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Kristen Pope | Freelance science writer

It worked.

“No one else went out until later in the season, when it was thicker," says Karin Bodony, a Galena-based biologist and environmental educator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who works with Fresh Eyes on Ice students indoors and out. When the weather is too harsh for the kids to leave the classroom, Bodony takes the measurements herself, adding them to databases used for biological inventory and monitoring.

In remote interior Alaska, frozen rivers become roadways. They connect communities and provide access to places to hunt, fish and gather resources.

“We live in a community that has no road system. … Travel between villages often depends on rivers and lakes because that’s the easiest winter travel,” Bodony says. “Ice safety is really paramount in the fall. The phenology of ice formation is not as reliable as it used to be as far as the timing.”

A 2013 study found 307 events in which a total of 449 people fell through ice in Alaska over a 21-year period. More than a third of the events involved at least one fatality; some involved as many as five. Most of the incidents involved people on snow machines, 14 percent involved only pedestrians, 9 percent involved people in vehicles like cars and trucks and 6 percent involved ATVs and their drivers.

To save lives and improve our understanding of a changing climate, students ranging from kindergartners to high school seniors in a number of Alaskan communities are working to measure, track and share the thickness of ice on their rivers and lakes. The Fresh Eyes on Ice observation network, which began in 2019, is a partnership between local communities, NASA, Tanana Chiefs Conference, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), among other partners. Participants drill holes with ice augers, collect temperature data with floating buoys, and fly drones to provide an aerial view to assess open water and other hazards. Around 325 students each year participate in the program, which has involved as many as 24 communities.

Thin ice isn’t the only concern. “Overflow” occurs when water pools on top of the ice, and it can be hazardous, especially when hidden under a layer of snow. “It’s counterintuitive; you wouldn’t think that one of the dangers of traveling in the middle of Alaska winter is water on top of ice under snow, but it bogs down your snow machine,” Bodony says. “You can get stuck in it, and you can get wet, and being wet in these cold conditions is definitely dangerous.”

Fresh Eyes on Ice scientist Christopher Arp demonstrates how to use ice measuring tools with Anne Wien Elementary School students in 2019. J.R. Ancheta

Knowing more about ice and how rivers freeze in the fall and break up each spring can help provide valuable information to keep people safe and even assist with flood forecasting.

Galena is located on the north bank of the Yukon River, which is the state’s longest. A tight bend in the river about 18 miles away makes the community particularly susceptible to flooding each spring, as large pieces of ice can catch in the narrow passage, backing up other ice and debris and causing a blockage. During spring breakup in 2013, catastrophic flooding due to an ice jam covered much of the village with seven to nine feet of water, displacing the vast majority of the community’s nearly 500 residents.

A drone photo shows ice jam flooding during spring break-up in Sleetmute in May 2022. Photo: Zac Smith

“What happens upriver or downriver from you on the river is really going to affect your river conditions,” says 17-year-old Ida Bodony, an 11th grade student in Galena, a program participant and Karin Bodony’s daughter. She refers to the Fresh Eyes on Ice Facebook page as a valuable platform for sharing information among communities. “It’s great to have space that is specifically for communication between villages about water conditions. There have been years with flooding where we’re able to know pretty much exactly what’s going to happen to our water levels when we’ve heard from people upriver from us."

As part of Fresh Eyes on Ice, students measure ice thickness about once a month. Before these community scientists go out into the field, they learn about ice, safety and tools, and they also spend time sharing their own experiences with ice.

“In the past, I’ve had kids not have any [lake or river] ice experience,” says Galena teacher Amanda Aloysius. “The only ice that they’ve dealt with is having ice in their drinks, so it’s really interesting to read some of their stories. We have them write their beginning-of-the-year stories, and then we take them out to experience it.”

The program also incorporates the vital traditional knowledge of local elders. “It begins with learning from elders and learning from your own community first, before learning from ice scientists,” says Katie Spellman, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She says that elders explain how they evaluate whether ice is safe to venture out on: by inspecting for cracks and pounding on it with wood and listening for certain sounds.

Fresh Eyes on Ice scientist Katie Spellman teaches Anne Wien Elementary School students about making scientific observations in 2019. J.R. Ancheta