Daniel Ksepka, the curator of science at the Bruce Museum here, visited Fairbanks, Alaska, in May 2022 for a research project on fossil birds. But Ksepka, a paleontologist by training, found himself more drawn to the city’s drunken forest — an unusual landscape of tilting trees — instead.
“The trees were leaning in seemingly random directions because the permafrost underneath the soil was thawing from increasingly warmer temperatures,” he said. “They were slumping as a result of not having a firm base. It almost felt like being in a bomb crater.”
Ksepka said that the setting illustrated the dramatic impact of global warming and profoundly affected him. “I couldn’t get the sight out of my head,” he said. “Back home, I started looking into other the ways that climate change is shaping the Alaskan landscape through the de-stabilization of permafrost, changing vegetation patterns and loss of ice.”
That trip and the drunken forest are the impetus for the Bruce’s exhibition “On Thin Ice: Alaska’s Warming Wilderness,” curated by Ksepka. It opened March 6 and will be on view until Oct. 19.