Alaska Food Festival and Conference set for Nov. 7-9 in Anchorage

The Alaska Food Festival and Conference will occur Nov. 7-9 at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

The Alaska Food Policy Council, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service and UAA will host activities at Lucy Cuddy Hall, including a conference Nov. 7 and the Alaska Food Festival Nov. 8, with local foods to sample, a farmers market and a dozen food workshops.

Yes, we can...grow our own food in Alaska. Learn more about it at the Alaska Food Festival and Conference.

Food Policy Council co-chair Liz Snyder said the conference and festival is for everyone interested in food in Alaska.

“The idea is to celebrate, strengthen and promote our local food system and to connect with the community,” she said.

Ken Meter, a food system analyst from Minnesota, will open the conference with a talk about building food security and his recent work analyzing Alaska’s food system. The conference will also include a photo documentary on food insecurity and sessions on community-based fishermen, planning and promoting a specialty food business, emergency preparedness, traditional and customary foods, farming in Alaska, food cooperatives, and food and hunger policy advocacy.

Workshops during the Nov. 8 food festival will cover cooking and baking with Alaska barley, keeping chickens in urban Alaska, powerhouse Alaska fruits and vegetables, food preservation resources, harvesting from the garden, fermentation and fermented foods, growing and using herbs, and more. Most workshops are free, but a few have materials fees.

The conference will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 7, with a food policy networking event from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The festival will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Nov. 8. Participants may tour various food sites in Anchorage on Nov. 9, including the Bear Tooth restaurant, the Fire Island bakery, the Downtown Soup Kitchen and more.

The festival admission fee is $10 and different registration options are available for the conference. The tour is free. See the full schedule, registration and self-guided tour information at http://bit.ly/akfoodpolicy. The Alaska Food Policy Council is a coalition of agencies and individuals interested in improving Alaska’s food security.

UAF campus forest tour offered

Cooperative Extension Service forester Glen Holt will offer a forest management walking tour Saturday, Nov. 1, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Glen Holt

Participants will meet at 1 p.m. at the Taku Parking Lot recycle bins, off Farmers Loop, for a 1.5-hour tour through the nearby forest. Holt said the tour will help private landowners learn how to manage the trees on their property, mitigate hazards, provide sustainable firewood and determine general forest health. Participants will learn which trees to cut for firewood and which to save and why.

Call Carmen Kloepfer at 907-474-5854 to register for the tour by Oct. 31. Participants are advised to dress warmly.

Grad students to share Peace Corps experiences

Graduate students in the School of Natural Resources and Extension will share their Peace Corps experiences Friday, Oct. 24 at 2 p.m. in Murie 107.

Julie Cislo, SNRE's Coverdell Fellow this year, served in Panama, teaching English to elementary school children.

Julie Cislo with children in Panama.

Samantha Straus, a Master's International student, recently returned from The Gambia, where she worked with community members on agro-forestry projects.

Samantha Straus with her host mother in The Gambia.

Willie Wilkins' service was in Malawi, helping with gardening, agro-forestry, medicinal gardening and HIV/AIDS education.

Willie Wilkins

Each student will give a lecture, followed by questions from the audience.

For more information, contact Associate Professor Susan Todd.

Students: earn money and scholarships while working an "outdoorsy" internship

Jeff Chen, Student Conservation Association recruiter, will be at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in late October to inform students about expense-paid internships. He will give a presentation Monday, Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. in the Murie Auditorium. Students are encouraged to bring laptops so they can begin the application process that night.

SCA internships can take students to amazing places.

Each year, SCA places over 2,000 interns in a diverse array of businesses, public land agencies and nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. Students serve in national parks, historic sites, earning a weekly living allowance and AmeriCorps education awards.

Selected interns receive free travel, training and housing. The opportunities are available to all areas of study and there are spring break options, leadership opportunities and summer internships in Alaska and Outside.

Contact Chen at 907 -717-8414. He will also be at the Natural Resources Career Fair Oct. 23 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Wood Center.

Farm to table takes on new meaning at Effie Kokrine Charter School

At Effie Kokrine Charter School, locally grown food did not have to travel far for a wholesome “farm to school” experience.

Local harvest takes on a whole new meaning when the food is grown in a school’s back yard, harvested by students, prepared and served on site.

From left, FFA members at Effie Kokrine Charter School serve up homegrown food at their school: Stefania Kremer, Suleymi Juarez and Catalina Kremer.

Spearheaded by the school’s FFA advisor, Avril Wiers, the project was an offshoot of the summer science program. All season, 25 high school students worked with Wiers in the school garden, growing vegetables and earning science credits. The students read “Chew on This” and Omnivore’s Dilemma” (young readers’ edition).

The Farm at Effie Kokrine also includes ducks, chickens and rabbits. A local Kiwanis Club helped the students build a barn for the animals this summer. Wiers teaches two, four-week sessions of the summer program, with students spending half their time in the classroom and half in the garden. “It’s project-based learning,” she explained. Exploration is the theme, and one student took off with landscape design and another was drawn to beekeeping.

With a grant from the Alaska Division of Agriculture’s Farm to School program, the Effie Kokrine FFA chapter was able to fund the school garden and purchase kitchen swag (hats and aprons), a French fry cutter and a chest freezer.

With the freezer, Wiers plans to preserve more of the garden’s bounty next summer. She has been managing the school garden for years, with its popularity among students growing alongside the veggies. The school even had three CSA (community supported agriculture) members this summer, with  members paying an upfront fee for a portion of the harvest. “We’re breaking into that scene a little bit,” Wiers said.

Her hope is that more vegetables can be served in the school cafeteria. “And we want to integrate cultural foods into the lunchroom,” she said. “We want the students to be more aware of where their food comes from. It’s easy to be complacent about where food comes from but when you plant the seeds, pick the veggies and serve them, that’s a great lesson for kids to learn.”

For the first few weeks of school, the cafeteria featured lettuce from the garden. On Sept. 22, Wiers and her FFA members served roasted cauliflower and Romanesco broccoli, roasted root vegetables and raw carrots at lunch time. Dressed in their FFA blue jackets and new aprons, the students handed out containers of food, while one young man recorded his classmates’ opinions about the menu.
“We tried to make it a special day,” Wiers said. “We needed to use up the veggies from the garden and thought it would be better to have a big event.

“The students have been really supportive,” she added. “We had to find common ground between what the kids will eat and what will grow in Alaska.”

Teacher James Krall said he would love to see the school garden grow. “The best thing that could happen to a school is local food and especially with kids growing the food.”

Wiers has applied for funding to purchase a hydroponic system so the students could grow lettuce year round. “We could stock the salad bar with Effie-grown lettuce,” she said.

Students at Effie Kokrine started a petition to get a salad bar in their cafeteria and they now have it, one of the few schools in the school district with that option. “They were getting the after-lunch slump,” Wiers said. “They wanted to integrate fresh, light, healthy options.

“We have opened up the dialog about what we eat and why.”

Contact info:
Website: http://edibleschoolyard.org/node/11689
Avril Wiers’ email: avril.wiers@k12northstar.org

Yummy food grown at the school was served to students.

NRM alum earns UAF alumni achievement award

Jeff Roach, who earned a B.S. in natural resources management in 1987 and did graduate work in NRM at UAF, was honored recently by the UAF Alumni Association with an alumni achievement award.

Jeff Roach

Roach chose natural resources management because he wanted a career in the outdoors. "NRM has been the key to the jobs I got," he said. "My land use planning studies with Susan Todd were instrumental in my getting a great job with the Department of Transportation."

What he liked best about his time with the School of Natural Resources was the camaraderie with other students and the approachability of the faculty. He said he was Professor Pat Holloway's first advisee. "It was an interesting learning experience," he said. "I had a good relationship with my professors."

The following story was prepared in 2012 by the UAA Office of University Advancement (reprinted with permission):

Jeff Roach knows how to run a small city. It’s just one of those things you pick up when you earn four academic degrees and serve 31 years in the Army National Guard. He also flies helicopters, appreciates the symphony and knows how to milk a cow. It’s no surprise that this lifelong learner has been entrusted with leadership positions and has fostered a love of learning in his three kids. But where did it all start?

Roach’s parents, in search of northern adventure, moved from their Michigan dairy farm to the foot of North America’s tallest peak in Talkeetna, when he was a teenager. Alaska has been home ever since. Growing up in a state that’s home to six of the 10 largest national parks in America influenced his decision to study outdoor recreation and natural resources.

After graduating from Susitna Valley High School, Roach joined the Alaska Army National Guard. He began taking classes at Matanuska-Susitna College, arranging his academic schedule to accommodate his Guard commitments. “There were enough classes being offered that I was able to make it work,” he says. The agriculture program awarded him a scholarship and he earned his associate degree in agriculture in three semesters at UAA’s community campus in Palmer. “I liked the small school atmosphere and the rural setting. We had a tight-knit group of students in the agriculture program where I developed wonderful friendships.”

Beyond his school and Guard commitments, he also worked part time for some of the dairy farms in the Mat-Su Valley that were just starting up through a state farm development program. Guest speakers in his agriculture classes discovered his dairy farm background and offered him work on their farms milking cows. Not the most traditional after-school job in Alaska, but one he was glad to take if it meant helping him achieve his goals.

Home nowadays is Fairbanks where Roach works as Northern Region planning manager for the State of Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. He is also a lieutenant colonel and currently serving as chief of staff for the Alaska Army National Guard.

Roach and his wife, Sherilyn, who met while studying natural resources at UAF, started their careers in Eagle, a rural town just west of the Yukon-Alaska border with seasonal access on the Taylor Highway. “She has an adventurous spirit,” he says. From New York’s Vassar College to UAF, Sherilyn had a little time to acclimate to frontier living before accepting a teaching post in Eagle alongside Jeff in his new role with the National Park Service as a park ranger. Roach’s first impression of Eagle? “I loved it!” he says. “I love small towns.” From one small town to another, the Roach family moved from Eagle to Tok, where he took a position with the Bureau of Land Management before ultimately settling back in Fairbanks.

Roach’s travel credentials extend well beyond Alaska, however. In his role as an Army National Guard officer, he’s been deployed to Haiti, Honduras, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Kosovo. His missions have varied—from peacekeeping to disaster relief as he worked his way up from helicopter mechanic to Officer Candidate School graduate and helicopter pilot. One master’s degree in management and another in strategic studies, in combination with his field experience, helped to prepare him for his 15-month deployment (2006–2007) as operations officer for the 1/207th Infantry Brigade in Kandahar, Afghanistan. “It was like running a small city,” he says of his role overseeing operations at the Kandahar airfield for 14,000 troops. “I didn’t sleep much.”

Roach volunteers with the Emergency Services Commission, KUAC Public Radio Citizens' Advisory Council, VFW, Army Aviation Association and his church. "I enjoy serving others," he said.

“I think the military breeds volunteerism,” Roach says. “When you come back from a high tempo operation, volunteering is a great way to use up all of that energy in a positive way.”

Education has always been important to Roach. "My wife has been a high school teacher for 24 years, and I’ve been involved as a student, instructor and supervisor. I feel that being a life-long learner is an important factor for a successful life,” he said. And while he may be done accumulating those academic degrees that started with an A.A.S. from Mat-Su College, he is looking forward to accepting new challenges as he progresses in his side-by-side civilian and military careers.

But it’s not all work and no play. Roach is looking forward to another winter of ice fishing and cross-country skiing.

Want to study in China?

Representatives of Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun, China, will be at UAF this week to work on developing exchange programs with the School of Natural Resources and Extension.

Jilin Agricultural University

A presentation on scholarships will be given Thursday, Oct. 9 from 3:40 to 5:10 p.m. in Arctic Health Research Building, room 183. Lifeng Zhang, vice president of Jilin; Lanpo Zhao, dean of the College of Resources and Environment; and Chun Cui, vice director of the Office of International Cooperation and Exchange; will answer questions about JAU and explain scholarships that are available from the Chinese government.

For more information contact uaf-snras@alaska.edu or call 474-7083.

Forest Festival draws hardcore outdoorspeople, despite snowstorm

A full-blown autumn snowstorm did little to dampen the enthusiasm of outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen today at the 17th annual Farthest North Forest Sports Festival.

Event organizers and competitors awoke to several inches of heavy, wet snow, but the ax throwing, log rolling and other woodsmen-style competitions went on as planned.

Matthew Balazs, left, and Marc Oggier build a campfire near Ballaine Lake.

"There was some good competition," volunteer Tom Malone said. "There weren't as many people but the times were close and the competition was good."

The only reason the new Belle of the Woods Ruby Baxter competes every year is because it's fun. She said she enjoys the sawing events the best.

"There is no better way to bring on winter," said competitor Matthew Balazs. "It's the last hurrah. It's good fun and good people." His favorite events are fire building and ax throwing.

Competitor Britton Kerin said he keeps coming back for the fun. "It's a nice fall activity; it gets you out," he said.

Christin Anderson competes in the birling event.

"It's my favorite time of year," said three-time Belle of the Woods Alice Orlich. "As community events go, this is definitely my favorite. You get people who have never done it before and you get the seasoned ones who up the ante and give it the edge."

First-time competitor Christin Anderson said she competed for her sister Teri (a former Belle of the Woods) and her boyfriend, who works on the North Slope. "He does things just for the doing," Anderson said. "I'm not that kind of person and I wanted to see what it's like." She competed in the ax throw, pulp toss and birling.

Perhaps it was a bystander during the birling who said it best. Watching the competitors fall into the chilly waters of Ballaine Lake, he said, "I consider myself pretty tough but I'm not doing that."

Best dressed: Competitors Adrian Baer and Nicole McKenzie came all the way from Palmer to compete with their team, the High Fallutin Aristocrats. Baer is a 2011 UAF geography graduate.

2014 winners

Belle of the Woods: Ruby Baxter
Bull of the Woods: Jason Buist


Ax throwing men: Matthew Balazs
Ax throwing women: Brenda Burk

Double buck saw men: Pete Buist, Jason Buist
Double buck saw women: Ashley Strauch, Ruby Baxter

Single buck saw men: Jason Buist
Single buck saw women: Ruby Baxter

Birling men: John Haley
Birling women: Ruby Baxter

Team events

Best overall team: Old Growth
Second-place team: Satan's Minions

Campfire building: Old Growth
Pulp toss: High-Fallutin Aristocrats
Log roll men: Ryan Adam, Scott Leorna
Log roll women: Christina Tachick, Tamlyn Siloa
Jack and Jill log roll: Adrian Baer, Nicole McKenzie

The event is hosted by the faculty at the School of Natural Resources, Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest staff and the Resource Management Society. Generous donations that helped make the event possible were provided by Northland Wood and the Great Alaska Bowl Co.

Winners named above who did not stay to receive their prizes are asked to contact Nancy Tarnai, ntarnai@alaska.edu. Certificates are also being prepared for all the winners.

Bull of the Woods Jason Buist and Belle of the Woods Ruby Baxter.

Eric Cook, left, and Jason Thies compete in a sawing event.

The winner's circle: competitors who earned prizes are pictured.

John Haley wore a cow costume for the birling event and took first place for the men's category.

USDA rep explores Alaska's ag export potential

Christian Foster, deputy administrator for the Office of Trade Programs, USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, visited Alaska in late September to drum up business.

He met with Anchorage business people about exporting fish, craft beer, rhodiola and birch products  to countries around the world, then went to Seward to visit peony farms and finally to Fairbanks to talk to University of Alaska Fairbanks agriculture faculty and industry representatives from peony and barley flour companies. While in Anchorage, Foster met with Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and experienced a 6.2-magnitude earthquake.

From left, Christian Foster of the Foreign Agricultural Service in Washington, D.C., met with Professor Pat Holloway, Rep. David Guttenberg, peony growers Carolyn Chapin and Ron Illingworth Sept. 26. He said throughout his trip to Alaska that peonies had "risen to the top."

"We want to help you promote agricultural resources and support international food security," Foster said. "Congress mandates that we give out $250 million, but Alaska doesn't take its share. Please find a need for it."

In the U.S., 25 percent of all agricultural products are exported, Foster said. This year, the country set an all-time high of $152 billion worth of food exports, with China being the largest importer. "In agriculture, they import like mad."

Foster believes Alaska-grown food will have a special appeal in foreign markets. "Not only can you say we have American products, you can say we're Alaskan; we have the purest food in the world," he said.

Meeting with SNRE faculty members Mingchu Zhang about canola, Meriam Karlsson about greenhouses and season extension, Pat Holloway about peonies, Jenifer Huang McBeath about potatoes, Greg Finstad about reindeer, along with several forest sciences faculty, Foster extolled the merits of three programs: Emerging Markets, Technical Assistance for Specialty Crops and Quality Samples.

Foster also met Bryce Wrigley, owner of Alaska Flour Co., home to the state's only commercial flour mill. Wrigley's farm produces Sunshine barley, which the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station researched and developed.

The only food product successfully exported in Alaska has been seafood, Foster said. "We have helped Alaska Market seafood worth $50 million in the last 10 years. There is more money we could give Alaska if businesses came and said they have products to export."

Mingchu Zhang, left, and Christian Foster discussed the opportunities for Alaska to export GMO-free canola.

Mingchu Zhang told Foster, "It is great you are here. You can help us link products to markets. There is huge potential here. You opened new horizons for us."

Foster said, "You need Alaska producers and associations to step forward and start the market research about demand. And you need to help farmers think like businessmen. The potential is massive."

As a result of the sessions, Reindeer Research Program Manager Greg Finstad is writing a proposal to help St. Lawrence Island producers market reindeer meat to Pacific Rim countries. "We're developing a business plan for a processing plant," Finstad said. "The timing was perfect."

Recreation survey recapped for parks and recreation pros

When the Bureau of Land Management decided to assess user demand for recreation areas, it was natural to partner with the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Peter Fix.

Fix, associate professor of outdoor recreation management, is known for his expertise in conducting surveys in Alaska. In this instance, he and graduate student Bryant Wright tried a different tack.

Bryant Wright talks to recreation professionals at the Alaska Recreation and Park Association annual conference Sept. 25.

Fix and Wright presented their findings Sept. 25 to members of the Alaska Recreation and Park Association at their annual conference in Fairbanks.

While traditionally Fix has conducted on-site and general population studies, for the BLM survey he and Wright asked Fairbanksans what outdoor recreation activities appealed to them and how achieving those desired activities would look. "This provides a metric other than visitor numbers," Fix said.

"And it was coordinated at the regional level, not just at one recreation site," he added. "We left the places to visit open ended which proved really interesting; there were places we wouldn't have thought of."

The researchers contacted outdoor recreation clubs and asked them to share the survey with their members. It was also promoted through the School of Natural Resources' blog and Facebook page and in a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article. Participants were encouraged to complete more than one survey for different activities. The period for completing the Survey Monkey site was May 2 to June 30.

Wright told the recreation professionals that roughly 200 different people responded, with 349 total survey attempts and 276 completed surveys. Specific locations named in the survey numbered 75 for the 21 activities to choose from.

"We have a lot more analysis to do," Wright said. "We are finding nuances in the activities as we work on this. Then we will relay the results to the groups who participated."

Fix emphasized how collaborative the project was, with involvement from BLM, UAF, state parks, the Fairbanks North Star Borough and Fort Wainwright.

"We are applying a community-based approach to recreation planning," said Chel Ethun, BLM assistant field manager. Funding came from the America's Great Outdoors program.

Reindeer calves get named, if somewhat fancifully

A decidedly whimsical nature applies to names selected for reindeer calves at the University of Alaska Fairbanks this fall.

Reindeer calves at UAF now have full-blown monikers instead of just numbers.

As the calves turned five months old, they were allotted names, including fun ones such as Buttercup, Bubbles and Blossom. Reindeer Research Program staff wait until the calves are weaned from their mothers to begin the naming process. All summer they are referred to by the numbers on their ear tags.

School children from around the country submit suggestions on the RRP website, some from far-flung locations like Wilmington, Delaware; Brattleboro, Vermont; and Cullawhee, North Carolina.

This year some of the names were chosen by participants in the first-ever Reindeer Youth Development Camp, held in August. Students from Savoonga, Nome, Stebbins and Anchorage spent several days with RRP staff learning about animal husbandry and leadership. For their extra efforts, they got to name half the herd.

Male names are Thunder, Lance, Sven, Coby, Kevin and Rodger. Females, besides those listed above, are Tucker, Nina, Fuzzball, Holly, Tabitha, Bella and Rosemary.

Rejected, as customary, were most Christmas-related nominations, including Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Mrs. Claus. Surprisingly, Holly made the cut. The staff try to disassociate Santa and his mythical flying creatures from their farm animals raised for meat research.

School children are welcome to enter names starting in April each spring. The program received 32 male names and 30 female names at the RRP website this year.

RRP conducts research in meat science, range management, nutrition, reproductive health, disease prevention and radio telemetry. The program has been active at UAF since 1981.

Grad student results assist state foresters reviewing reforestation standards

Given the chance to present their research to professional foresters, natural resources management graduate students represented the University of Alaska Fairbanks in fine fashion.

Presenting Sept. 30 to members of the state Reforestation Science and Technical Committee (an advisory committee for the Board of Forestry), Andrew Allaby and Miho Morimoto shared their work on forest regeneration. Both are involved in Professor Glenn Juday's Boreal Alaska -- Learning, Adaptation and Production research, education and outreach project. SNRE collaborators in the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research project were also on the committee's program.

From left, Professor Glenn Juday, Andrew Allaby and Miho Morimoto presented their research findings to the Reforestation Science and Technical Committee on Sept. 30.

"I was so proud of those students," Juday said. "Their presentations affect the actual process of our state's regulatory authority for forest management practices. This was an invaluable experience for graduate students in natural resources management. This is one of the things characteristic of our degree program; we do research with consequences."

Both students reported on tree regeneration in the Tanana Valley State Forest. When SNRE forestry research started nearly 50 years ago, foresters were relying on research results from other geographic areas. A number of pioneering forestry studies were launched by SNRE Professor Keith Van Cleve, most of which have been continued by Professor John Yarie.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, USDA Forest Service scientists at the Institute of Northern Forestry also cooperated closely with the SNRE faculty in the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. INF was closed in the 1990s. After the 1983 Rosie Creek Fire, Juday administered a series of state-funded forest studies involving INF and SNRE. The collaborative group established one of the biggest and most ambitious forest regeneration experiments in Alaska. With state funding, BAKLAP researchers have again been measuring and documenting that specific area.


"We only had 12 years of work before," Juday explained. "I knew there was more to the story. With BAKLAP we were able to salvage that investment and make it pay off 30 years later. That's really gratifying to see."

Morimoto, a doctoral student, spoke on forest regeneration post-harvest in the Fairbanks area of the Tanana Valley State Forest: meeting emerging biomass energy demands.

She has been evaluating harvest for sustainable yield, noting if harvest units are adequately regenerated, testing for significant differences in regeneration among different types of management and examining how much biomass was accumulated in 40 years post-harvest.

Morimoto studies harvest activities and reforestation by thoroughly examining existing databases. She also sampled 30 state forest harvest units to study regeneration over the long term. Throughout the summer of 2013, she measured nearly 700 plots, comparing the management techniques, and since then has been analyzing data.

She concluded harvest units are adequately regenerated, based on the State Sustainable Yield Standard. Her preliminary results show that site preparation and natural regeneration tended to produce denser and larger stems of regeneration and greater amounts of biomass. When the production of larger spruce is the goal, she recommended planting seedlings. To produce maximum wood biomass, she said that site preparation and natural regeneration appear to be the preferred method.

Grad student Allaby addressed the outcome of the 30-year-old white spruce regeneration experiment in a part of the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest burned by the 1983 Rosie Creek Fire. Allaby looked at which white spruce regeneration techniques were most effective in producing biomass. "When the Rosie Creek Fire burned a fair portion of the university forest it gave us an opportunity for new research," he said.

In the 66-acre study area, Allaby measured 140 of the 180 treated units, about 40 meters by 40 meters each. He measured white spruce stocking and growth. He counted trees and measured the diameter of 16,000 trees in an area totaling 4 1/2 acres within the experimental treatment. "It's starting to look like a forest," he said. "It's pleasing to see 60-foot tall aspens and birch and 28-year-old white spruce pushing 40 feet.

"Should we scarify?" he asked. "It depends on the forest management objectives. Should we plant spruce? Broadcast seeding and planting seedlings both have a positive impact on biomass." His results offer the opportunity to match management goals with the most effective practices at the lowest costs.

Juday said the BAKLAP work and graduate student research help foresters focus on climate challenges. "Climate-driven changes are actually playing out in pretty understandable ways but not always exactly predictable ways," he said.

The foresters at the Fairbanks meeting Tuesday and those on the phone from around the state were impressed with the UAF students' presentations. "The foresters seemed delighted to have these research results," Juday said. "The relevance of this research is very high. We're pleased to have had the opportunity to do research that is squarely on target for natural resources management information needs."