Permafrost Outreach

Alaska EPSCoR is conducting an outreach effort in line with its research focus on permafrost and infrastructure. Termed the Permafrost Outreach Program, the project consists of installing permafrost temperature monitoring systems at hundreds of public schools across Alaska and the Yukon and teaching students how to monitor the sites as well as to record and report data.

Program lead Kenji Yoshikawa has traveled to the schools and put in the devices personally, involving the schoolchildren in their installation and teaching them about permafrost science in the process. From 2008-10, 2,802 students (73 percent of them Alaska Natives) were involved in the school visits.