‘Fresh Eyes on Ice’ Teaches Kids to Collect Vital Ice Data in Remote Alaskan Communities

Students measure ice thickness and monitor spring break-up to help save lives in areas where frozen rivers are used as roadways

Kristen Pope | Freelance science writer

April 16, 2026

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In the Alaskan community of Galena last fall, students and teachers discovered that a snowmobile had recently driven out onto the thin ice of Alexander Lake, just a quarter mile from their school. It was close to the spot where they’d conducted ice thickness measurements from shore as part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Fresh Eyes on Ice program, and they knew that the freshly frozen ice was too thin to safely support the heavy machine. Wanting to prevent a tragedy, the school reached out to the local radio station, asking it to warn people about the danger and encourage them not to travel on the thin ice.

It worked.

“No one else went out until later in the season, when it was thicker," says Karin Bodony, a Galena-based biologist and environmental educator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who works with Fresh Eyes on Ice students indoors and out. When the weather is too harsh for the kids to leave the classroom, Bodony takes the measurements herself, adding them to databases used for biological inventory and monitoring.

In remote interior Alaska, frozen rivers become roadways. They connect communities and provide access to places to hunt, fish and gather resources.

“We live in a community that has no road system. … Travel between villages often depends on rivers and lakes because that’s the easiest winter travel,” Bodony says. “Ice safety is really paramount in the fall. The phenology of ice formation is not as reliable as it used to be as far as the timing.”

A 2013 study found 307 events in which a total of 449 people fell through ice in Alaska over a 21-year period. More than a third of the events involved at least one fatality; some involved as many as five. Most of the incidents involved people on snow machines, 14 percent involved only pedestrians, 9 percent involved people in vehicles like cars and trucks and 6 percent involved ATVs and their drivers.

To save lives and improve our understanding of a changing climate, students ranging from kindergartners to high school seniors in a number of Alaskan communities are working to measure, track and share the thickness of ice on their rivers and lakes. The Fresh Eyes on Ice observation network, which began in 2019, is a partnership between local communities, NASA, Tanana Chiefs Conference, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), among other partners. Participants drill holes with ice augers, collect temperature data with floating buoys, and fly drones to provide an aerial view to assess open water and other hazards. Around 325 students each year participate in the program, which has involved as many as 24 communities.

Thin ice isn’t the only concern. “Overflow” occurs when water pools on top of the ice, and it can be hazardous, especially when hidden under a layer of snow. “It’s counterintuitive; you wouldn’t think that one of the dangers of traveling in the middle of Alaska winter is water on top of ice under snow, but it bogs down your snow machine,” Bodony says. “You can get stuck in it, and you can get wet, and being wet in these cold conditions is definitely dangerous.”

Knowing more about ice and how rivers freeze in the fall and break up each spring can help provide valuable information to keep people safe and even assist with flood forecasting.

Galena is located on the north bank of the Yukon River, which is the state’s longest. A tight bend in the river about 18 miles away makes the community particularly susceptible to flooding each spring, as large pieces of ice can catch in the narrow passage, backing up other ice and debris and causing a blockage. During spring breakup in 2013, catastrophic flooding due to an ice jam covered much of the village with seven to nine feet of water, displacing the vast majority of the community’s nearly 500 residents.

“What happens upriver or downriver from you on the river is really going to affect your river conditions,” says 17-year-old Ida Bodony, an 11th grade student in Galena, a program participant and Karin Bodony’s daughter. She refers to the Fresh Eyes on Ice Facebook page as a valuable platform for sharing information among communities. “It’s great to have space that is specifically for communication between villages about water conditions. There have been years with flooding where we’re able to know pretty much exactly what’s going to happen to our water levels when we’ve heard from people upriver from us."

As part of Fresh Eyes on Ice, students measure ice thickness about once a month. Before these community scientists go out into the field, they learn about ice, safety and tools, and they also spend time sharing their own experiences with ice.

“In the past, I’ve had kids not have any [lake or river] ice experience,” says Galena teacher Amanda Aloysius. “The only ice that they’ve dealt with is having ice in their drinks, so it’s really interesting to read some of their stories. We have them write their beginning-of-the-year stories, and then we take them out to experience it.”

The program also incorporates the vital traditional knowledge of local elders. “It begins with learning from elders and learning from your own community first, before learning from ice scientists,” says Katie Spellman, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She says that elders explain how they evaluate whether ice is safe to venture out on: by inspecting for cracks and pounding on it with wood and listening for certain sounds.

When it’s time to collect data in the field, Galena students walk to nearby Alexander Lake, toting ice augers and other tools. After adults confirm that the ice is safe to walk on, students head to their sampling area and begin drilling in three different spots so they can average their measurements. Once they collect data, they share it with the community via the Fresh Eyes on Ice Facebook page, as well as with the National Weather Service River Forecast Center, which then shares community-specific forecasts. The program also provides data to scientists around the world.

The data has been used in studies with a variety of objectives, from quantifying trends and drivers of ice thickness to forecasting river ice phenology, or the timing of the freezing and thawing of rivers. While the project has been around for only six years, organizers say that they’ve seen a significant amount of variability during that time. The data they’ve collected has tied into longer-term records showing a shorter duration of river ice, as well as changes in ice thickness and lake ice phenology.

“It represents the continuity of historical research projects and monitoring programs in Alaska, therefore filling an important scientific gap as the winter regime of cold region rivers is increasingly impacted by extreme weather events associated with climate change,” says Benoit Turcotte, a hydrologist with the YukonU Research Center.

Student participants also apply the information they collect to scientific questions, investigating the difference between pH levels in the lake, river and their faucets at home, for example, or whether the lake or river produces stronger ice blocks or the comparative cleanliness of snow versus ice. Students present their results at science fairs, state symposiums and national conferences. Ida Bodony has even joined her mom to present a poster about the program at an American Geophysical Union meeting.

Drones can provide aerial views to identify hazards like open water and to document when rivers and lakes freeze and break up. Students in some communities participated in Drones on the Ice workshops, learning how to utilize these tools to safely gather data in areas that may be dangerous to monitor on foot.

In the three-day workshops, students assemble drones, learn to safely fly them, and tackle skill-building obstacle courses. Many workshops culminate in an event where community members gather to swap ice stories, play games like ice bingo, and celebrate kids as they practice their newly acquired skills. “It turned into a really great community-building event,” Spellman says.

Data and photos collected by drones and other means are archived in places like the Arctic Data Center, NASA’s GLOBE database and the National Weather Service database, where they can help inform flood forecasting during spring breakup. Communities and forecasters use the real-time cameras to observe the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, and the Fresh Eyes on Ice Facebook page allows people to rapidly share their observations and raise awareness.

“We at the River Forecast Center consider the Fresh Eyes on Ice data an invaluable part of our monitoring efforts,” says NOAA hydrologist Celine van Breukelen. “We heavily leveraged the near-real-time river cameras each year they were operational and ingested [the program’s] ice and snow depth measurements into our ice thickness databases.”

The data is also used to verify remotely gathered satellite data. According to Fresh Eyes on Ice’s 2025 report, University of Alaska Fairbanks Climate Scholars investigated the accuracy of satellite-captured remote images and found that 23 percent of the time, satellite data and the finer details recorded by observers on or near the ground do not align, so this project helps provide additional valuable information.

The program is currently focused on testing community-based monitoring approaches, and the organizers have submitted a new proposal to continue their work with an emphasis on real-time monitoring.

Fresh Eyes on Ice contributes to scientific knowledge and creates a long-term data set that will be a vital asset for scientists in decades to come, but some of the program’s biggest impacts are felt in the students’ own communities. Residents inquire about ice thickness and use the data to plan their work, relying on it to indicate, for example, when heavy equipment can safely be taken out on the ice.

“We have people asking us, ‘Hey, did you guys measure the ice?' 'How thick was the ice?’” Aloysius says. “We even have companies asking … just to see what they can do with their equipment.”

The program also helps students understand that they are valuable community members who can contribute vital knowledge and keep their neighbors safe. Spellman says that the most important part of the project is making the kids feel that “they’re needed, and that they’re learners and scientists.”

In Alaska, people’s lives are so closely tied to the land that they must cultivate a deep understanding of the natural world.

With “50-below temperatures, it’s very obvious. You can’t sit in your house and ignore what’s happening outside, because it comes inside, creeping in through the walls,” Karin Bodony says. “It’s possible but difficult to be oblivious to the environment, and health and human safety is so much more related to environmental conditions than it is in urban areas of the lower 48. I think it’s hard for people who don’t live here to really understand that.”