Green Blog: Hunting for Debris and Answers in Alaska

Throughout months of measuring trees, I carried the hope of finding a glass float on the outer coast of Southeast Alaska. Green and blue and made of hand-blown glass, they are remnants of the deep sea fishing industry, used long before plastic and other materials kept nets afloat. Most that remain today originated in Japan. Since I last wrote for the Green Blog, we?ve visited 24 sites in dead, dying and stressed yellow cedar forests in the West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness over the course of a three-week expedition.

In the rain, wind and impenetrable fog that cloaked our final push for data collection, twice my heart jumped at the sight of the sacred glass on rocky shores. I reached down with my neoprene-covered hands, only to claim a large light bulb on both occasions. These too, washed up from Japan alongside the Styrofoam and bottles. Predictions from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration say that by 2013, 1.5 billion tons of debris from the tsunami could reach the coast of Alaska down to California. Out there on the outer coast, we may have stumbled upon the earliest signs.

I?m here in the Alexander Archipelago to study the forests ? what happens after the yellow cedars die ? but this project continually uncovers the unexpected. I?m learning about a history of wilderness and changes occurring on protected lands. I?m learning about ocean currents. I?m learning about gold mining and fishing regulation. I?m learning how to let tides and swell dictate my course and how to be fully present.

I set a goal for data collection, but the daily work and life in harsh conditions demands constant attention, persistent energy and flexibility in planning.

Alongside giant Sitka spruce and regenerating hemlock trees, spouting humpback whales and grizzly bears, I?ve been alone for weeks in some of the nation?s most remote wilderness with only the company of my team members: Tom?s Ward, Gregg Treinish and Corey Radis. We note signs of human activity like visitors to a far-off planet: the scarce fishing boats, float planes and jets above, the trash where land meets sea. But mostly, solitude pervades. When out there on the coast, I focus on staying safe, recording measurements of tree heights and sapwood from cores we collect, and moving forward.

It?s difficult to imagine anything beyond the perpetual shades of gray. We haul our kayaks up the jagged beach before jumping into the wall of forest each day toward a successful mission: sites completed, temperature devices reclaimed, trees measured and cores collected across miles of surveyed coastline.

We swapped the healthy forests and chilly summer air in Glacier Bay National Park for the steady rain and dying yellow cedars farther south in the Tongass National Forest. The Island of Chichagof in the Tongass is part of what southeast Alaskans call the ABC islands ? Admiralty, Baranof, Chichagof ? the three large islands that make up the northern portion of the archipelago, known for their desolation and wildlife.

Chichagof has the highest density of bears per square mile of any place documented on earth ? with more bears than there are people dotting the few, rural communities.

Like many parts of Alaska, Chichagof carries a mining history. Not far from the forests in Klag Bay is a low-priority Superfund site; decaying boats and rusted barrels remain from a gold mine closed in 1942. In 1980, the western, coastal region of the island was federally designated as wilderness, offering the highest level of national preservation. It is area many Alaskans consider the gem of the wild archipelago.

My research on the ecological responses to yellow cedar decline led me here. I needed to work in a place relatively undeveloped, in forests untouched by the logging that has occurred throughout the Tongass.

When the Wilderness Act passed in 1964, it set aside 9.8 million acres of federal land for the preservation of natural conditions and for the use and enjoyment of those lands as wilderness. Wilderness areas today cover roughly 110 million acres of land managed by the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

Yet wilderness is not easily defined. The historian Roderick Nash wrote, ?civilization created wilderness.? Others, like William Cronon, also argued that wilderness was a human invention based on a romantic ideology. Wilderness ? with a capital ?W,? according to the Wilderness Act ? offers the values of ?solitude,? and ?primitive, unconfined recreation.?

Measuring impacts to the experience of solitude or balancing the protection of natural conditions with various uses is no easy task.

One day, we leave our base camp at Waterfall Cove to visit four sites, and upon returning, find a fishing boat has capsized, spilling nearly 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel and petroleum, forcing managers to close the fishery in Slocum Arm. When the fog ceiling lifts, we count float planes buzzing in the distance. We reach the open ocean in our kayaks and note more debris.

Yet deep in the forest, signs of grizzly and Sitka black-tailed deer are the only paths we can follow amidst all the bushwhacking.

Perhaps one day, the systematic discipline of science will lead me to a few solid answers about what happens after the yellow cedar die, and on to a lot more questions relevant to other people and places on this planet.

Lauren E. Oakes, a Ph.D. candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University, is studying the ecological repercussions of the dieback of yellow cedar forests in the Alexander Archipelago in southeastern Alaska.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5282e14522a2b66a7b426a3b6fd087be

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