Spring planting at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm

Alan Tonne, Kieran Gleason and Erin Carr plant spring wheat at the Fairbanks
Experiment Farm.

Spring planting is underway at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm. Crews planted vegetables and grains for ongoing variety trials.

Heidi Rader and Nicole Carter plant winter
squashes as part of the vegetable variety trials.

The farm crew planted spring wheat as part of the grain trials to further test varieties that could be suitable for Alaska. Malting and feed barley varieties collected from around the world are also being evaluated for their adaptability to Alaska. UAF agronomist Mingchu Zhang, who is coordinating the grain trials, said that most of the malting barley, which is often used to make beer, is imported from the Lower 48.

Eighty varieties of vegetables are being planted in the experiment farm fields at UAF. Recent variety trials have been conducted at the Georgeson Botanical Garden, so the trials are moving across Yukon Drive. Crops include corn, carrots, beets, beans, fennel, winter squash and spinach. Demonstration plots will be planted in the botanical garden to provide outreach and education opportunities for the public. All trials except corn are being replicated at the Matanuska Experiment Farm and Extension Center. Results from the last three years of trials are available here.

For questions about the vegetable trials, contact Glenna Gannon at gmgannon@alaska.edu or project director Heidi Rader at hbrader@alaska.edu.

A COVID-19 story from a rugged UAF researcher

By Ned Rozell
After the final steps of a long run in early March, Greg Finstad took his pulse rate. His heart was at 38 beats per minute. Perfect. The reindeer biologist and marathon runner was in top shape to run this year’s Boston Marathon.

From there, things did not follow the plan for Finstad, head of the Reindeer Research Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. After reaching his peak of fitness, not long after he was alone in his bedroom, gasping for what he thought might be his last breath.

Greg Finstad

Finstad was infected with the COVID-19 virus. It knocked him down and almost took him out.

Finstad is not a typical 65-year-old: The sturdy researcher has wrestled reindeer with the Alaska Natives of the Seward Peninsula and St. Lawrence Island for more than a quarter century. He was shooting for a 3-hour, 30-minute performance this year at the Boston Marathon.

“I considered myself a tough guy — I can tough it out; that virus isn’t tougher than me,” he said recently in a phone interview. “Well, it is tougher than me.”

Finstad, who is now home in Fairbanks recovering with achy joints but the ability to ride his bike with his granddaughters, was one of the first confirmed cases of the disease in Fairbanks.

His story of the damage wrought by a particle one-thousandth the width of an eyelash began in late February 2020.

Back then, Finstad was on St. Lawrence Island doing reindeer work. One day, he received a text from his wife, Bev. His father, 91 and living in Vancouver, Washington, had passed away.

Finstad caught a flight to Nome, then flew to Seattle, on to Portland and drove to Vancouver. He made it in time to attend his dad’s memorial service.

While in Washington state, then emerging as a hotspot for the virus that causes COVID-19, Finstad helped his mother get settled in an assisted-living facility. To relieve some stress and keep on with his training program, he mapped out a route and ran for 18 miles one day.

Greg Finstad runs a race at Birch Hill

Finstad then flew to Buffalo, New York, via Seattle and Chicago. He is on the board of directors for the Reindeer Owners and Breeders Association, and spoke at the organization’s annual meeting there.

From Buffalo, he traveled back to Alaska on March 8, 2020. He remembers extreme congestion within the corridors of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

“It was spring break when I was coming back,” he said. At Sea-Tac, “there were rivers of people in every terminal. If anyone sneezed, that virus could have infected a dozen people.”

Back in Alaska, Finstad briefly visited his office in a UAF building that was almost empty during spring break. He felt fine, but his visit soon after led to that building being one of the first structures on campus closed to visitors.

Home from his journey to bury his father, move his mother to an unfamiliar place and give the keynote speech at a conference, Finstad and his family drove down to their cabin in the Alaska Range. His three granddaughters were off from school for their own spring break. Time at the cabin with them is a family tradition.

There in the one-room structure, Finstad began to feel fatigued.

“I got aches all over, and then my senses of taste and smell disappeared,” he said. “This was not like the flu. My body’s response to this was very different.”

By chance, he had a medical thermometer at the cabin. He took his temperature and found he had a fever. He tried to stay as far away from his family as he could. They decided he needed to return home.

Greg Finstad demonstrates a technique during a 2017 animal husbandry
workshop.

In Fairbanks, doctors dressed in protective gear met him at Tanana Valley Clinic. First, they gave him a flu test.

“It was the first time I ever hoped I had the flu,” he said.

The next day, a doctor from the clinic called to tell him he tested positive for COVID-19.

“My stomach just fell,” he said.

Soon, he had more than just mental anguish.

Isolated in his bedroom later that night, he could feel the virus reach his lungs. He went from breathing normally to struggling to suck in a single breath.

“It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest,” he said.

He also likened the feeling to having a plastic bag duct-taped around his neck.

“It’s like mile 22 of a marathon — you’re hurting, taking one step at a time. For me, it was one breath at a time.”

At the lowest moment of his experience, his wife Bev came up and started crying when she saw him through the glass door of the bedroom.

“I started crying, too: I thought, ‘Man, this is it.’”

But the end was not to be. Mornings came. Finstad breathed a little easier, but nights were when the “monster reared its head.”

Finally, after 13 days of isolation in his bedroom, the details of which he hardly remembers, Finstad breathed easier and felt a bit better. To his biologist mind, his immune system had battled like hell, and barely won.

He credits the workers at the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services for calling him right away, interrogating him as to whom he had been with and where he had been, and checking in with him several times each day. They gave him advice and told him several times they didn’t know an answer to some of his questions, which he also appreciated.

Now, he has gradually recovered. He is trying to run again, maybe to toe the line in the postponed Boston Marathon in September or, more likely, his favorite Equinox Marathon that same month in Fairbanks. But he knows he is not the same as he was in early February.

“I don’t know if my lung capacity will ever come back,” he said. “But you know what? I don’t care. I appreciate every breath I take now. Life is good.”

Along with his newfound appreciation of living (which to this observer always seemed to be high), he wants to be a living cautionary tale as to the danger of the virus that causes COVID-19.

“We’ve thrown all the world’s resources at this, and it’s still killing people left and right. That’s what impresses me and scares me.

“Having recovered from this, there’s a certain amount of immunity,” he said of himself. “I still wear a mask and my hands are raw (from washing them).

“I want to tell people who take their mask off (in tight spaces): You know, I’ll bet I was tougher than you, and it just about killed me."
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

Alan Tonne recognized for 35 years at UAF

Alan Tonne stands in the  Fairbanks Experiment Farm weather
station. He records weather data daily. UAF photo by J.R. Ancheta

Alan Tonne grew up working on the family wheat and cattle farm near Fort Benton, Montana, and the Missouri River. Chores included feeding livestock and driving farm trucks from the age of 12 or 13.

Tonne headed to Alaska in the spring of 1982, planning to work as a carpenter or in construction. “My goal was not to be involved in agriculture,” he said.

Despite this determination, he accepted a job for the state’s Agriculture Action Council, measuring and assessing farmland in Delta Junction. Then he was recruited in 1984 to work as a field technician for the Delta Research Site, which is operated by the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (AFES).

One thing led to another and UAF recognized Alan Tonne last week for having worked for AFES for 35 years.

 “It’s one of those things that just kind of happened,” he said.

Tonne became the farm manager for the Fairbanks Experiment Farm in 2006. He is the contact person for scientists hoping to conduct research there and he oversees the farm’s operations with a small crew. He handles a variety of other duties, including snow plowing, vehicle and equipment maintenance, harvesting hay, etc. He also records daily weather data that has been collected at the farm since 1911, including maximum and minimum temperatures, evaporation, precipitation, snow depth and wind volume.

This spring, because of pandemic restrictions, he will plant crops grown in the grain variety trials and grasses grown for cover crops research.

Over the years, work evolved, depending on the animals at the farm and the research. One winter, he fabricated aluminum frames that were part of an experiment to evaluate the effect of global warming on crops. Researchers pumped carbon dioxide into the covered frames to see what effect that had on the crops.

Milan Shipka, the director of the AFES, said, “Alan is a good problem solver. He looks at things and even when there is a problem, he works to find solutions to try to benefit everyone. Being farm manager has meant that he was always in the forefront, not always an easy place to be, but he has been great to work with.”

After living in the farmhouse at the experiment farm for 14 years, Tonne moved out this spring, the first step toward retirement, which is still probably a couple of years off.

He imagines that his retirement will involve more hunting and fishing, and no farming.

“I would really be difficult for me to leave Alaska,” he says.

Tonne was one of three UAF employees recently recognized for 35 years of service. The others were Debbie Davis Ice of the Geophysical Institute and Kari Marks at the Rasmuson Library. Another library worker, Marie Johnson, was recognized for 40 years.

Web tool forecasts climate effects on Alaska agriculture

By Michael Delue
A new web tool from University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists makes data for agricultural planning in Alaska more accessible.

Maps by UAF Scenarios Network for Alaska
and Arctic Planning. These maps show how
plant hardiness zones in Alaska likely will
change in coming decades.

The Alaska Garden Helper demonstrates for growers the on-the-ground effects of future shifts in climate. 
The easy-to-use tool allows individuals to investigate their specific communities, from Ketchikan to Utqiaġvik. They can see projected changes in growing season length, annual minimum temperature and hardiness zones.
The tool also provides graphs of the expected change in growing-degree days, a measure of cumulative heat energy available for the growing season and a critical variable for some crops.

A team led by Nancy Fresco, network coordinator at UAF’s Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning, developed the Alaska Garden Helper.

SNAP created the tool in collaboration with the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fresco also worked with researchers from UAF’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the Alaska Peony Growers Association, farmers in the Fairbanks area and skilled climate modelers.

The goal wasn’t solely to produce a practical tool for gardeners, Fresco said. 

“None of us are under the impression that agriculturalists in Alaska are currently planning their planting seasons as far out as 2099,” she said. “We also wanted to put the effects of climate change into a practical context for people, and to empower people with the full dataset that our scientists work with.”

Climate change will likely affect each crop differently. Earlier planting seasons, earlier and greater accumulations of growing-degree days, and fewer cold-limiting temperatures are expected.

The tool’s data comes from a coarse climate model updated with local topographic and climate information to make it usable at finer scales. This process, referred to as dynamical downscaling, is a focus of the Alaska CASC. The technique was used by UAF’s Rick Lader, John Walsh, Uma Bhatt and Peter Bienieck, as well as others, to develop the daily climate data, the tool’s backbone. Computer programmer Alec Bennett and other team members then developed the web-accessible tool.

“Everything has been collaborative in this project,” Fresco said.

Peonies bloom in midsummer at Far North Flowers in the Fairbanks area.
A new web tool from UAF scientists helps show how climate change
likely will affect Alaska crops such as peonies. Photo by Krista Heeringa

The team anticipates the tool will have other applications and open new avenues for research. There is interest in expanding it to include native flora. While seasonally cultivated crops are usually not limited by winter cold temperatures, native plants may be affected by changing temperature minimums differently. 

Warmer temperatures also may increase the likelihood of crop pests traditionally held at bay by Alaska’s formidable winters. Shifts in growing season timing also will affect other parts of the complex agricultural economy. One example is the growing Alaska peony market, where the unique midsummer bloom drives sales. 

While the tool highlights some negative impacts, it presents a largely positive look at the opportunities Alaskans can find in a changing climate. Fresco and the SNAP team hope the tool will help people not only grow food locally but also understand the changing climate’s impact on agriculture and gardening in their communities. 

“Not every community has a garden now,” Fresco said, “but every community could consider one for their future food security.”
Michael DeLue is a science communicator with Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning and the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center.
ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Nancy Fresco, nlfresco@alaska.edu, 907-474-2405