Inaugural Alaska CASC Interns Shine, Communicating Science Stories Across the State

A children’s book, museum exhibit and media kit were just some of the science storytelling projects completed during the internship

Reflecting on their summer together, Lia Ferguson, Caroline Wexler and Maisy O’Neil recall many sounds of water. Heavy raindrops drumbeat their tent throughout a Denali thunderstorm; the Bering Sea’s loud tides offered a chilly swim during a hot day in Nome; Seward’s docks rattled together like chattering teeth when washed over by salty waves. 

And like any good melody, a motif arose from these musical moments — one that balanced creative expression with scientific discovery.

As the inaugural cohort of the USGS Alaska Science Center and Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center’s (AK CASC) Communicating Science internship, Ferguson, Wexler and O’Neill — all of whom are both artists and scientists — sought to answer a crucial question in the field of actionable science: how to make complex research accessible and relevant for the communities whose lives are impacted by the results. 

Over nine weeks, each intern completed two projects that creatively centered USGS Alaska Science Center research and Alaska CASC communication with artistic narratives and visuals.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm from scientists looking to communicate what they’re working on,” says Ferguson, who graduated from Stanford University with a degree in earth systems and this summer finished her MFA from UAF’s creative writing program. “They’re passionate about their work, but they have busy schedules. So it makes sense to share their findings as a societal service, but also as excited human beings.”

For Ferguson — who is now a full-time Science Communicator and Content Creator with the Alaska CASC — it was important to reach young audiences. She wrote and illustrated a children’s book about the USGS Research Vessel (R/V) Alaskan Gyre, which operates out of Seward. Written from the perspective of the Gyre, the book describes research scientists conduct on board the vessel, including nearshore ecosystem research and monitoring forage fish, whales, seabirds and sea otter populations. And, to Ferguson’s delight, the story rhymes.

“Rhyming can engage different parts of our brain, for both adults and children,” she says. “I knew it would be a challenge to go for, but I’m excited that I pulled it off.”

For her second project, Ferguson developed a podcast recording with Christina Ahlstrom, a USGS geneticist, and Laura Scott, a USGS microbiologist, about the relationship between the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and visitation in Denali and Wrangell St. Elias National Parks. Trekking through muddy shrubbery, they tested surface waters and spoke about the scientific process and the National Park Service’s “Leave No Trace” principles. 

While in the field, park visitors often approached the team, curious to learn about their research, which inspired the idea to advertise the podcast in park visitor’s centers. She hopes the podcast will feature soon on Alaska Voices.

Caroline Wexler knows first-hand how communicating science in Alaska poses unique challenges and opportunities.

While cutting-edge technologies are harnessed by scientists, traditional communication methods — oral or paper messages — often have the greatest reach in rural and coastal villages. Thoughtfully translating complex findings into clear conclusions, without sacrificing nuance, is no straightforward task. And Alaska’s sheer size, and the rate at which ecosystems are changing, can be difficult to visualize. 

A recent graduate of the University of Connecticut, Wexler pursued a double major in geoscience and science communications. Her background is equally diverse, spanning research on the Juneau Icefield and in Iceland and a specialty in geographical information systems (GIS), to filming a documentary about these experiences. Her film, “The Icefield: An Expedition Memoir,” was showcased at the 2023 USAPECS Polar Film Fest.

This summer, she worked with Anthony Fischbach, a USGS wildlife biologist who is using drones to monitor walrus populations near Point Lay, Alaska. Haulouts — when walruses move out of the water and congregate in large groups — usually occur on nearby sea ice. But annual sea ice extent is declining, forcing the animals to swim greater distances to haulout on land, expending energy and becoming more vulnerable to disease and disturbance. 

The community flyers Wexler created — for villages who rely on walruses for subsistence, as well as resource managers — concisely explained how the research would be conducted, and why.

From a bird’s eye view of climate change in the Arctic, the image of disappearing glaciers is perhaps the most poignant and popular. But communicating the loss of these features without harboring a “sense of doom and gloom,” Wexler says, requires tact — as well as tenors of hope and joy. 

Balance — mass balance — is at the heart of the USGS Benchmark Glacier Project, which monitors the long-term health of five glaciers across Alaska and the western United States: Gulkana (AK), Wolverine (AK), Lemon Creek (AK), South Cascade (WA), and Sperry (MT). While visiting the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitor’s Center in Fairbanks, Wexler saw an opportunity to bring decades of data to life in the form of a public-facing exhibit.

“How can we take the giant scale at which the glaciers are melting and put that into an easily digestible format for people to really understand how big of a problem this is?” she says.

Combining her GIS experience with an artistic eye, Wexler rendered 3D-models of each glacier to depict recession over time. The visuals — at once clear and beautiful — tell the stories of glacier loss in an accessible way. And to help the public conceive of large numbers — that the Wolverine Glacier lost a known ice equivalent of 20.6 cubic miles of water to melting between 1950 and 2020, for example — she devised powerful alternatives: that the glacier lost enough water to flood all of Seattle under six feet of water.

“That was just a unique way to show scale,” she says. “And that goes for different climate change-based sciences and research. It’s not just glaciers. This change is happening so quickly to so many different things. I think it’s really important to take those numbers and make them more human.”

If all goes according to plan, Wexler’s project will be on display at the center in the coming weeks. 

Born and raised in Fairbanks, Maisy O’Neill had never visited Nome nor imagined herself taking a dip in the Bering Sea. But she was thrilled when both ideas became realities. 

“It was freezing cold and salty,” O’Neill says, laughing. “We were getting splashed in the face and probably spent less than five minutes in there.” 

The visit to western Alaska allowed her to learn about the regional impacts of harmful algal blooms (HABs), which contain toxins that can accumulate in many marine species, including shellfish. The problem, pervasive in both the Bering and Chukchi Seas and made worse by ocean heatwaves, is impacting subsistence and commercial fishing. 

Hoping to create a resource for harvesters in the Bering Strait and Norton Sound regions, O’Neill and Danielle Gerik, a biologist with the USGS Alaska Science Center, scoured more than 20 scientific papers and data sets to create a possible risk-assessment information sheet. With this resource — optimized with color-coded, easy-to-understand visuals — harvesters may be able to quickly see how the species they harvest might affect human health. They are still working with communication specialists in the Nome region to determine the most effective way to share this information and collaboratively address HABs.

Now a junior at the University of Arizona, O’Neill is studying biology with a minor in biochemistry. She was drawn to the internship for its openness to those without a science communication background, and quickly grew to appreciate the laughter, people, and human element of research throughout the summer. 

“They were open to teaching and giving someone with zero experience a new opportunity to see a whole different side of the science world, which I thought was really cool,” she says. “I was hooked.”

Through her own work as a student, O’Neill became interested in the field of epigenetics — how the environment can change or influence a species’ gene pool — and was able to work alongside an Arctic grizzly bear study that probed similar questions. Led by USGS wildlife biologist Anthony Pagano, his team’s research followed 12 grizzly bears on the North Slope with GPS video-camera collars, monitoring their autumn diet and movement. The animals’ body composition, denning behaviors, and reproductive patterns are all closely tied to climate. And the greening of northern Alaska, the study suggests, is severely impacting grizzlies as they try to meet their energy needs. 

O’Neill helped imagine how to best share the study’s findings with journalists, creating a media kit to generate coverage and offer story ideas. Once the research is peer-reviewed and published, her kit will be sent to a network of newsrooms, connecting readers across the country with Alaska’s precious coasts.

“I learned that USGS and the University of Alaska Fairbanks are huge hubs for Arctic research, and it’s drawing in people from all types of backgrounds and countries to come and collaborate on actionable science,” O’Neill says. “People here are helping affect policy decisions that could end up helping the whole world in the long term.”

As the summer winds down, Kristin Timm and John Pearce — the internship’s creators and mentors  — are working hard to ensure that this cohort is the first of many to come. 

“I think this summer was a huge success,” Pearce says. “And I’m really hopeful that we’ll be able to do it again in the near future.”