Katreen Wikstrom Jones

Originally from Sweden, Katreen has now lived in Alaska for 10+ years and is currently a resident of Girdwood. Katreen loves to backcountry ski, hike and mountain bike with her dogs, husband and friends. In her work for the Climate & Cryosphere Hazards Program at the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, she is involved with multiple projects that focus on alpine slope instability hazards in Alaska using various remote sensing techniques, field measurements and modeling. Katreen thinks the most rewarding aspects of her job is when her scientific results and data products get used by stakeholders to improve their jobs.

If you’re lucky you’ll get invited to Katreen’s traditional “julbord”. She enjoys celebrating her Swedish culture every once in a while and prefers to do so by sharing traditional dishes (a feast!) with friends and family.

What is community science? Why join CSO?

Katreen doesn’t view [community science], and especially participating in CSO, as a big commitment. She explains: “We always make observations when we wander in the outdoors, so why not quantify and record them, and put them to use!” Since she started working with CSO in 2017, she’s become a more active observer and she gets a kick out of noticing the changes in snowpack from year to year in the backcountry areas she frequently visits. Understanding where the snowpack is shallow can help you identify trigger points for avalanches. Thanks to CSO she also pays more attention to interannually fluctuating snowpacks and their consequences on other important aspects of our lives during the non-winter months, like how snow depth affects forest health and wildfires, salmon runs, blueberry harvests, and groundwater aquifer levels, just to name a few.