I’m not sure that one came from Nat— though I did inherit alotnof stuff from him. As I recall Nat donated his books to the library for a tax receipt. A very Nat move.

A new exposure on Sulphur.

Would be isotopically so interesting if accessible.

Photo of an ice rich permafrost exposure with thin aggrading (syngenetic) ice wedge.

Crazy ice wedge day. 10-12 m high syngenetic ice wedge spanning the Late Pleistocene—early Holocene boundary. #klondike #permasfrost

Great new paper on long recurrence interval earthquakes along the Tintina Fault in central Yukon, led by @theronfinley.bsky.social. A nice merging of the rich glacial record of the Yukon with modern seismicity data to understand potential risk in northern Canada. Great work Theron!

Large Surface‐Rupturing Earthquakes and a >12 kyr, Open Interseismic Interval on the Tintina Fault, Yukon We provide the first conclusive evidence of numerous large (>Mw 7.5) surface-rupturing earthquakes in the Quaternary on the Tintina fault Offsets to Early and Middle Pleistocene glaciofluvial ter...

Really pleased to share our new paper in GRL, documenting evidence of multiple Quaternary surface-rupturing earthquakes on the Tintina fault in the Yukon.

doi.org/10.1029/2025...

@faultydata.bsky.social @earthquakeguy.bsky.social @thatfaultguy.bsky.social @tephrafan.bsky.social

Image of the cover of the journal Science with two horses galloping across a meadow, highlighting the accompanying paper.

New paper with a large cast, but including a lot of permafrost, preserved horse fossils from the Yukon— work we did collaboratively over many years. Nice to see this out. Paper led by indigenous authors, highlighting deep connections horses and communities.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I laughed. And probably best it’s a different Brent.

The Ukrainian Sherpa UTV all conditions buggy, including amphibious. A spring fieldwork dream…not ours just interloping on their ride with some frozen materials.

Winning!

Hi geoscientists! For those who avoid journals that are profit-focussed and abuse academic free labour (e.g., Elsevier, Nature), take a look at CJES. Non-profit and a storied history. I just joined as AE - journals like this are run with heart and integrity and need your support.
#academicsky
⚒️🧪

I bought my copy from Aquila books in Calgary. Not sure if they’re still there.

Not sure if you ever read Lew Green’s excellent ‘the Boundary Hunter’s’ about A.O.Wheeler, Ogilvie and the late 19th and early 20th C surveyors of the AK border. 141st Longitude and AK panhandle. It’s a great read.

On Bullshit - Wikipedia

There’s a book by Frankfurt (it’s quite short) called On Bullshit that’s worth a read.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bull...

Ice flow dynamics of the northwestern Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last deglaciation Abstract. Reconstructions of palaeo-ice-stream activity provide insight into the processes governing ice stream evolution over millennial timescales. The northwestern sector of the Laurentide Ice Shee...

New paper from Ben Stoker’s PhD with Martin Margold on the ice flow history of the NW Laurentide Ice Sheet. Not for the faint— clicking in at 41p. A huge effort to compile and organize into a consistent ice sheet history with contributions from many.

tc.copernicus.org/articles/19/...

I try to stick to work here, but the ongoing impasse between Edmonton Pub. Schools and the Educational Assistants and Support Workers has gone on for more than a month, affecting our family. More than 1000 kids are being denied access to education. I wrote an Op-Ed @edmontonjournal.bsky.social

Yes. And I doubt they will ever go back. Mixed feelings about it. It’s definitely efficient. Though this year with some complex family needs it was welcome.

Today I finished my third (and final) year of #NSERC Geosciences Eval group. It’s a lot of work, but an enjoyable and rewarding form of service. A remarkable breadth of high quality thoughtful work, and a fair and consistent evaluation process in my experience.

In a crazy multiverse sort of way, there will be those that have greater success with changes at NSF.

Will the Grievious Angels ever come west?

In autumn, 1945, American photographer Gordon Parks flew up to Yellowknife on assignment with Standard Oil to do a photo feature but bad weather kept him from his intended destination. Instead he was invited to a nearby Dene community…

The dodo bird is extinct. This scientist says she can bring it back. The company she works for is betting millions it can realize a once-far-fetched idea of “de-extinction.”

Behind a paywall but a nice profile of Beth Shapiro. We’ve been friends and worked together for 25 or so years. Always creative and now one of the biggest critics of de-extinction is redefining what it might mean for conservation genetics. Worth a read.

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Permafrost microbial communities follow shifts in vegetation, soils, and megafauna extinctions in Late Pleistocene NW North America Using sedimentary ancient DNA from permafrost sediments deposited between 30,000 and 4000 years ago in Yukon, Canada, we explore whether there were changes in microbial communities paralleling the tr...

A very cool ancient eDNA paper from Tyler Murchie’s PhD that shows the co-occurrence of distinctive plant, animal, microbial and even gut microbiome communities associated with megafauna and their extinction/extirpation.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Relict permafrost preserves megafauna, insects, pollen, soils and pore-ice isotopes of the mammoth steppe and its collapse in central Yukon In eastern Beringia (unglaciated Alaska and western Yukon), the Pleistocene-Holocene transition was characterised by rapid changes in plant, insect an…

A couple of recent ancient eDNA papers on Klondike permafrost if you’re interested.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

View of ice and organics within a permafrost core. Ice veins are shiny and dark colours represent organic matter ca 20,000 years old.

Exposure of relict permafrost with drill from the Klondike area of central Yukon within the Trondek Gwichin Territory.

The indefatigable Emma Tom Tom, who works excavating the upper part of a Middle Pleistocene mammoth in June 2024.

An ancient soil (paleosol) exposed in the Klondike, dating to the last glacial maximum. The turbic nature reflects cryoturbation in a grassy tussock tundra environment

#Permafrost is the most exceptional material for the preservation of past life on the planet. A gram of permafrost can have more than 10^9 fragments of DNA, representing the plants, animals and microbial communities when the material was accumulating. #Klondike #Beringia

View of the Mountain River joining the Mackenzie (Deh Cho) upstream of Fort Good Hope. The Mackenzie (looking north) widens with the addition of the coarse load, becoming braided upstream of the Ramparts. #Sahtu region, #NWT

Is it really? Conspiracy nonsense.

bsky.app/profile/inst...

Mammoth teeth in a pile of bones.

Two tired students with more than 1000 fossils from a single locale, collected in 2-3hrs from the head of a point bar at low water.

The point bar site that took 4 of us 2-3hrs to collect the pile of fossils in the left of the photo.

Two juvenile and one mature mammoth tooth.

#FossilFriday appreciation of our cover of the new #Beringia AAAR collection, a fossil rich locale on the Old Crow R. in Vuntut Gwitchin Territory. A river trip with 3 (then) graduate students. More than 1000 Pleist fossils: 70+ mammoth teeth, horses, hyena, camel, giant beaver, sloth and caribou.

Arctic Indigenous mapmakers are reclaiming the past, shaping their future.
A new story by Jess Howard @permafrostpathways.bsky.social highlighting our collaborative mapping efforts with Esri and native Alaskan communities.
permafrost.woodwellclimate.org/arctic-indig...