Katie V. Spellman

University of Alaska Fairbanks · International Arctic Research Center

In the “Berries in Alaska’s Changing Environment” series, we examine what we know about the impacts of climate change on our berry species based on scientific research and observations by community members across the state. We identify potential threats to the growth, health, and fruit production of each species. We also look at opportunities: ways...

In the “Berries in Alaska’s Changing Environment” series, we examine what we know about the impacts of climate change on our berry species based on scientific research and observations by community members across the state. We identify potential threats to the growth, health, and fruit production of each species. We also look at opportunities: ways...

Youth-focused community and citizen science (CCS) is increasingly used to promote science learning and to increase the accessibility of the tools of scientific research among historically marginalized and underserved communities. CCS projects are frequently categorized according to their level of public participation and their distribution of power...

There are emerging opportunities to leverage community and citizen science (CCS) for youths’ science learning. This study focuses on two CCS projects, each with a youth-focused component, monitoring resources that hold cultural and practical significance for people across Alaska. Each CCS project was implemented in two separate designs (contributor...

Open-source designs for turbidity and depth sensors are becoming increasingly capable and available, but the knowledge required to construct them limits their use compared to expensive, commercial sensors. Here, we present an open-source optical backscatter and water pressure sensor that can be ordered almost fully assembled, requires no coding to...

Due to the rapidly changing environmental conditions and necessity of cross-cultural engagement, the sub-Arctic is a prime testbed for innovative citizen science program design. The Winterberry and Fresh Eyes on Ice projects focus on advancing knowledge of rapidly changing environmental conditions (focusing on native berry species and freshwater ic...

Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban...

Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban...

Plants with persistent fleshy fruits that last throughout fall and into winter and spring are an important source of nutrition for animals and people in boreal, subarctic, and arctic regions, but little information on fruit retention or loss is available for these regions. We evaluated fruit loss for four species across Alaska using data from our W...

The Arctic is undergoing large-scale changes that are likely to accelerate in future decades such as introductions and expansions of invasive species. The Arctic is in a unique position to prevent new introductions and spread of existing invasive species by adopting policies and actions aimed at early detection. Responding to threats from invasive...

This dataset contains observations of fruit retention Rosa acicularis (prickly rose), Empetrum nigrum (crowberry), Vaccinium vitis-idaea (lowbush cranberry or lingonberry), and Viburnum edule (highbush cranberry). Data were collected at 47 communities in 6 ecoregions across Alaska, primarily by youth groups and interested volunteers. Ecoregions inc...

Community and citizen science on climate change-influenced topics offers a way for participants to actively engage in understanding the changes and documenting the impacts. As in broader climate change education, a focus on the negative impacts can often leave participants feeling a sense of powerlessness. In large scale projects where participatio...

Effective responses to rapid environmental change rely on observations to inform planning and decision-making. Reviewing literature from 124 programs across the globe and analyzing survey data for 30 Arctic community-based monitoring programs, we compare top-down, large-scale program driven approaches with bottom-up approaches initiated and steered...

The Fresh Eyes on Ice project, based out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), combines science and learning through community science (see Observing the Cycle of Ice through Fresh Eyes, Arp et al., this issue). The project is monitoring the formation and decay of lake and river ice through field measurements, drones, a network of ice phenol...

Watching river and lake waters as they develop first ice in the fall, grow to a solid stable cover over the winter, then break-up-often dramatically-in the spring is something that comes naturally to northern peoples. Whether watching in wonder, deciding when to set nets for early winter whitefish, warning villages of ice-jam flooding, or detecting...

In 2016, a group of Earth Science organizations and Indigenous scientists affiliated with the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences worked together to submit a proposal to the first call for NSF INCLUDES pilot projects. The proposal, entitled “Integrating Indigenous and Western Knowledge to Transform Learning and Discovery in the G...

Undergraduate geoscience and natural resource management students desire employable skills that can immerse them in jobs or graduate training related to their majors. Career trajectories for undergraduate Natural Resource Management majors at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) typically fall into four categories: tribal, state, and federal ag...

Mulder, C.P.H., K.V. Spellman, E.B. Sparrow (2020) Winterberry: understanding the dynamics of fleshy fruit loss in fall and winter. Witness the Arctic 24(2): 27-31. In the far north, many plant species retain their fruits into the fall and throughout the winter. Fleshy fruits provide a high-quality food source at a time when few other resources ar...

This dataset contains observations of ice phenology throughout the winter of 2019/2020 (Water Year 2020). Observations are primarily co-located within or near communities participating in the Fresh Eyes on Ice project, seeking to expand spatial coverage of ice observations and inform a variety of user groups including river forecasters, community m...

This dataset contains community based observations of ice thickness throughout the winter of 2019/2020. Observations are co-located within or near communities participating in the Fresh Eyes on Ice project, seeking to expand spatial coverage of ice observations and science literacy in classrooms around the state. This spatially distributed dataset...

Climate changes occurring in the Arctic impact the entire planet, yet few experience these shifts as rapidly as Alaska Native communities. When tribal youth connect with elders, K-12 educators, and scientists to map personal stories of change, scientific approaches to monitor these changes and strategies for stewardship emerge. For four years, the...

Abstract Accessibility of scientific research to underrepresented voices is a forefront issue. Intentionally-designed citizen science programs, such as the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ (UAF) citizen science and learning research project “Arctic Harvest-Public Participation in Scientific Research,” are poised to improve the participation and effe...

We present a comprehensive list of non-native vascular plants known from the Arctic, explore their geographic distribution, analyze the extent of naturalization and invasion among 23 subregions of the Arctic, and examine pathways of introductions. The presence of 341 non-native taxa in the Arctic was confirmed, of which 188 are naturalized in at le...

Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) is a powerful tool for climate learning. Participants in climate change related projects can gain scientific knowledge and science process skills while simultaneously helping generating new scientific knowledge that could span community or regional scales. PPSR has great potential to reach broad au...

As the field of Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) has rapidly grown over the past decade, so too has the awareness of issues of diversity and inclusion in the design of programs aimed at inviting all people to the table of science. We share the early outcomes from the Winterberry- Arctic Harvest Project, where 28 communities across...

Our students recognize the need for climate change research and action, and we aim to facilitate the development of skills to enable them to meet this need. This presentation details a partnership between a climate change research center in Alaska and a STEM program in a community college in Southern California to build climate workforce skills amo...

The Alaska K-12 science/STEM education community has a long history of evidence-based instruction and curriculum development that is responsive to the cross-cultural nature of K-12 education in Alaska communities. Despite the attention to culturally responsive education in K-12 education, awareness is generally lacking among science researchers and...

The poster summarizes the results of the recent study carried out on a pan-Arctic scale and aimed to establish the list of non-native plant species present in the region, their naturalization status and pathways of introduction. Basic taxonomic and biogeographic characteristics of the non-native flora of the Arctic are presented.

Building community with rural and underrepresented groups has been a challenge in the field of citizen science. At the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a team of scientists, educators, Extension professionals, and evaluators have joined efforts to take on this challenge across Alaska. The goals for Arctic Harvest-Public Participation in Scientific R...

In interior Alaska, increases in growing season length and rapid expansion of introduced species are altering the environment for native plants. We evaluated whether earlier springs, warmer summers, and extended autumns alter the phenology of leaves and flowers in native and introduced forbs and shrubs in the boreal understory and open-canopy habit...

River watersheds are among the most complex terrestrial features in Alaska, performing valuable ecosystem functions and providing services for human society. Rivers are vital to both estuarine and aquatic biota and play important roles in biogeochemical cycles and physical processes. The functions of watersheds have been used as vulnerability indic...

As rapid changes occur in the Arctic, we work to build the capacity to generate new knowledge through 4H youth engagement and citizen science programs, including Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE).

This appendix is aimed at providing the full dataset to support the summaries of our findings in Connected climate change learning through citizen science: An assessment of priorities and needs of formal and informal educators and community members in Alaska, by K.V. Spellman, E.B. Sparrow, M. Chase, A. Larson, and K. Kealy.

Citation: Spellman KV, Sparrow EB, Chase MJ, Larson A, Kealy K. 2018. Connected climate change learning through citizen science: an assessment of priorities and needs of formal and informal educators and community members in Alaska. Connected Science Learning 1(6): 1-24. ABSTRACT: Citizen science offers significant potential to address pressing cl...

Integrated science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) solutions and effective, relevant learning processes are required to address the challenges that a changing climate presents to many Arctic communities. Learning that can both enhance a community’s understanding and generate new knowledge about climate change impacts at both local and cont...

In pollinator-limited ecosystems in the earliest stages of the invasion process, the effects of invasive plants on the pollination and reproduction of co-flowering native plants may be particularly sensitive to the distance between native and non-native plants. Our study tests how the distance from invasive plant patches affects the pollination and...

Both herbarium specimens and citizen-science observations have become increasingly accessible but underutilized sources of data for phenology research. We developed and tested a novel technique that uses high-quality citizen-science observations to provide an independent validation of phenology models derived from herbarium specimens. Using this ap...

Building communities that are resilient and adaptive to climate change requires the development of education strategies that train community members in higher order thinking skills that can be used to solve complex environmental problems. This study provides an empirical test of hypotheses within social-ecological systems resilience theory that hav...

Building communities that are resilient and adaptive to climate change requires the development of education strategies that train community members in higher order thinking skills that can be used to solve complex environmental problems. This study provides an empirical test of hypotheses within social-ecological systems resilience theory that hav...

Integrated science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) solutions and effective, relevant learning processes are required to address the challenges that a changing climate presents to many Arctic communities. Learning that can both enhance a community’s understanding and generate new knowledge about climate change and it’s impacts at both local...

The establishment of abundantly flowered, highly rewarding non-native plant species is expected to have strong consequences for native plants through altered pollination services, particularly in boreal forest where the flowering season is short and the pollinator pool is small. In 18 boreal forest sites, we added flowering Melilotus albus to some...

A rapidly changing climate and human disturbance patterns have accelerated the spread of invasive plants species in Alaska. Non-native plant invasions can disrupt pollinator services to native plants and have the potential to impact the pollination and fruit set in berry species important for subsistence harvest. My dissertation aims to address the...

Communities at far northern latitudes must respond rapidly to the many complex problems that are arising from changing climate. An emerging body of theoretical and empirical work has explored the role that education plays in enhancing the resilience and adaptability of social-ecological systems. To foster effective, local, and timely responses of h...

Ecologists often engage in global-scale research through partnerships among scientists from many disciplines. Such research projects require collaboration, interdisciplinary thinking, and strong communication skills. We advocate including these three practices as an integral part of ecology education at the kindergarten through 12th grade (K–12) le...

Synthesis report and handbook developed by and for scientists, practitioners, community members, and funders involved in community-based monitoring and citizen science to identify and respond to common issues and share successful practices for Alaska. Subject areas explored include a comparison of the perspectives of diverse participants in Alaska...

As climate rapidly warms at high-latitudes, the boreal forest faces the simultaneous threats of increasing invasive plant abundances and increasing area burned by wildfire. Highly flammable and widespread black spruce (Picea mariana) forest represents a boreal habitat that may be increasingly susceptible to non-native plant invasion. This study ass...

Background/Question/Methods Building human communities that are resilient and adaptive to ecological change requires the development of education strategies that train the vast majority of community members to rapidly assimilate and apply advances in ecological knowledge. The k-12 public school system provides great opportunity to develop and tra...

Background/Question/Methods In Alaska, important subsistence foods such as blueberries (Vaccinium uliginosum) and cranberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) require insect pollination to produce fruit. Invasive white sweetclover (Melilotus albus) has spread along roadsides and rivers throughout Alaska adjacent to easily accessible berry-picking habitat,...

Background/Question/Methods Sustainability science has emerged as an interdisciplinary response to the complex challenge of maintaining Earth’s life support functions during the Anthropocene. Recognizing that our most intractable and urgent ecological problems required the explicit consideration of our economies, cultures and institutions, Terry...

Invasive plants present a serious threat natural resources and subsistence lifestyles, and Alaska's ecosystems and cultures are increasingly vulnerable to these threats. Residents of the Bristol Bay region of Alaska have expressed concern on the vulnerability of their subsistence resources to non-native plant invasions. We assessed the current and...

Imagine an organism that can travel between the cracks in someone’s boots, as an uninvited hitchhiker inside packing material, or as an aquatic weed stuck to the floats of a plane. Imagine the same organism rapidly degrading salmon habitat in a local stream, or eliminating blueberries from a favorite berry patch. Invasive species have the potential...

Early Primary Invasion Scientists: First graders engage in real research to help battle invasive plants. Young learners significantly contribute to the knowledge gap on the issue of invasive plants in the boreal forest.

As the climate changes, Alaska’s boreal forest faces the simultaneous threats of rising invasive plant abundances and increasing area burned by wildfire. Highly flammable and widespread black spruce forest represents a boreal habitat that may be increasingly susceptible to non-native plant invasion. In other biomes, non-native plant invasions are g...