Roman Dial
Anchorage
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Articles by Roman Dial
Permafrost thaw controls iron flux from wetlands and sulfide-bearing rocks to Arctic rivers and streams
Abstract Recent warming has caused widespread iron mobilization into Arctic waterbodies that degrades ecosystems and threatens natural resources. Yet, understanding where and when iron flux occurs remains limited. Here, we investigate iron loading across regional to local scales in Arctic Alaska using climate, water chemistry, and borehole data together with mapped geology and permafrost presence.
Alaskan Legend Dick Griffith Passes Away at 98 Original
By Roman Dial Dick Griffith, the grandfather of modern Alaskan adventure, died in his sleep last week. He was 98. By his 50s, a thick shock of white hair crowned Dick's head. Many of us in our 20s hoped one day to be like him: Clint Eastwood in tennis shoes and a backpack. But by the time our own heads had grayed, we knew we could never be what he was: the person we meet once in a lifetime and even then, only if we're lucky.
Metal mobilization from thawing permafrost to aquatic ecosystems is driving rusting of Arctic streams - Communications Earth & Environment
Abstract Climate change in the Arctic is altering watershed hydrologic processes and biogeochemistry. Here, we present an emergent threat to Arctic watersheds based on observations from 75 streams in Alaska’s Brooks Range that recently turned orange, reflecting increased loading of iron and toxic metals. Using remote sensing, we constrain the timing of stream discoloration to the last 10 years, a period of rapid warming and snowfall, suggesting impairment is likely due to permafrost thaw.
Adventure Cycling Association
When I first suggested the idea of merging skiing with bikepacking to Diego, his round blue eyes widened, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. Looking back, I can understand his reaction — I was improving my ski touring skills at that moment, while he was new to bikepacking. He had recently acquired his first touring bike and had only a handful of short pannier-packing experiences. The idea of blending off-road cycling, camping, and skiing felt too big to comprehend. But that was a few years ago.
Adventure Cycling Association
Despite their prevalence in society, bikes aren’t commonly featured in mass-consumed media. At least, not for stories set in the modern day, and not ridden by adults. So when a show like “Stranger Things” comes out and the opening episode has children riding their bikes home from a late-night game of Dungeons & Dragons, the fog as thick as the whimsy still in their hearts, I — like most bike nerds out there — latched on. I was that kid, and at 41 years old, I still am.
Black Mountain Cycles La Cabra
This article first appeared in the January/February 2024 issue of Adventure Cyclist magazine. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Black Mountain Cycles: they’re simple and affordable steel bicycles designed by owner Mike Varley and produced in small batches overseas. After reviewing an MCD way back in the July 2019 issue, I purchased a Road+ frame that I turned into my beloved do-anything fender/basket bike. Since then, both the MCD and the Road+ have been discontinued and replaced by the Mod Zero.
Adventure Cycling Association
Like an isolated Galapagos, Fairbanks, Alaska, in the 1980s was a veritable hotbed of thriving mutants who evolved with a suite of novel outdoor skills built on the experience and wisdom of the climbers, canoeists, backpackers, skiers, snowshoers, hunters, and homesteaders who came before them. But by adapting an explosion of new gear to novel techniques, Fairbanks’s adventurers marked the beginning of outdoor pursuits that would spread across the world over the coming decades.
Adventure Cycling Association
An estimated about 21 million people traveled to another city to view the eclipse of 2017. Why compete with the crowds this year? Bike camping is the perfect way to witness the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024: No need to worry about stop and go traffic, impossible airfares, and fully-booked hotels. The path of totality crosses a dozen Adventure Cycling Association bicycle routes. Our maps recommend convenient camping, lodging, and bicycle shops along the way.
The world’s boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward - Alaska Beacon
by Ronny Rotbarth, Alaska Beacon November 10, 2023 Earth’s boreal forests circle our planet’s far northern reaches, just south of the Arctic’s treeless tundra. If the planet wears an Arctic ice cap, then the boreal forests are a loose-knit headband wrapped around its ears, covering large portions of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia. The boreal region’s soils have long buffered the planet against warming by storing huge quantities of carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere.
The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
Earth's boreal forests circle our planet's far northern reaches, just south of the Arctic's treeless tundra. If the planet wears an Arctic ice cap, then the boreal forests are a loose-knit headband wrapped around its ears, covering large portions of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia. The boreal region's soils have long buffered the planet against warming by storing huge quantities of carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere.
The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
By Roman Dial, Professor of Biology and Mathematics, Alaska Pacific University Earth's boreal forests circle our planet's far northern reaches, just south of the Arctic's treeless tundra. If the planet wears an Arctic ice cap, then the boreal forests are a loose-knit headband wrapped around its ears, covering large portions of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia.
The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
Earth’s boreal forests circle our planet’s far northern reaches, just south of the Arctic’s treeless tundra. If the planet wears an Arctic ice cap, then the boreal forests are a loose-knit headband wrapped around its ears, covering large portions of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia. The boreal region’s soils have long buffered the planet against warming by storing huge quantities of carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere.
The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
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The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
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The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
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The world's boreal forests may be shrinking as climate change pushes them northward
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OPINION: The degradation of a wild and scenic river in Alaska’s Brooks Range
The Salmon River, possibly the most famous waterway in Arctic Alaska, was the opening subject of John McPhee’s classic, “Coming into the Country.” McPhee and his companions – a combination of state and federal employees – floated the Salmon in 1975 to assess its suitability for Wild and Scenic status, a designation granted to rivers that possess “outstandingly remarkable value” and have mechanisms that provide for their long-term protection.
Spruce Trees Are Popping Up in the Arctic. They Haven't Been There for 20,000 Years.
We were pushing through head-high willows along a brushy caribou trail, five days into our week-long trek across Alaska’s Noatak valley, when my hiking partner, Brad Meiklejohn, startled me with a command. “Stop!” he said. “Look to your left.” I froze—nobody wants to hear a warning like that a hundred miles from the nearest road in the Arctic wilderness—and turned slowly, expecting to see our seventh and closest grizzly bear. Instead, I saw a chest-high white spruce tree.
Sufficient conditions for rapid range expansion of a boreal conifer - Nature
Abstract Unprecedented modern rates of warming are expected to advance boreal forest into Arctic tundra1, thereby reducing albedo2,3,4, altering carbon cycling4 and further changing climate1,2,3,4, yet the patterns and processes of this biome shift remain unclear5. Climate warming, required for previous boreal advances6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17, is not sufficient by itself for modern range expansion of conifers forming forest–tundra ecotones5,12,13,14,15,17,18,19,20.
Issue 8: Turmeric and olive oil loaf + Lost in the Valley of Death
Welcome to Good Book/Good Bread! Every two weeks, I recommend a book I love, and bake a delicious bread that fits with an aspect of the story. Haven’t subscribed yet? Sign up here! This week: Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas by Harley Rustad, and a turmeric and olive oil loaf topped with green onions. Part 1: Good Book Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad Setting the tone Manchester by Kishi Bashi, here.
An all-in-one Packrafting Guide
Packrafting on Spencer Lake. Chugach National Forest, Alaska. Photo courtesy Paxson Woelber. When Lt. Henry Allen and his companions journeyed from Cordova to the Brooks Range in 1885, locals showed them how to carry and stretch animal skins over willow branches to form packable rafts. More recently, Alaskans led the way in “packrafting.” Originally, we carried lightweight inflatables to cross and float rivers on wilderness trips.
The Adventurer's Son
"A brave and marvelous book. A page-turner that will rip your heart out." (Jon Krakauer) In the tradition of Into the Wild comes an instant classic of outdoor literature, a riveting work of uncommon depth. I’m planning on doing four days in the jungle.... It should be difficult to get lost forever: These were the haunting last words legendary adventurer Roman Dial received from his son, before the 27-year old disappeared into the jungles of Costa Rica.
Wanna Get Away? Fortunately, Local Bookstores are Serving up a Dose of Escapism
It’s summer, and we’re four months into a shelter-in-place existence that’s showing no signs of abating any time soon. Old calendar notifications and iPhone photo memories create easy mental pitfalls that go something like, “I should be boarding a plane to Japan in 30 minutes,” or, “This time last year I was on a beach in Spain.” Given that a US passport is only valid in a couple dozen places around the world at the moment, those kinds of trips are the things of dreams right now.
Source Suggests These Books
In the spirit of this Outdoor issue of the Source Weekly, here are three new Adventure Travel standout reads: By Tom Beans, Dudley's BookShop Cafe click to enlarge Submitted 'Without Ever Reaching the Summit' by Paolo Cognetti A wonderful little gem of a book from the author of the equally fantastic "Eight Mountains." Cognetti follows in the footsteps of Peter Matthiessen and his trip to the Dolpo region of Nepal (made famous in his book, "The Snow Leopard"), using him as something of a...
10 Books About the Culture and History of Different Nations Releasing in 2020
I had visited many parts of India, Paris, England and scoured through the United States of America by the age of thirteen. And I hadn’t even left my house to do so. A new book to devour every week; the pages flew me to parts of the world I had only seen on television, and some that were only accessible by walking through a closet. Usually when people talk of travel books, they refer to those spelling brightly-coloured words about the culture, heritage, and geography of a destination.
From novels to non-fiction: The 15 best books out on shelves this March
These are the books to download now on your e-reader Clockwise from top left: 'Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America' by Gerald Posner; 'The Red Lotus: A Novel' by Chris Bohjalian; 'The Genius Life: Heal Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Become Extraordinary' by Max Lugavere; 'Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You' by Jason Reynolds; 'The Jetsetters: A Novel' by Amanda Eyre Ward; 'Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot' by Mikki Kendall; 'Untamed' by Glennon...
Missed Translations
A bittersweet and humorous memoir of family—of the silence and ignorance that separate us, and the blood and stories that connect us—from an award-winning New York Times writer and comedian. Approaching his 30 birthday, Sopan Deb had found comfort in his day job as a writer for the New York Times and a practicing comedian. But his stage material highlighting his South Asian culture only served to mask the insecurities borne from his family history.
Review | Roman Dial shared his love of ad�ven�ture with his son. His new book explores the consequences.
Roman Dial, a professor of biology and mathematics by profession, is a legendary Alaskan explorer. He’s competed in winter competitions across the state and climbed some of its highest peaks. He wrote the standard guide to packrafting — using a small, inflatable boat that can fit in a backpack to cross the raging rivers of Alaska’s interior and far north, where bridges are nearly nonexistent. In 2014, Dial’s son Cody went missing while traveling in the jungles of Central America.
A Modern-Day Explorer, a Costa Rican Jungle, and the Search for a Lost Son
In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, the twenty-seven-year-old son of preeminent Alaskan scientist and National Geographic Explorer Roman Dial, walked alone into Corcovado National Park, an untracked rainforest along Costa Rica’s remote Pacific Coast that shelters miners, poachers, and drug smugglers. He carried a light backpack and machete.
My Son Went on a Solo Hike and Never Came Home
Editor’s note: While Roman Dial’s son’s full name was Cody Roman Dial, he also went by Roman. In the below text, Roman refers to Cody Roman, not his father. While Roman was exploring the cultures, mountains, and jungles of Central America, I was finishing up home projects and making short day trips and planning a long pack-rafting trip in the nearby Talkeetna Mountains in Alaska. I enjoyed hearing about Roman’s trips via email, but looked forward to having him home.
The Adventurer's Son
“A brave and marvelous book. A page-turner that will rip your heart out.”—Jon Krakauer In the tradition of Into the Wild comes an instant classic of outdoor literature, a riveting work of uncommon depth. The Adventurer’s Son is Roman Dial’s extraordinary account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son’s fate.
Glacier Algae: A Dark Past and a Darker Future
Introduction Glacier surfaces are home to diverse and active microbial communities (Hodson et al., 2008; Stibal et al., 2012; Anesio et al., 2017). The coincidence of liquid water and sunlight during summer months supports substantial phototrophy at the glacial surface.
The Survivors - Adam Frankel - Hardcover
Chicago Tribune Notable Book of 2019 A memoir of family, the Holocaust, trauma, and identity, in which Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter, must come to terms with the legacy of his family’s painful past and discover who he is in the wake of a life-changing revelation about his own origins. “The Survivors is an astonishingly beautiful and profoundly moving book.
"Watermelon snow" on glaciers: sustaining life in colour
Glacier surfaces around the world often host active communities of specialized organisms, including annelids in Alaska, insects in the Himalayas, and rotifers in Iceland. But these organisms, like all life, need liquid water in order to survive. The most strikingly visible signs of life on glaciers come from the microbes responsible for “watermelon-snow” – so-called both for its colour, and its smell.
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