Leaving Bear Valley on a foggy day. Movers carried our stuff away the day before. Full fall colors on display in the Mat-Su Valley accompanied us on our trip south. The coffee lineup is tougher in Alaska. Glenallen, AK. Wood is piling up this time of year in Tok, AK. Lucy's set up in the way back. Destruction Bay Campground on Kluane Lake, YT. Sunrise at Slims Bridge near the south end of Kluane Lake, AK-YT border. Foothills of the Icefields Range, which hide 5000m peaks. A Stone Sheep pup marches along the Kluane Lake shoreline in the near freezing temps of dawn. Slims Bridge, Kluane Lake. Saddest moment of the trip: Arriving in Haines Junction to find the Alpine Bakery closed for the seaso
The two images below were created from datasets entirely unrelated to each other, yet result in strikingly similar curves. The first is an elevation profile of the Himalayan Mountains, plotted from topographic contours. Elevation is on the y-axis and distance on the x-axis. The second image charts the usage of the word "Himalaya" in books and articles published between the year 1800 and 2000 (Google Books Ngram Viewer). Frequency is on the y-axis and time is on the x-axis. I added the labels to both ("High Himalaya" and "Tibetan Plateau"). Pretty cool, huh? Topographic Profile of the Himalayas. Usage of the term "Himalaya" in books from the year 1800 to 2000.
Background It is widely purported that climate change, particularly shoreline erosion, threatens the sustainability of Alaska's coastal native villages. These villages are scattered along the state's western coastline (Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea) and the north slope (Beaufort Sea). Many were originally established as seasonal hunting camps, but have now grown to become "hardened" residential communities. Most lie along exposed shorelines in fine grained, loosely consolidated sediments and glacial outwash underlain by ground ice (permafrost below 1m). Unstable Footings The locations of coastal villages were chosen hundreds of years ago for their proximity to harvestable resources, not landsca
