BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON THE SNOWFIELDS AXD 

 GLACIERS OF ALASKA, 1936 



By ERSfiBET KOL * 

 Sseged, Hungary 



Many travelers in Alaska have reported seeing red snow, and it has 

 long been known that this phenomenon was caused by the presence of 

 minute plants that live only in permanent beds of ice and snow. No 

 scientific study of these microorganisms had been made, however, and 

 it was for the purpose of conducting such a research and comparing 

 the cryo vegetation (plants that grow on ice and snow) of America 

 with that of Europe that I visited Alaska in the summer of 1936. 

 Grateful acknowledgment is made to Dr. C. G. Abbot, Secretary of 

 the Smithsonian Institution, for the grant which enabled me to under- 

 take this work. 



I left Seattle for Alaska at the beginning of July, going as far as 

 Seward by boat and from there by train to Mount McKinley National 

 Park, where I lived in Savage River Camp. Using this camp as a 

 base, I visited the surrounding glaciers and snowfields that were 

 within the radius of a day's journey on foot or horseback. On such 

 excursions I was careful to make pH determinations of both snow- 

 fields and icefields. I also made microscopic examinations on the spot 

 as frequently as possible and always brought back living material in 

 thermos bottles to be worked on later in camp. 



My first excursion was to the head of the Savage River. On the 

 surrounding slopes grow beautiful iVlpine poppies and other flowers, 

 and the many snowfields in this region yielded such characteristic snow 

 algae as Chlamydomonas nivalis and Scoticlla nivalis. Because the 

 surface was thickly covered with refuse and fragments from the 

 slopes, however, the cryoplankton which elsewhere develops in such 

 quantities as to color the surface was poorly represented. 



The valley of the Savage River is very large, but at one end it 

 branches off into many small, steep gorges through each of which 



1 Holder of the Fellowship Crusade International of the American Association 

 of University Women for the academic year 1935-36. The Alaska work was done 

 under a grant from the Smithsonian Institution. Although the field-work was 

 done in 1936, the report was not received from the author until June 1938. — 

 Editor. 



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