ACEP Storyteller Featured in Northern Soundings Radio Program

This past summer, University of Alaska Anchorage researcher Jennifer Schmidt and ACEP’s Amanda Byrd teamed up to produce a film that examines the challenges to residents who lost homes in 2019’s McKinley Fire.

Byrd and Schmidt were interviewed by Robert Hannon for his radio program, “Northern Soundings, Alaska in Conversation.” They discussed that while forest fires have always been vital to Alaska’s ecosystems, they can be deadly to humans living in our near dense woods.

Listen to the recording here.

The film was funded by and produced for the Fire and Ice project, a five-year effort funded by the University of Alaska’s NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. The project conducts research into changes to fire risk and behavior in Alaska’s boreal forest. It also investigates changes to physical and chemical variables that influence biological communities in the nearshore Gulf of Alaska.

The Mckinley Fire film can be viewed here.

 

Jennifer Schmidt (l) and Amanda Byrd (r) during an interview for the film. Photo by Mike Mathers.