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A shrew scrounges for food around the campfire one evening as researchers in UAA Biological Sciences Professor Brandon Briggs' lab sample microbes in Alaska's glaciers and streams for their summer field work. This year, the team sampled microbes in the meltwater and soils at Grewingk Glacier Lake, Grewingk Creek, and Humpy Creek on the south side of Kachemak Bay. The objectives for this year’s sampling were to determine microbial community and functional potential in pro-glacial streams and to see how community composition changes with diurnal stream stages.
Photo by James Evans / University of Alaska Anchorage