Alaska could lose several research institutions and a pipeline into science for budding researchers in the state if the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget become a reality.
“Even the possibility of the disruption is affecting the students and the researchers,” said Joshua Hostler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His colleagues in a research group met last week to discuss whether they’d apply for a new federal funding opportunity. Because of the uncertainty, they probably won’t.
“Even if they do approve the funding, are they going to take it away later?” Hostler said.
He said that groups across the university system have been easing up on submitting research proposals for the same reason.
The Trump administration proposed to slash the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget by about 27% and eliminate climate research in a memo leaked this month. The draft cuts would terminate funding for several research institutes that rely on the agency to finance their work in Alaska. Among those on the chopping block are the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES), the Alaska Ocean Observing System, Alaska Sea Grant, the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy and the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
The institutions share projects, faculty and student researchers with the University of Alaska so the state can understand and adapt to climate change while training the next generation of in-state experts.
Hostler is currently developing a seasonal lightning forecast system to help wildfire managers in Alaska plan for the upcoming fire season. Lighting strikes most in Interior Alaska, and that’s where the biggest wildfires in the state happen. Hostler is using machine learning models to predict the intensity of lightning a season in advance, so fire managers know where to put their resources.
But he’s funded by a NOAA grant from the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office that would be eliminated under the draft cuts, and he applied for the grant with help from CICOES, which would also be cut. The funds cover Hostler’s wages of $29 per hour.
“Without that funding, I just wouldn’t be able to pay my rent,” he said. “I’d have to stop doing the research that I’m doing now and I’d have to go get a job somewhere.”
Hajo Eicken heads the International Arctic Research Center at UAF. He said these NOAA-funded institutes have helped create a pipeline for students to develop research in Alaska and then have opportunities to continue working here after graduating.
“These students, in particular, the Ph.D. students, they’re at the cutting edge of the field,” he said. “They help us respond much more effectively to various opportunities and challenges that we’re facing in Alaska.”
CeCe Borries-Strigle, a Ph.D. student at UAF who is set to finish her degree this summer, was planning to stay at the university for another year as a post-doctoral researcher to finish her work improving fire weather forecasts in the state. But, like Hostler, that project would be funded through a NOAA office and a research institute that may soon cease to exist.
Borries-Strigle is based in Kenai and was there in 2019 when the Swan Lake Fire jumped Sterling Highway and smoke choked the region for several months. She said she wants to stay in Alaska working on wildland fire research, but might have to change those plans due to funding uncertainty.
“I think there’s going to be a huge generation of scientists that miss out on more early career training because the funding is not there,” she said. “Those jobs aren’t there.”
At Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Homer, 10 college students participate in community-driven research projects each year. Katherine Schake manages the reserve and said that past students have gone on to manage invasive European green crab for the Metlakatla Indian Community, track fish stocks at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and been hired on to continue freshwater research at the reserve.
The reserve receives more than $800,000 per year from NOAA, and a 30% match from the University of Alaska Anchorage. That covers facilities and half of the staff’s salaries, Schake said. Without the base NOAA funds, she said that the staff would likely drop from 10 to four, and they wouldn’t be able to continue mentoring students.
One key service that students help with in Alaska is collecting data at sea. Seth Danielson leads an oceanography lab at UAF. His team tracks ocean conditions such as the temperature, nutrient content and salinity off the coast of Alaska over long time periods. That data, which shows how the seas are changing, feeds into how fisheries are managed.
“So NOAA develops the ecosystem status report for the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council every fall, and the council uses the assessments of ocean conditions as they set harvest levels for next year’s catch limits,” Danielson said. “So not all that data is collected only by NOAA — some of it’s collected by university researchers like us.”
More than 60% of Danielson’s funding comes from NOAA through the Alaska Ocean Observing System, one of the institutes that would be closed under the proposal. If that happens, he says he would probably have to lay off four of his five staff members.
He’d lose more than staff. Last August, his team moored half a million dollars worth of equipment to the bottom of the ocean. To get the data it’s been collecting all year, they need funding to sail out there and retrieve it.
“So not only is the data at risk and the students who are relying on that data for their graduate research, but the equipment itself is at risk — the batteries don’t last forever,” he said.
If the batteries die before Danielson can secure funding for the expedition, all of the data would be lost.
In Juneau, Curry Cunningham runs a fisheries lab through UAF. He estimates that NOAA pays for at least 30% of his research and staff, and said that the bleak funding outlook means he’s planning to scale back the number of graduate students and research projects he’ll take on in the future.
Right now, Cunningham oversees six graduate students and four post-graduate researchers. Three of them are working on NOAA-funded projects.
“A lot of the job opportunities that may have been available in the recent past are unlikely to be available for some of our students as they exit our program,” he said.
The proposed cuts come as UAF has set a goal to become one of the top-tier research institutions in the nation, called R1 status. To qualify, the university needs to award an average of 70 doctorates per year. Laura Conner is vice chancellor for research at UAF. She said that roughly a quarter of the university’s operating budget comes from the federal government, and graduate researchers rely on federal dollars.
“It’s likely that large decreases in federal support could impact R1,” Conner said.
But, she said it’s hard to predict how it will play out and UAF is still hopeful it can achieve the status.
Even so, she said that a deep cut to NOAA funding, “will have a chilling effect on research across the nation, more generally.”
Staff at NOAA’s Juneau offices and the White House declined to comment, and final funding decisions have not yet been made.
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