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Amy Martin

Amy Martinis the founder and executive producer of Threshold, a podcast and public radio program. Each season, Threshold takes a deep dive into one story of pivotal change in the natural world. In 2017, Outside Online named Threshold one of the best new podcasts of year, and the Montana Broadcasters Association awarded it the best non-commercial radio program of the year.The first season of Threshold told the story of the American bison. The second season takes listeners to all eight countries of the Arctic.In addition to producing Threshold, Amy files stories for NPR’s All Things Considered, PRI’s The World, and other outlets. In 2016, she was selected for the Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2014, she was chosen to give a TEDx talk at the University of Montana.  Amy was raised on an Iowa farm and has lived in Missoula, Montana since 1999.

A red helicopter is shown landed on the Greenland ice sheet with team of three professors and three students unload their gear.

PHOTOS: Up close and personal with Greenland’s massive ice sheet

The Big Melt

Researchers on Greenland’s ice sheet are trying to find out more about our planet and the future implications with rising seas. It’s also spectacularly beautiful and surreal.

Three people walk across ground covered in ice and snow as the horizon stretches behind them.

As Greenland’s ice sheet melts, scientists push to learn ‘how fast’

The Big Melt
A large oil tanker docks amid ice and snow in the Arctic. On the side, the ship's name is written in Russian characters.

An environmental newspaper fights for press freedom in the Russian Arctic

The Big Melt
portrait

As the Arctic warms up, a ‘new ocean’ is bringing new commerce to the top of the world

The Big Melt
sea ice

Ice is us: Alaska Natives face the demise of the Arctic ice pack

The Big Melt
child

The Arctic’s Sámi people push for a sustainable Norway

The Big Melt

After centuries on the margins, the Indigenous Sámi of the Arctic regions of Scandinavia are starting to reassert their cultural identity. And they say the world can’t solve the climate crisis without perspectives like theirs.

A sun sets behind a cloud over a grey body of water

Arctic permafrost is starting to thaw. Here’s why we should all care.

The Big Melt

Just how quickly will billions of tons of carbon locked up in the Arctic’s melting permafrost be released into the atmosphere? Scientists in the Arctic say finding out could be a matter of survival.

A person walks through a puddle in Shismaref, Alaska.

An Alaskan village is falling into the sea. Washington is looking the other way.

The Big Melt

Shishmaref, Alaska, home to a tightly knit Iñpuiat community of 600 people, is ground zero for climate change in the Arctic. What happens here could foreshadow the fates of other US coastal communities. Why won’t Washington pay attention?

A large concrete sphere sits on a brown hill overlooking a slate blue sea.

In Iceland, a shifting sculpture for a changing Arctic  

The Big Melt

A sculpture in Iceland marks the location of the Arctic Circle — at least the circle’s location this year, because it turns out that the Arctic Circle doesn’t stay in one place. It’s a suggestion of how difficult it is to pin down anything in the Arctic.

Sámi renideer herder Reiulf Aleksandersen and his son build a fence for gathering their herd on Rooksavardi, or Red Mountain, in far northern Norway.

This family is already being hurt by climate change. They might also be hurt by a solution.

Environment

Sámi reindeer-herding families in northern Scandinavia are being hit hard by the impacts of climate change. But some may also suffer from an effort to help address climate change — a big wind farm, being built right through their herding grounds.