Alaska Maps Released This Week are Most Precise Ever.  From the Aleutian Islands to the North Slope, Alaska's massive and varied terrain has now been mapped in an unprecedented way, exactly a year after President Barack Obama announced the new Arctic mapping project during his visit to Alaska.

With the Climate Changing, UAF Researchers Look to Spring Wheat as a Potential Crop. Could fields of wheat be Alaska's next big grain crop? With Alaska's growing season lengthening as a result of higher temperatures, researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have been studying whether it's possible to develop a more resilient type of wheat that matures quickly and is suitable for Alaska climates. Last month, UAF professor Mingchu Zhang began harvesting spring wheat from a 1-acre plot at the university's Fairbanks experiment farm. This season, he tested 90 spring wheat varieties already developed at Washington State University and has been working to cross-breed some on his own to see which ones will thrive in Alaska. Alaska Dispatch News

 

What to Expect From the Final Days of the 114th Congress. Congress is returning with its pre-election finish line, and just one immovable hurdle, already in sight just three weeks from now.  After the longest summer break in modern times, lawmakers are required to accomplish a single legislative task before leaving again. But it's a job far more politically fraught than it is procedurally simple: Assuring normal government operations continue through the end of this budgetary year and into the new one. Roll Call

 

Nunavik Communities Decry "Rogue" Hunters, Beluga "Mismanagement" Plan.  The beluga hunt closed down along Nunavik's coasts   much earlier than usual this year   - on Aug. 17 - angering some hunters in communities that didn't catch their annual quota and will see no fall hunt.  "That is so unfair, so wrong in every way. I'm heartbroken," said Sheila Ningiuruvik in a Facebook discussion on the end of the beluga season, which left Quaqtaq on Nunavik's Hudson Strait with less than half of its total allowable catch of 25.  Nunatsiaq Online 

How a Fiber-Optic Cable Could Forever Change Life in Arctic Alaska. Summer construction on the first fiber-optic cable to cross the Arctic has rural Alaska telecom providers promising a huge market shift in a region that is on the underserved side of the digital divide. As two ships unspool cable onto the floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas, consumers in six coastal communities from Nome to Barrow anticipate cheaper, speedier internet and the ability to download more data without overage charges by the middle of next year. The economics of bringing internet to rural Alaska are lousy, which is why the federal government, through various programs, subsidizes connectivity. And even then, rural consumers pay high rates for plans with low data limits and download speeds. Alaska Dispatch News  

[Canada] Naval Officers Learn How to Handle Ice-Filled Waters in Anticipation of New Arctic Patrol Ships. The Royal Canadian Navy is preparing for the arrival of its first Arctic patrol ship by sending officers assigned to the vessel to the Antarctic and Canada's far north to learn how to operate in ice-filled waters, says the country's top sailor. The Chilean Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard are providing training for the difficult task of conducting such missions, Vice Admiral Ron Lloyd, head of the RCN, told Postmedia. National Post

 

Whale Hunters of the Warming Arctic. Sikuliaq, too young and unreliable to bear a thirty-ton whale carcass. The hunters could do nothing but watch the shining black backs of bowheads, breathing calmly, almost close enough to touch.

On a trip to the ice edge, Tariek Oviuk, a hunter from Point Hope, felt a strange sensation: the lift of ocean waves beneath his feet. The older men, nervous about the rising wind, hurried back toward shore, but the younger hunters remained, stripping blubber from a few small beluga whales. Then the crack of three warning shots came rolling across the ice, and the hunters scrambled for their snowmobiles. "As soon as we heard those shots, my heart started pounding," Oviuk recalled. The New Yorker

 

Arctic Permafrost Carbon Study Predicts Imminent, 'Really Large' Methane Release. "Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas," University of Alaska Fairbanks ecology professor Katey Walter Anthony tells students during a field trip recorded on  video by UAF. Walter Anthony has become something of YouTube phenom over the past few years, due to the many video clips showing her demonstrating how methane that's been captured by ice on a frozen lake can be released by poking a hole in the ice and then ignited by holding a lighter next to the puncture. "... A molecule of methane is 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide," she tells her class just before igniting methane gas released from the bubble, which draws cheers from the students. KUAC