Permafrost grown: Investigating permafrost-agriculture interactions in Alaska Here, we learn about Dr. Melissa Ward Jones, who leads a transdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, co-producing knowledge with farmers to understand these unique agricultural systems better. In 1908, a field was cleared for cultivation in Fairbanks, Alaska, at a U.S. Federal Agricultural Experiment Station (Pewe, 1954) that is now part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). Cultivated potatoes crops provided good yields, however, ten years after land clearing, the field began to sink down and mounds, up to 10 m in diameter and up to 2.5 m high, began to appear (Rockie, 1942). After repeated grading and land leveling, the mounds continued to be redeveloped, leading to the field’s abandonment sometime in the 1920s. Today, this area is a forested walking trail on the UAF campus, and the mounds remain (Figure 1).