Friday Focus: Field work informs local and global challenges
Laura Conner, vice chancellor for research
June 19, 2026
— By Laura Conner, vice chancellor for research
The snow has finally melted, the birch leaves are out in force and field work at UAF is in full swing. It makes me a bit nostalgic for my own field work days long ago, from botany work in Colorado, banding albatross in the French Frigate Shoals, or collecting walnut fly larvae in Arizona, to name a few field efforts I was engaged in over the years. Those projects involved long days outdoors in all kinds of weather, as well as encounters with rattlesnakes and other hazards.
While rattlesnakes are not a concern in 91ÊÓƵ, our researchers face plenty of physical challenges in the field, from grueling hikes and wet tents to sea sickness and too many mosquitoes to count. Still, most researchers I know wouldn’t trade it for anything. The challenges and rewards involved with field work can be exhilarating on a personal level (and many hazards can be mitigated through field safety courses), but much more importantly, the work performed and the data collected inform critical challenges for our state and the world.
As an example, personnel from our College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences have been tagging Chinook salmon to help pollock fishers avoid catching the Chinook – important, because fisheries can be shut down if they capture too many non-target species (bycatch). The tags collect data every few seconds about what is going on at the salmon’s location, such as depth, temperature and light levels. Detailed analyses of this large data set have been used to predict where the Chinook are most likely to be at a given time – helping the pollock industry decide where to fish to reduce their bycatch.
This is just one example of the kinds of work our researchers are engaged in every summer. Across all of our colleges and research institutes, faculty, staff and students (both graduate and undergraduate) detect and remove invasive species to help protect our agricultural and natural ecosystems, collect samples to aid in critical mineral discovery and recovery, and install and maintain sensors to monitor volcanic and tectonic activity, to name just a few among dozens of projects. If you are one of UAF’s many field researchers, I thank you for your work. It makes a difference.
Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF's leadership team every week.