Who to Contact for Alaska Climate and Wildfire Data?
A short guide to reaching the right person on our team, whether you have a data question, a research idea, or want to visit the lab.
Contacting the Team
We read every message that lands in our inbox. Some come from graduate students wrestling with a fire-perimeter dataset, others from village councils asking how warming trends might affect a winter trail. Both belong here.
Email is usually the fastest way to reach us. Write to [email protected] and tell us what you're working on. A sentence or two of context helps us route your question to whoever knows the answer instead of bouncing it around the group.
If you've already read something on the site — one of our Wildfire Data explainers, say — mention it. Knowing where you started saves us from repeating what you've seen.
We're a small team, so replies usually take a few days during fieldwork season. That's not us ignoring you. It's us being somewhere with no signal.
Inquiries by Research Topic
Questions reach the right hands faster when they're aimed at the right topic. Our work splits into the areas below, and each covers a different set of questions.
Wildfire Data
Burn perimeters, fire-season timing, and how we reconcile satellite records with on-the-ground accounts. Start with our Wildfire Data section, then write if a specific dataset doesn't line up with what you expected.
Climate Impacts
Temperature and precipitation trends, permafrost, and the downstream effects communities actually notice. The Climate Impacts pages cover most of what we field here.
Subsistence Access
How changing ice, fire, and seasons shift access to hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds. These conversations are often the most local, and the most urgent. See Subsistence Access.
Mapping Tools
The interactive maps themselves — layers that won't load, projections that look off, or a feature you wish existed. The Mapping Tools section is the place to begin.
Not sure which bucket your question falls in? Send it anyway. We'd rather sort it on our end than have you guess wrong.
Prospective PhD Students and Researchers
If you're thinking about graduate work in Arctic climate or fire science, we want to hear from you early — ideally before application deadlines crowd everyone's calendar.
A good first email does three things. It tells us what questions keep you up at night, names a dataset or paper of ours you've actually looked at, and says roughly when you'd want to start. We're less interested in a polished pitch than in seeing how you think.
Funding shapes a lot of this. Some years we have a fully supported slot waiting; other years we're helping candidates assemble fellowships from outside sources. We'll be straight with you about which situation applies when you write, rather than letting you build hopes around a position that doesn't exist yet.
Postdocs and visiting researchers follow a similar path. Reach out to [email protected] with a short note and a CV, and we'll tell you honestly whether there's a fit. You can read more about who's already here on the Research Team page.
Collaboration and Visitation Opportunities
Our best work has rarely happened alone. Tribal organizations, land managers, and other research groups have all shaped the maps we publish — sometimes by handing us a dataset, sometimes by telling us our assumptions were wrong.
Two kinds of collaboration come up most. The first is data-sharing: you have local observations, we have the modeling and cartography, and together the picture sharpens. The second is co-developed tools, where a community or agency needs a map that doesn't exist and we build it with them rather than for them. That second kind takes longer and works better.
Visiting the lab: We welcome visitors, but space and timing matter. Email us at least a couple of weeks ahead with your dates and what you'd like to see or discuss. During peak fieldwork months, part of the team is out of the office, so a heads-up lets us make sure the right people are around when you arrive.
One honest caveat: our coverage is strongest for the regions we've worked in directly, and thinner elsewhere across Alaska's enormous footprint. If your question lands in a gap, we'll say so, and we'll try to point you toward someone who can help.
For anything — a collaboration idea, a visit request, or a question you can't quite categorize — the door is [email protected]. Genuine questions are always welcome, and we mean that.