Welcome to my Alaska Natural History website!  The main focus and product on this website is my book Interior and Northern Alaska: A Natural History.  The book is about the landscapes, plants and animals of the biggest state in America. And the farthest north! It includes dinosaurs in the arctic, ice-age Alaska, giant short-face bears, mammoths, bison, American lions, scimitar cats, changing modern landscapes, tundra plants and animals, boreal forest plants and animals, salmon and other fishes of Alaska, and adaptations that help these organisms survive life in the Far North.

The book spawned, no pun intended, the idea to create a self-guided course in Alaska science. I put together a biology curriculum flash drive, appropriate for high school students, containing 13 instructional units, each tied to a chapter of the book and each containing additional readings, links to websites, observations, experiments, virtual labs and virtual field trips and tests. This educational package is being used by home school students across Alaska. Since the lessons address all of the required standards for NGSS and Alaska standards, it would be appropriate for home school students in the entire northern tier of U. S. states, especially Washington State, all the Canadian provinces, or, for other home-school in other states interested in Alaska.

The high school curriculum was followed by another science curriculum appropriate for middle school science students. This curriculum addresses all the NGSS and Alaska standards for middle school science: earth and space sciences (ESS), life sciences (LS) and physical sciences (PS). Whereas the high school curriculum lessons follow the chapters of the book in sequence, the middle school curriculum addresses first, ESS, then LS, then PS. That means the student will find the appropriate textbook parts as appropriate to the lesson. As with the high school curriculum, the middle school instructions are contained on a flash drive that comes with the package.

Both curriculum packages include and incorporate the Spirit of the Arctic DVD, an ecological photo and sound tour of the entire state created by Kathy Turco. Kathy recorded all the animal sounds included on the DVD. Over 200 wildlife and landscape photos on the DVD were taken by world famous wildlife photographer Michio Hoshino.

Another book, How Not to Die Hunting in Alaska, is a “how not to” guide to hunting in our largest state. It is entertaining to read, and illustrated by Jeanne Mars Armstrong’s wonderful cartoons. This book is a “must read” in outdoor education!

Also in the “books” menu, you will find other books I’ve written. Undeserved Punishment is a novel of two white boys growing up in Navajo country in the 1950s. Read the testimonials for this and my other books in the testimonials menu.

I’ve highlighted several soon to be published novels in the books menu and several have been reviewed in the testimonials menu. These novels include two Alaska-based novels, Pulse and Fred, Drugs, Russians and Agent Orange. A third novel, science fiction, is The Roswell Crash Survivors Benefit Concert.

Press (Media / News)

• Read article by Local Editor, Kris Capps