ENRI reseacher Adam Csank uses ancient clam shells to pioneer new predictor of rising Arctic temperatures

Will Alaska's arctic landscape transform into forest? Will living in Barrow be more like living in Anchorage?

Scientists, including Adam Csank, are finding clues in a beaver pond on Ellesmere Island suggesting the heating cycle that began with the 19th century's Industrial Revolution may indeed result in just such a radical climactic shift. Think "boreal forests, beavers and bears" in Barrow, instead of ice.

Csank, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Environment and Natural Resources Institute (ENRI) at UAA, is lead author on a study published April 15 in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Read Alaska science writer Doug O'Harra's summary of Csank's findings in the Alaska Dispatch.

Basically, Csank says that the Arctic "sizzled" before the Pleistocene ice age, and scientists have found new ways to determine air temperatures during that toasty Pliocene Epoch. This may suggest how warm we can expect the Arctic to get in the future. Working with clam shells surfaced from the Ellesmere Island beaver pond, Csank and fellow researchers used new methods to isolate oxygen and carbon molecules fixed in the shells when they were formed, based on temperature at the time.

"In this case, Csank and Tripati and their co-authors 'pioneered a new method for measuring past temperature using only the calcium carbonate found in fossilized shells' that didn't require any plant specimens," O'Harra writes.

Csank will present on these findings at the May 4-7 Classrooms for Climate conference at UAA. He says he has already found Pliocene samples in Alaska, from Circle, that he wants to start working on.