Tyler King

Watch his Ignite talk:

It’s mid-summer in the North Slope of Alaska. The sun hangs low on the horizon, seemingly always shining, but never beating down enough to melt they permafrost and frozen bed of the Kuparuk River. This is where Presidential Doctorate Research Fellow Tyler King makes his home in the summer, studying the dynamics of the energy balance between river temperature, its surroundings and climate change.

“There’s no down time,” King said. “In the field you are working 6 days a week, twelve to eighteen hours a day. It’s nonstop. Because the sun doesn’t set, you don’t feel tired so you keep on working.”

Now back analyzing data at the USU Water Research Laboratory, downstream from the first dam of the Logan River, King says that there is even more to do in analyzing his data. He and the team he is working with are thoroughly engrossed in questions about water temperature: What are the pathways of energy entering and leaving the river? How does the river gain heat from the air and sunlight? How much heat does it in turn transfer to the surrounding environment?

“We’re there in the field every day measuring water discharge, temperature and depth,” King said. “The ultimate goal is to be able to predict river temperature in the future given different climate conditions.”