Wow, things have certainly changed since the last installment of the GWA Quarterly Currents. The first quarter of monitoring year 8 was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic washing ashore in Alaska, which resulted in federal/state agency closures and restrictions from State of Alaska mandates for physical distancing. Most GWA team members shifted to working from home and developing contingency plans for postponing or in some cases cancelling field surveys. Let’s just say the suggestion of losing data is not easily accepted by principal investigators who are passionate about their research and have spent their whole careers nurturing legacy time series. Therefore, a great deal of effort is currently being put into
creative “plan Bs and Cs”. However, since the GWA program has diverse partnerships, not all data collection has been affected this season and the program continues with some successes not experienced by other researchers and organizations. A brief summary of our program’s first quarter activities and accomplishment can be found in the latest issue of the GWA Quarterly Currents (vol 4.1).