Ice Age Yukon: permafrost, ancient DNA and new understanding of Pleistocene Beringia
Duane Froese
Associate Professor & Canadian Research Chair in Northern Environmental Change
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta
Sunday, September 15, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Large parts of the Yukon were not glaciated during the Ice Age and as a result preserve an exceptional record of the plants, animals and environment that existed in this region of Beringia. Permafrost has survived, at least in some parts of the Yukon, for much of the last million years. This permafrost preserves exceptional fossils of Ice Age mammals, plants and ancient DNA and records the dramatic impacts of past climate – both warming and cooling– on these environments. In this talk I will present some of our recent developments in understanding of Ice Age Yukon, dynamics of permafrost and ice age mammals, and even how these studies tell us about the impacts of future climate change in Yukon.
Ice Age Old Crow: Yukon's ancient history from north of the Arctic Circle
Monday, September 16, 2013, supper and lecture starting at 5pm, Old Crow Community Hall
Ice Age Klondike: Ice age fossils and frozen treasures form the Klondike goldfields
Tuesday, September 17, 2013, 7:30 pm Dänojà Zho Cultural Center, Dawson
The start of an Ice Age: a longterm perspective on Beringian climate, permafrost and the evolution of the Klondike goldfields
Thursday, September 19, 2013, 12 noon Glass Classroom (room C1440), Yukon College, Whitehorse
Digital Archaeology and the Preservation of Fort Conger, a Historic Polar Exploration Base in Canada's High Arctic
Peter Dawson
Department of Archaeology/Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary
Sunday, August 4, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Fort Conger, located in Quttinirpaaq National Park, Ellesmere Island, is a historic landmark of national and international significance. The site is associated with many important Arctic expeditions, including the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of the First International Polar Year and Robert Peary’s attempts to claim the North Pole. Although situated in one of the most remote locations on earth, Fort Conger is currently at risk because of the effects of climate change, weather, wildlife, and human activity.
Join Peter Dawson as he shows how 3D laser scanning was used to record cultural features rapidly and accurately despite the harsh conditions present at the site. He will discuss how the future impacts of natural processes and human activities can be managed using 3D scanning data as a baseline, how conservation and restoration work can be planned from the resulting models, and how 3D models created from laser scanning data can be used to excite public interest in cultural stewardship and Arctic history.
Can diatoms save the world?
Jill Sutton
Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Berkeley
Sunday, July 21, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
When most people think of algae, they think of kelp or slimy green/brown films floating in water, but it is a single-celled microscopic alga invisible to the naked eye, called a diatom, that has recently gained notoriety. Like other algae, they convert carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight energy into oxygen and carbohydrate during the process of photosynthesis. Unlike other algae, diatoms construct cell walls composed of amorphous silica. As they sink to the ocean bottom after death, these porous and ornately beautiful glass-like structures rigidly protect their inner contents, delivering processed carbon to the seafloor.
Since 1990, scientists have been conducting experiments to determine whether diatoms are a reliable way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As part of their studies, they have also been surveying ways of stimulating diatom growth by fertilizing the ocean – a controversial process where the repercussions are poorly understood. The experimental results are inconclusive and the cost of fertilizing the ocean is high, yet entrepreneurs have begun selling the idea of ocean fertilization as a reliable method of carbon sequestration. Join Jill as she explores the possibilities and risks inherent in diatoms.
Plants revived after 400 years under ice: Regrowth of Little Ice Age bryophytes exhumed from a polar glacier
Catherine La Farge
Professor of Biology, University of Alberta
Sunday, June 9, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, widespread ice retreat during the 20th century has sharply accelerated since 2004. The retreat of Teardrop Glacier, central Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, is exposing intact plant communities overridden by glaciers during the Little Ice Age (1550-1850 AD). Bryophyte populations (mosses, hornworts and liverworts) exhumed from beneath the ice margin show remarkable preservation, including unexpected signs of regrowth. To test their viability, Catherine La Farge and her colleagues collected samples along the ice margin where they had been exposed for less than 2 years, and then grew them indoors. These experiments resulted in unique, successful regeneration of several moss species from subglacial vegetative material.
The regeneration of subglacial bryophytes, previously considered dead, significantly expands our understanding of modern glacial ecosystems as biological reservoirs and challenges traditional concepts of glacial refugia of land plants to include subglacial ecosystems. Resilience of these organisms emphasizes their critical role in the establishment, colonization, and maintenance of polar terrestrial ecosystems, otherwise inhospitable for many land plants.
Ten Lessons from a Tiger
John Vaillant
Author, Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction
Sunday, April 21, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Arts Centre, Whitehorse
John Vaillant's latest book, The Tiger, took three years to research and write and included two extended trips to China and the Russian Far East, the last stronghold of the Siberian (aka Amur) tiger. In the course of his investigations, Vaillant interviewed biologists and hunters, poachers and wardens, conservationists and indigenous Russians, all of whom share their forest home with Amur tigers, which can weigh up to 600 pounds. Vaillant was surprised to find that, rather than being seen as fearsome, alien beings, local Russians saw their tigers as being not all that different from them in terms of their basic needs and attitudes. Like humans, tigers are apex predators with a strong sense of entitlement to their territory, and Vaillant discovered that these remarkable and intelligent animals might have some things to teach us about diet, resource management, and getting along with others. Join John as he distills into images and words the lessons humans have learned from tigers over two million years of coevolution in the forests of Asia. View the Ted talk distilled from this lecture.
This lecture presented in partnership with Environment Yukon.
Designing Healthy Communities: homes and cities as exercise machines
Avi Friedman
Professor of Architecture, McGill University
Sunday, March 24, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
The obesity epidemic has affected many Canadian communities. In 2005, more than 6 million Canadian adults aged 20 to 64 were overweight and nearly 3 million were obese. The common tendency is to blame people’s dietary choices and sedentary habits. Yet, it can also be argued that poor urban planning practices have largely contributed to lack of active lifestyles. Low density urban sprawl, long commutes, diminishing land for green areas and elimination of sidewalks from local streets have led to reduced activity, primarily among suburban dwellers.
The need to reverse course and regard the community and the home as exercise machines should to be a top priority of urban planners and public health officials. Public transit, commercial hubs a walking distance away, jogging tracks, bike paths and play spaces need to integrated into new residential development. Join Avi Friedman as he draws on his experience both north and south of the 60th parallel to outline the decline of healthy community planning, and the antidote in designing neighbourhoods to foster active lifestyles.
A Late Precambrian Drama: Supercontinents, Snowballs, and the Emergence of Animals
Galen Halverson, T.H. Clark Chair/Associate Professor
Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University
Saturday, March 9, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
By the time the Precambrian came to a close 541 million years ago, the first large animals populated the oceans. Within 25 million years, the Cambrian explosion had filled in the metazoan tree of life with most of the familiar major groups of animals that exist today (and a few unfamiliar ones!). A compelling and mostly unanswered question remains as to the origin and early diversification of animals: why did it happen? Early animal evolution appears to represent the culmination of a series of dramatic events and ongoing change to Earth’s surface environment throughout the preceding 300–400 million year (the Neoproterozoic Era), which included the break-up of a supercontinent, extensive volcanism, progressive oxygenation of seawater and the atmosphere, and at least two global (snowball) glaciations. In this talk, Galen Halverson will tell the story of late Precambrian Earth history and explore the links between these many events and processes which eventually gave rise to an environment capable of supporting large animals and complex ecosystems.
Atmospheric transport and transformation of contaminants in the Arctic
Hayley Hung and Alexandra (Sandy) Steffen
Air Quality Processes Research Section, Environment Canada
Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 7:00 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Pristine locations such as the Arctic are not free from contamination from outside influence. Toxic chemicals such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and mercury are found in the Arctic but have arrived from sources outside the Arctic. For the past 20 years, Environment Canada has been investigating how these contaminants travel on air masses and how they are deposited into the Arctic ecosystem. As part of the Northern Contaminants Program and the International Polar Year, POPs and mercury have been the focus of atmospheric research.
Hayley Hung and Sandy Steffen will present results from their research at Alert, Nunavut and Little Fox Lake, Yukon, as well as measurements over the sea ice and from various sites that may be impacting the Canadian Arctic. They will present the history of these issues, how the Arctic uniquely treats these toxic chemicals, what they have been doing to understand how they behave, whether the levels are going up or down and what they are doing about the situation.
Northern Biochar for Northern Restoration
Katherine Stewart, PhD,
Soil Scientist and Project Coordinator, Yukon Research Centre
Sunday, December 2, 2012, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Industrial activities in Canada’s North are expanding and along with it the need for effective remediation and restoration technologies. Soil amendments that promote the degradation of hydrocarbons, reduce the bioavailability of heavy metals, improve soil conditions and promote long term re-vegetative success are needed. Biochar is a product that results from heating various biological ingredients, such as wood, fish or animal bone under oxygen limited conditions. In southern climates, biochar has proven to have many benefits for the environment, including increased soil pH, water holding capacity, and plant growth, as well as promoting hydrocarbon degradation at contaminated sites.
Through collaborative projects between Yukon College and the University of Saskatchewan, we are working to identify different types of biochar that promote hydrocarbon degradation in northern soils. We are also assessing the ability of biochar to promote re-vegetation on northern mine impacted sites. In addition to examining soil amendments, we are evaluating the restoration potential of native nitrogen-fixing herb species and biological soil crusts. Incorporating local nitrogen-fixing species into restoration efforts may help to improve plant species diversity and nitrogen availability in mine impacted soils. Through the development of soil amendments and new techniques for establishing native primary sucessional communities, remediation and restoration of disturbed sites in northern Canada can be greatly improved.
From the Ice Ages to present: bird migration and speciation
Darren Irwin,
Associate Professor of Zoology, University of British Columbia
Where west meets east: northwestern Canada as a laboratory for the study of bird speciation
Friday, November 16, 2012, 7:30 pm Yukon College Lecture Theatre, Whitehorse
What is a species? Biologists have been struggling to answer this question for centuries. Northwestern Canada is an excellent place to examine this question, since there are many contact zones between closely related but somewhat different western and eastern forms. I examine multiple west-east pairs of bird populations, treating each as a “snapshot” in time of the evolution of one species into two. In each pair of populations, we can ask how the related forms differ and whether they consider each other the same species. In some cases, what is currently called a single species actually consists of two “cryptic species” that are genetically distinct and are reproductively isolated where they meet. In other cases, forms that are called separate species were found to interbreed extensively in the contact zones between them. I discuss how future research in the Yukon can help us understand the interactions between western and eastern relatives, allowing us to build a more comprehensive understanding of bird speciation.
Biogeographic history and migratory behavior of birds in the Yukon: the imprint of the Ice Ages
Sunday, November 18, 2012, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Just 20,000 years ago glaciers covered most of Canada, including much of the Yukon. Where did its current bird diversity come from? Can we see the imprint of the Ice Ages on current patterns of Yukon bird diversity and behavior? I will discuss the strong link between biogeographic history of birds and a remarkable behavior that many of them display twice each year: migration to distant wintering areas and back. Seasonal migratory routes tend to retrace routes of expansion of bird populations out of glacial refugia in the western U.S., the eastern U.S., and Eurasia into northwestern Canada. While migratory behavior tells us much about the ancient history of birds, it also can play an important role in shaping future diversity by increasing the likelihood that two populations will continue to diverge into two species. I discuss exciting recent advances in genetic and tracking technology that is enabling us to study migration and biogeographic history in greater detail than ever before.
From the Yenisei to the MacKenzie – A Tour of Archaeology Sites of Greater Beringia at the End of the Pleistocene
Norman Alexander Easton,
Lecturer in Anthropology, Yukon College
Sunday, October 21, 2012, 7:00 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
The past decade of archaeological research in Beringia has uncovered important new sites, such as the child cremation in an 11,500 year old house pit at Upward Sun River in Alaska, and refined our understanding of previously investigated sites, such as more accurate radiocarbon dating of Ushki Lake on the Kamchatka peninsula through accelerator mass spectrometry. Along with advances in molecular genetic mapping, new discoveries in linguistic connections between east Asia and northwestern America, and increasingly fine-grained paleoenvironmental reconstructions, these new sources of data are revealing an increasingly complex history of human occupation and migration within Beringia. This illustrated lecture will provide a tour from Lake Bakail to the Mackenzie River, stopping at points of archaeological interest along the way to look at the places and artifacts that document the human history of Beringia.
Duane Froese
Associate Professor & Canadian Research Chair in Northern Environmental Change
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta
Sunday, September 15, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Large parts of the Yukon were not glaciated during the Ice Age and as a result preserve an exceptional record of the plants, animals and environment that existed in this region of Beringia. Permafrost has survived, at least in some parts of the Yukon, for much of the last million years. This permafrost preserves exceptional fossils of Ice Age mammals, plants and ancient DNA and records the dramatic impacts of past climate – both warming and cooling– on these environments. In this talk I will present some of our recent developments in understanding of Ice Age Yukon, dynamics of permafrost and ice age mammals, and even how these studies tell us about the impacts of future climate change in Yukon.
Ice Age Old Crow: Yukon's ancient history from north of the Arctic Circle
Monday, September 16, 2013, supper and lecture starting at 5pm, Old Crow Community Hall
Ice Age Klondike: Ice age fossils and frozen treasures form the Klondike goldfields
Tuesday, September 17, 2013, 7:30 pm Dänojà Zho Cultural Center, Dawson
The start of an Ice Age: a longterm perspective on Beringian climate, permafrost and the evolution of the Klondike goldfields
Thursday, September 19, 2013, 12 noon Glass Classroom (room C1440), Yukon College, Whitehorse
Digital Archaeology and the Preservation of Fort Conger, a Historic Polar Exploration Base in Canada's High Arctic
Peter Dawson
Department of Archaeology/Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary
Sunday, August 4, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Fort Conger, located in Quttinirpaaq National Park, Ellesmere Island, is a historic landmark of national and international significance. The site is associated with many important Arctic expeditions, including the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of the First International Polar Year and Robert Peary’s attempts to claim the North Pole. Although situated in one of the most remote locations on earth, Fort Conger is currently at risk because of the effects of climate change, weather, wildlife, and human activity.
Join Peter Dawson as he shows how 3D laser scanning was used to record cultural features rapidly and accurately despite the harsh conditions present at the site. He will discuss how the future impacts of natural processes and human activities can be managed using 3D scanning data as a baseline, how conservation and restoration work can be planned from the resulting models, and how 3D models created from laser scanning data can be used to excite public interest in cultural stewardship and Arctic history.
Can diatoms save the world?
Jill Sutton
Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Berkeley
Sunday, July 21, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
When most people think of algae, they think of kelp or slimy green/brown films floating in water, but it is a single-celled microscopic alga invisible to the naked eye, called a diatom, that has recently gained notoriety. Like other algae, they convert carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight energy into oxygen and carbohydrate during the process of photosynthesis. Unlike other algae, diatoms construct cell walls composed of amorphous silica. As they sink to the ocean bottom after death, these porous and ornately beautiful glass-like structures rigidly protect their inner contents, delivering processed carbon to the seafloor.
Since 1990, scientists have been conducting experiments to determine whether diatoms are a reliable way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As part of their studies, they have also been surveying ways of stimulating diatom growth by fertilizing the ocean – a controversial process where the repercussions are poorly understood. The experimental results are inconclusive and the cost of fertilizing the ocean is high, yet entrepreneurs have begun selling the idea of ocean fertilization as a reliable method of carbon sequestration. Join Jill as she explores the possibilities and risks inherent in diatoms.
Plants revived after 400 years under ice: Regrowth of Little Ice Age bryophytes exhumed from a polar glacier
Catherine La Farge
Professor of Biology, University of Alberta
Sunday, June 9, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, widespread ice retreat during the 20th century has sharply accelerated since 2004. The retreat of Teardrop Glacier, central Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, is exposing intact plant communities overridden by glaciers during the Little Ice Age (1550-1850 AD). Bryophyte populations (mosses, hornworts and liverworts) exhumed from beneath the ice margin show remarkable preservation, including unexpected signs of regrowth. To test their viability, Catherine La Farge and her colleagues collected samples along the ice margin where they had been exposed for less than 2 years, and then grew them indoors. These experiments resulted in unique, successful regeneration of several moss species from subglacial vegetative material.
The regeneration of subglacial bryophytes, previously considered dead, significantly expands our understanding of modern glacial ecosystems as biological reservoirs and challenges traditional concepts of glacial refugia of land plants to include subglacial ecosystems. Resilience of these organisms emphasizes their critical role in the establishment, colonization, and maintenance of polar terrestrial ecosystems, otherwise inhospitable for many land plants.
Ten Lessons from a Tiger
John Vaillant
Author, Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction
Sunday, April 21, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Arts Centre, Whitehorse
John Vaillant's latest book, The Tiger, took three years to research and write and included two extended trips to China and the Russian Far East, the last stronghold of the Siberian (aka Amur) tiger. In the course of his investigations, Vaillant interviewed biologists and hunters, poachers and wardens, conservationists and indigenous Russians, all of whom share their forest home with Amur tigers, which can weigh up to 600 pounds. Vaillant was surprised to find that, rather than being seen as fearsome, alien beings, local Russians saw their tigers as being not all that different from them in terms of their basic needs and attitudes. Like humans, tigers are apex predators with a strong sense of entitlement to their territory, and Vaillant discovered that these remarkable and intelligent animals might have some things to teach us about diet, resource management, and getting along with others. Join John as he distills into images and words the lessons humans have learned from tigers over two million years of coevolution in the forests of Asia. View the Ted talk distilled from this lecture.
This lecture presented in partnership with Environment Yukon.
Designing Healthy Communities: homes and cities as exercise machines
Avi Friedman
Professor of Architecture, McGill University
Sunday, March 24, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
The obesity epidemic has affected many Canadian communities. In 2005, more than 6 million Canadian adults aged 20 to 64 were overweight and nearly 3 million were obese. The common tendency is to blame people’s dietary choices and sedentary habits. Yet, it can also be argued that poor urban planning practices have largely contributed to lack of active lifestyles. Low density urban sprawl, long commutes, diminishing land for green areas and elimination of sidewalks from local streets have led to reduced activity, primarily among suburban dwellers.
The need to reverse course and regard the community and the home as exercise machines should to be a top priority of urban planners and public health officials. Public transit, commercial hubs a walking distance away, jogging tracks, bike paths and play spaces need to integrated into new residential development. Join Avi Friedman as he draws on his experience both north and south of the 60th parallel to outline the decline of healthy community planning, and the antidote in designing neighbourhoods to foster active lifestyles.
A Late Precambrian Drama: Supercontinents, Snowballs, and the Emergence of Animals
Galen Halverson, T.H. Clark Chair/Associate Professor
Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University
Saturday, March 9, 2013, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
By the time the Precambrian came to a close 541 million years ago, the first large animals populated the oceans. Within 25 million years, the Cambrian explosion had filled in the metazoan tree of life with most of the familiar major groups of animals that exist today (and a few unfamiliar ones!). A compelling and mostly unanswered question remains as to the origin and early diversification of animals: why did it happen? Early animal evolution appears to represent the culmination of a series of dramatic events and ongoing change to Earth’s surface environment throughout the preceding 300–400 million year (the Neoproterozoic Era), which included the break-up of a supercontinent, extensive volcanism, progressive oxygenation of seawater and the atmosphere, and at least two global (snowball) glaciations. In this talk, Galen Halverson will tell the story of late Precambrian Earth history and explore the links between these many events and processes which eventually gave rise to an environment capable of supporting large animals and complex ecosystems.
Atmospheric transport and transformation of contaminants in the Arctic
Hayley Hung and Alexandra (Sandy) Steffen
Air Quality Processes Research Section, Environment Canada
Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 7:00 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Pristine locations such as the Arctic are not free from contamination from outside influence. Toxic chemicals such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and mercury are found in the Arctic but have arrived from sources outside the Arctic. For the past 20 years, Environment Canada has been investigating how these contaminants travel on air masses and how they are deposited into the Arctic ecosystem. As part of the Northern Contaminants Program and the International Polar Year, POPs and mercury have been the focus of atmospheric research.
Hayley Hung and Sandy Steffen will present results from their research at Alert, Nunavut and Little Fox Lake, Yukon, as well as measurements over the sea ice and from various sites that may be impacting the Canadian Arctic. They will present the history of these issues, how the Arctic uniquely treats these toxic chemicals, what they have been doing to understand how they behave, whether the levels are going up or down and what they are doing about the situation.
Northern Biochar for Northern Restoration
Katherine Stewart, PhD,
Soil Scientist and Project Coordinator, Yukon Research Centre
Sunday, December 2, 2012, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Industrial activities in Canada’s North are expanding and along with it the need for effective remediation and restoration technologies. Soil amendments that promote the degradation of hydrocarbons, reduce the bioavailability of heavy metals, improve soil conditions and promote long term re-vegetative success are needed. Biochar is a product that results from heating various biological ingredients, such as wood, fish or animal bone under oxygen limited conditions. In southern climates, biochar has proven to have many benefits for the environment, including increased soil pH, water holding capacity, and plant growth, as well as promoting hydrocarbon degradation at contaminated sites.
Through collaborative projects between Yukon College and the University of Saskatchewan, we are working to identify different types of biochar that promote hydrocarbon degradation in northern soils. We are also assessing the ability of biochar to promote re-vegetation on northern mine impacted sites. In addition to examining soil amendments, we are evaluating the restoration potential of native nitrogen-fixing herb species and biological soil crusts. Incorporating local nitrogen-fixing species into restoration efforts may help to improve plant species diversity and nitrogen availability in mine impacted soils. Through the development of soil amendments and new techniques for establishing native primary sucessional communities, remediation and restoration of disturbed sites in northern Canada can be greatly improved.
From the Ice Ages to present: bird migration and speciation
Darren Irwin,
Associate Professor of Zoology, University of British Columbia
Where west meets east: northwestern Canada as a laboratory for the study of bird speciation
Friday, November 16, 2012, 7:30 pm Yukon College Lecture Theatre, Whitehorse
What is a species? Biologists have been struggling to answer this question for centuries. Northwestern Canada is an excellent place to examine this question, since there are many contact zones between closely related but somewhat different western and eastern forms. I examine multiple west-east pairs of bird populations, treating each as a “snapshot” in time of the evolution of one species into two. In each pair of populations, we can ask how the related forms differ and whether they consider each other the same species. In some cases, what is currently called a single species actually consists of two “cryptic species” that are genetically distinct and are reproductively isolated where they meet. In other cases, forms that are called separate species were found to interbreed extensively in the contact zones between them. I discuss how future research in the Yukon can help us understand the interactions between western and eastern relatives, allowing us to build a more comprehensive understanding of bird speciation.
Biogeographic history and migratory behavior of birds in the Yukon: the imprint of the Ice Ages
Sunday, November 18, 2012, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Just 20,000 years ago glaciers covered most of Canada, including much of the Yukon. Where did its current bird diversity come from? Can we see the imprint of the Ice Ages on current patterns of Yukon bird diversity and behavior? I will discuss the strong link between biogeographic history of birds and a remarkable behavior that many of them display twice each year: migration to distant wintering areas and back. Seasonal migratory routes tend to retrace routes of expansion of bird populations out of glacial refugia in the western U.S., the eastern U.S., and Eurasia into northwestern Canada. While migratory behavior tells us much about the ancient history of birds, it also can play an important role in shaping future diversity by increasing the likelihood that two populations will continue to diverge into two species. I discuss exciting recent advances in genetic and tracking technology that is enabling us to study migration and biogeographic history in greater detail than ever before.
From the Yenisei to the MacKenzie – A Tour of Archaeology Sites of Greater Beringia at the End of the Pleistocene
Norman Alexander Easton,
Lecturer in Anthropology, Yukon College
Sunday, October 21, 2012, 7:00 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
The past decade of archaeological research in Beringia has uncovered important new sites, such as the child cremation in an 11,500 year old house pit at Upward Sun River in Alaska, and refined our understanding of previously investigated sites, such as more accurate radiocarbon dating of Ushki Lake on the Kamchatka peninsula through accelerator mass spectrometry. Along with advances in molecular genetic mapping, new discoveries in linguistic connections between east Asia and northwestern America, and increasingly fine-grained paleoenvironmental reconstructions, these new sources of data are revealing an increasingly complex history of human occupation and migration within Beringia. This illustrated lecture will provide a tour from Lake Bakail to the Mackenzie River, stopping at points of archaeological interest along the way to look at the places and artifacts that document the human history of Beringia.