In early April, a team of researchers traveled 400 miles by snow machine across the Seward Peninsula from Nome to Kotzebue. Their mission was to better understand beavers in the far north.
As the Arctic warms, scientists say beavers are moving in, bringing rapid and dramatic changes to the landscape.
“For me that's just been really impressive and a little bit scary.” said Ken Tape, a research professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Beavers in northern Alaska have been the focus of Tape’s research for the last seven years.
North America has only one species of beaver, Castor canadensis. After decades of recovery from over-trapping, these large semi-aquatic rodents are experiencing a new resurgence, especially in Northwest Alaska.
Earlier this month, Tape and two other researchers traveled with Kotzebue-based writer Seth Kantner across frozen tundra and sea ice, pinpointing beaver lodges along their way.
According to Tape, beavers are affecting fish habitat, thawing permafrost, and changing the course and hydrology of streams. In addition to warming localized areas, Tape said the beavers are also encouraging more biodiversity as they bring in new species along with them.
“They're really ushering in and accelerating this new Arctic – warmer water, longer summers, enhanced vegetation growth, thawed permafrost, all those types of things are coming along with beavers,” he said.
Tape’s research group uses satellite imagery to catalog beaver ponds in Northern Alaska and compare new data to archival aerial imagery of the region from the 1950s onward. They’ve has identified more than 12,000 new beaver ponds in the northern Alaskan tundra since 2016.
“There are very few animals that you can see their footprint on the landscape from space,” Tape said. “One of them is humans and one of them is beavers. There really aren't very many others.”
Tape said as part of his research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, he founded the Alaska Beaver Observation Network, or A-BON. A-BON is an online, open-source forum to document new beaver habitat by his group and local contributors. It uses traditional ecological knowledge alongside the scientific data.
Research professor Benjamin Jones was part of the expedition. He has been working as a researcher in the Arctic for over 20 years. He said there's a seasonal gap in research observations on beaver activity in the region beyond the summer months, which is why expeditions in the fall, winter and early spring are so important.
Jones said one of the advantages in traveling during the winter on snowmachines is that there is a less environmental impact, with fewer disruptions to wildlife and subsistence hunters. But it isn’t without its challenges.
“We got stuck in a 48-hour ground blizzard, where our entire camp just got consumed by blowing snow,” Jones said. “It's just part of the adventure of doing science in remote regions.”
The group plans to return to the region this upcoming August, when they will travel to field sites along the Kobuk River to continue monitoring the growing beaver populations and changes to the Arctic landscape.
