Andy Bunn, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Western Washington University, participated this summer in the Polaris Project in the Siberian arctic. It was the second consecutive summer that Bunn took a pair of WWU undergraduates on the summer research project to study the effects of climate change on these ecologically vital and sensitive areas.

Story by John Thompson | WWU

Western Washington University graduate student Ian Gill spent his summer researching the predator-prey dynamic between grizzly bears and the chum salmon up close and personal in the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary on Alaska’s Cook Inlet in an effort to understand the factors affecting the success of individual bears, how they learn, and how this interaction affects the health of both populations.

Andrew Bunn, assistant professor at Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment, is a primary investigator in a new initiative at the Woods Hole Research Center known as the Polaris Project, which will train future leaders in arctic research and education, and inform the public, both of which are essential given the rapid and profound changes under way in the Arctic in response to global warming.