The Bonanza Creek LTER program has successfully engaged in hundreds of outreach and education programs concerning boreal forest ecology.

Arts and Humanities:

BNZ has a strong history of leadership in arts, humanities, and ecological science integration. Check out the BNZ founded program In a Time of Change (ITOC) that synthesizes the sciences, arts, and humanities to produce transdisciplinary experiences, events, and exhibits.

Fostering Science:

A program that introduces youth in care to the joys of doing science.

Schoolyard LTER:

One of the most successful components of BNZ outreach where we have teamed with other organizations to train science teachers in Alaska on engaging students in long-term environmental research.

Citizen Science

• Arctic-Earth: The program trains teachers, 4-H leaders, and community members on climate change concepts, culturally-responsive curriculum, and environmental observing protocols in face-to-face and online courses.
• GLOBE: This is an international, hands-on environmental science and education program that connects K-12 students, teachers, and scientists around the world for research collaboration and cross-cultural enrichment.
• Late Bloomers: A far north phenology network citizen science project.
• Project BrownDown: Citizen science project to assess how native and invasive plants are responding to Alaska's changing climate (this project has been completed).
• Winterberry: Citizen science for understanding berries in a changing north.

Photo Credit: Christa Mulder

Other Outreach

We collaborate with the Alaska Native Science Commission (ANSC) in their program to address the environmental and ecological concerns of Native Alaskans. We participate annually in a community meeting that ANSC organizes, providing information on long-term ecological change and listening and discussing with Native leaders their concerns about such changes.

We work closely with numerous state and federal agencies and Native organizations through joint research programs, discussions of management issues, jointly organized seminars, training programs for agency staff, and participation on the Citizens' Advisory Committee for the Tanana Valley State Forest. We are also involved in the Interior Issues Climate Change Task Force (e.g., the Climate Change Adaptation Advisory Group and Climate Change Education Group). Due to the continued national and international concern about climate warming, we are regularly interviewed by radio and television stations (including foreign media), newspapers, journals, and film crews. We have also provided testimony on climate change to the US House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology and to the Alaska Governor’s cabinet.