The Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center is so far spared from closures coming to a third of such climate science centers across the country, as first reported by The Washington Post.
In other regions of the U.S., some centers are expected to run out of money soon because the federal government has stalled funding and essential agreements with universities that the U.S. Geological Survey needs to manage the centers.
But Alaska’s center is safe for now.
Kristin Timm, the center’s university co-director at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said the center’s funding through next summer has already been disbursed.
“But of course, we’re worried about how long our funding will continue to last,” she said.
The center’s budget is roughly $2.2 million dollars per year. It signed an agreement with the University of Alaska in 2023 that maintains their partnership through July of 2028, which should ensure the center’s existence until then.
Timm said that about 25 university employees receive a significant portion of their salary through the climate center.
But she said that two grants through the USGS are on hold. One would have funded communications interns and the other would have funded a study on how climate change could affect a caribou herd that’s important to subsistence hunters.
She said the center does projects that Alaskan communities and decision makers have asked for.
“If we don’t get funded, you know, one of the major projects that would really affect Alaskans is the work around the glacier outburst flood and Suicide Basin,” Timm said.
The center funded the interactive website that helped inform Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley residents about the threat to their homes during August’s flood. The center has also funded research around improving wildfire forecasts and how climate change is affecting salmon in the Yukon River Basin.