documented 76 one-acre sites across the Tongass between 1996 and 2005. [caption id="attachment_2394" align="alignnone" width="371"] Largest known tree on Mitkof Island. Landmark Tree sites are scored according to dimensions of the largest tree and wood volume of the surrounding acre. Theyâre also assessed for ecological values such as winter deer and summer bear habitat. The project has involved Alaskans from Ketchikan to Hoonah. We found trees up to 11 feet in diameter, and 250 feet tall. Our highest scoring stand is on limestone bedrock (karst), but most of our sites grow on stream and river deposits (alluvium). Most of those streams have salmon, and therefore, of course, bears. Our search takes us far from beaches and roads, into the most remote and sensitive bear concentrations of the Tongass. Most of our highest-scoring stands are feeding places for brown and black bears that rarely encounter people in those areas, and we donât want that to change. Locations of many LT sites should not be made public. So how can LandmarkâŠ
- SCHOOLSSchools of Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂ: site materials This section is being added in fall of 2020, for descriptions of each school in our district, and (scroll down) more general background materials on natural history themes. Discovery has a long history with these schools. Indeed, we were there for the founding of several. JuneauNature is working with the District to provide air-photo historical series and other natural & cultural history content for every school site, featuring not only the building but nearby field trip destinations (yellow boxes on these maps) where our naturalists have led student outings for decades. CBJ schools, NW to SE Valley schools: 1) Auke Bay Elementary 2) University of Alaska Southeast 3) Mendenhall River Elementary 4) Floyd Dryden Middle 5) SĂtâ EetĂ ShaanĂĄx (GV) Elementary 6) Thunder Mountain High 7) Riverbend Elementary 8) Dzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle Channel schools: 9) Yada.at KalĂ© (JD) High 10) YaakoosgĂ© DaakahĂdi 11) Montessori Elementary/Middle 12) Charter Elementary/Middle 13) Harborview Elementary 14) SayĂ©ik (Gastineau) Elementary From the cartographerâs perspective, these schools can be separated into âValleyâ (or out-the-road?) schools and âChannelâ (or J-D cities?) schools. Valley Schools Auke Bay Elementary is in the watersheds of Lake Creek, and streams like Ăakâw NoowâŠ
- Glacier hubDeveloping in conjunction with Discoveryâs Glacier App that we hope to roll out this summer. Resources listed below will cover all things glacial: bedrock sculpting, surficial landforms (erosion and deposition), post-glacial succession, wildlife, and the ways glaciers influence our lives, for better (ice skating!) and worse (outburst floods). Speaking of which, letâs fly up to the source of that hopefully temporary problem . . . Â
- Connor-Carstensen landforms courseReading the landscape of Southeast Alaska Aug 28: For the 2022 UAS fall semester, Geologist Cathy Connor and I are offering a field-intensive course, modeled after the little book we wrote together in 2013. This page will list resources already on JuneauNature, plus new materials developed specifically for the class. Letâs start with a custom geopdf, centered on Ăakâw, little lake (Auke Lake), and University of Alaska Southeast campus, launchpad for our quest to understand the shape of Ăakâw & Tâaaáž”Ăș AanĂ. Custom geopdf for Ăakâw. Download this, along with a color infrared 2013 aerial covering the same area. On our first class, weâll load the navigational app Avenza to our phones, and test out this geopdf. You can get familiar with it on walks around the lake, or on the trail to housing. In addition to recording tracks, this app allows you to create photopoints and zip them, with track, into a Google Earth kmz for sharing and archiving.Thisâll become standard procedure on all of our adventures this fall. Download this bare earth geopdf, (10MB) And a 2013 color infrared for the same area 12MB) One of the best ways to study changes over time is with what IâŠ
- Schools of Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂcbj school district
- Auke Bay ElementaryAuke Bay Elementary School Discovery has worked with Auke Bay School since our first teacher workshops in the early 1990s. Judy Maier, one of our founding âmentor teachersâ from Harborview days, began teaching at Auke Bay and embarked on the students-&-elders project that culminated in publication of A step back into old Auke Bay Field sites in easy walking distance from Auke Bay School and the University. Auke Bay Elementary is in the watersheds of Lake Creek, and streams like Ăakâw Noow and Waydelich. Tiny Bay Creek trickles along the edge of the school grounds and is accessed by trail from the playground. Few have recorded LingĂt names, except Gaat HĂ©eni, sockeye stream, draining Aakâw, little lake. Orthomosaic from ArcGIS Online, taken 20190629
- Mendenhall River ElementaryMendenhall River Elementary School Discovery has worked at Mendenhall River School since our first teacher workshops in the early 1990s.Our first naturalist here was Davey Lubin, the Nature Dude, who sometimes arrived in class attired in skunk cabbage and other native flora. Field sites in easy walking distance from Mendenhall River School. Green outline on left is Discovery Southeastâs new conservation reserve. MRS is only moments on foot from the vast Recreation Area, where students can experience beaver workings, and study post-glacial recolonization. Orthomosaic commissioned by CBJ. Acquired June, 2013.
- SĂt’ EetĂ ShaanĂĄxSĂtâ EetĂ ShaanĂĄx (Glacier Valley) Elementary School. This was the third school Discovery sent a naturalist to, after Harborview (me) and Mendenhall River School (Dave Lubin). For 30 years since, the forest framing Jordan Creek [noTN?] at the foot of Thunder Mountain has been Steve Merliâs office. Thousands of 3rd-to-5th-graders have had their first rich off-trail experience in these woods. The large alluvial fan above SĂtâ EetĂ ShaanĂĄx and Floyd Dryden, logged in the 1940s, once grew the most magnificent forest in Ăakâw AanĂ CBJ-commissioned orthophoto, June, 2013
- Riverbend Elementary SchoolRiverbend Elementary School Riverbend and Thunder Mountain High School are minutes from a footbridge accessing the confluence of Kaxdigoowu HĂ©en (Montana) with Wushi lâuxâu HĂ©en (Mendenhall). This opens extraordinary opportunities for study of hydrology, geomorphology, succession, and wildlife habitat. Riverbend and Thunder Mountain on hillshade generated from LiDAR digital elevation model. Footbridge accessed field sites on June, 2013 orthomosaic.
- Dzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle SchoolDzantikâi HĂ©eni Middle School Discovery was there for the opening of this school in 1995. Iâd recently âretiredâ from Nature Studies (grades 3 through 5), by then in the capable hands of master naturalists Dave Lubin and Steve Merli, and transitioned into Middle School projects, beginning with Maggie Jacobyâs class at Floyd Dryden. I also followed Marie Drake teachers Jan Pohl and Susan Joling when that school closed and migrated to Dzantikâi HĂ©eni.
- Harborview Elementary SchoolHarborview Elementary School Five downtown schools are in 12-square-mile Dzantikâi HĂ©eni (Gold Creek) watershed. Most urban of CBJ schools, theyâre correspondingly most challenging for quick access on foot to wild land, particularly in upper grades with quicker period rotations. But Evergreen Cemetery works for many purposes. And the new Seawalk is a huge asset for outdoor education. All of our current schools and everything outboard of Willoughby Avenue is fill, mostly from AJ Mine. CBJ-commissioned orthomosaic, June, 2013. Imagery was flown prior to construction of the Sea Walk (added however, on hillshade above), which has subsequently become a major recreational and educational asset, within easy walking distance from downtown schools. At Discovery, we hope to soon offer focused interpretive materials for this site at the mouth of Dzantikâi HĂ©eni, little flounder creek,
- Yada.at KalĂ© (JD) HighResources for our downtown high school Downtown schools from Brave Outlier, the 160-foot spruce in foreground. Y=Yada.at KalĂ©; Y&M=YaakoosgĂ©-DaakahĂdi&Montessori; H=Harborview. This is how beautiful face sees us. Oct-17th Rather belatedly, Iâm adding a page for beautifully-adorned face (JDH), on the occasion of STEAM-2022, the 3-day gathering of educators from Ăakâw & TâaakĂș AanĂ and beyond.
- SayĂ©ik (Gastineau) ElementarySayĂ©ik (Gastineau) Elementary SayĂ©ik, spirit helper, is in XâĂĄatâ TâĂĄak (Bear Creek) watershed, best of our local schools for studies of deer habitat. The deep, headward-cutting canyons of little Bear Creek now finger into deltaic deposits of ShgĂłonaa HĂ©enakâu (Lawson Creek) from a time of higher sea level when this much bigger stream flowed out through todayâs XâĂĄatâ TâĂĄak, beside the island (downtown Douglas) and Anax Yaa Andagan YĂ©. where sunâ rays hit first (Douglas Boat Hbr). Hillshade from 2013 LiDAR CBJ-commissioned orthomosaic, June, 2013
- Schools of LingĂt AanĂschools throughout the archipelago
- Nature near the schools: thematic workshopsâTheme-basedâ workshop materials In the early 1990s, Discovery received federal funding to offer teacher workshops locally and throughout northern-&-central LingĂt AanĂ. Most were âsite-based,â focused on the immediate surroundings of each school. But we also offered classes on 5 subjects or âthemesâ important to our Nature Studies programs. Nature Studies is offered throughout the school year in all CBJ elementary schools, so our programs focused on seasonally appropriate topics. Autumn, as plants senesce, is a great time to think about seed distribution. Winter is the best season for animal tracking. And in spring, we welcome back our migratory birds. Below are slideshows and other resources developed during our 5 âthematic workshops: â seeds â natural communities â landforms â tracking â birds
- School-history pageflippersAirphoto historical series for school surroundings
- Recent teacher outingsRecent DSE teacher training classes & expeditions Discovery began offering recertification classes for teachers within a few years of our founding, in the early 1990s. Teachers visited the âcandelabra treeâ in Kanakâaa, skinny (Seymour Canal) during our June, 2017 expedition.
- Middle School STEAM groupJuneauNature resources for SHIâs MS STEAM CoP Our proposed route will pass from Ăakâw into XutsnoowĂș AanĂ just south of TĂĄaxâaa HĂ©eni, mosquito stream (Greens Creek). Blue, yellow and red dots on this map are named places, towns/camps and fort sites. Zoomed in, my maps populate with LingĂt over translation over (colonial name) And if you recognize all those acronyms, congratulations; youâre definitely a Southeast educator. Which also means youâre one of Discovery Southeastâs heroines/heroes. Our core mission is supporting you in bringing place-based, hands-on education to the youth of LingĂt AanĂ. If youâre a non-teacher, and glazed over at that intimidating 4-piece shorthand, hereâs why I abbreviated it: Sealaska Heritage Instituteâs Middle School Science Technology Engineering Arts & Math Community of Practice. (whew!). Iâm embarrassed to say I was unaware of this group until a couple weeks ago. MS STEAM CoP is a coalition of Middle School teachers from schools throughout the archipelago who meet regularly over ZOOM and sometimes in the rowdy real world. For example . . . In late March, 2023, Iâm gearing up for a weekend catamaran trip from Ăakâw TĂĄ, little lake bay (Auke Bay) to ChatlkoowĂș, halibut tail (Angoon ferry terminal). Weâll haveâŠ
- Media types
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- Books & booklets
- Pamphlets
- Maps
- Newsletters
- Research reports
- Bishop-EnvironaidPapers by Dan Bishop, hydrologist Between 1974 and 1991, Dan Bishop, proprietor of Environaid, was probably the most widely respected environmental consultant in Southeast Alaskaâthe go-to advisor for any project idea involving water. His publications were delivered to agencies, NGOs and developers but rarely archived in journals, or otherwise available to naturalists, scientists or outdoorsfolk. UAS Egan Library has some in printed form, but theyâre not scanned for digital download. Iâve long aspired to change that. Henceforth, this subpage of JuneauNature>Media types will be a growing source for Bishop materials. Scroll down to see them listed chronologically. As of early 2023, I have the raw materials to assemble fairly high-res pdfs of the 25-or-so most useful papers. For a sense of the geographic and disciplinary range of Danâs work, a good starting point is my 7-page list of Environaid land-water reports. Download list here (2MB)  Left: Photo from USFS archives, when Dan worked at Forestry Sciences Labs.  Right: Dan and daughter Gretchen on a stream near Haines airport, on contract for ADOT In 1985 I was a long-haired hermit caretaking the scout camp at AsxâĂ©e, twisted tree (Eagle River). Not a fan of civilization, I was nevertheless conscripted intoâŠ
- Essays & documents
- Journals
- PowerpointsDownloadable presentations for teachers & naturalists 2020: Powerpoints are a recent addition to JuneauNature media. Iâm uploading some fairly âhistoricalâ presentations, created originally as 35-mm slideshows. With advent of digital imagery and projection, I scanned them and converted, for easier distribution andâhopefullyâmore adaptable to a wide variety of educatorsâ needs.
- Book Reviews
Mendenhall Glacier by bus & boot leather
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