Melissa Ward Jones is a Research Assistant Professor in the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She completed her B.Sc. (2012), M.Sc. (2016) and Ph.D. (2020) in the Department of Geography at McGill University, Canada.
Melissa is a permafrost scientist and geographer interested in the causes (system components such as climate and land cover) and system responses (e.g., thaw subsidence) of permafrost landscapes.
Her work focuses on permafrost systems in the continuous permafrost zone of the Arctic and permafrost-agriculture interactions primarily in the discontinuous permafrost zone of Alaska. Melissa leads the Permafrost Grown Project, a five year, 3 USD million project funded by the US National Science Foundation.
Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research Editors’ Choice Award
The 2024 Editors’ Choice Award honors the paper: “Socioecological dynamics of diverse global permafrost-agroecosystems under environmental change”by Melissa Ward Jones et al. in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 56(1).
Melissa has extensive field experience, including remote winter and summer camping, and has completed over 15 arctic field expeditions in places such as Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere Islands, Canada, Svalbard, Norway, and throughout Alaska, USA. Melissa is an advocate for making science and fieldwork more family-friendly and has been doing fieldwork with her daughter since her daughter was two months old.
Melissa has worked with Arctic logistic companies to increase access to housing and transportation opportunities for researchers with childcare responsibilities during fieldwork. Recently, she championed the creation of the US Permafrost Association Family Care Program, launched in 2024 to provide caregiver grants to permafrost researchers.
