All over Alaska, perennially frozen ground, or permafrost, is melting. During a panel discussion at the Arctic Encounter Symposium in April, an ecologist said the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta is set to lose nearly all of its permafrost in the next two decades. And a warming climate is to blame.
“It’s bad news,” said Sue Natali, a Senior Scientist and leader of the Permafrost Pathways Initiative at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. The goal of the initiative is to help develop strategies to manage and adapt to the enormous impact permafrost thaw is having on Y-K Delta communities. “It’s worse if you don’t know, it’s worse if you don’t plan and it’s worse if you’re not part of the planning process," she said.
Her team was in Nunapitchuk this spring to sample the permafrost there. It’s a village that sits on a stretch of tundra about 25 miles west of Bethel. Natali and her colleagues are working with the community to identify ground that can support a relocation of the village.
“Not all the ground will completely sink… there are places that are not as ice rich as others and that’s what we’re working to do right now, to figure out where are those places, mapping those places and getting that information into the hands of the communities so that they can start that planning now,” said Natali. She made her comments during a panel discussion on the global impacts of a changing Arctic during the annual Arctic Encounter Symposium.
When permafrost melts, it doesn’t only cause the ground to sink and shift. She said melting permafrost’s impact isn’t confined to not only shifting, sinking, and waterlogged ground. Natali said the global impact of melting permafrost and a warming Arctic is greatly underestimated. “It’s gonna make droughts worse, it’s gonna make sea levels higher, it’s gonna make whatever the warming impact on where you live worse, so [...] we're not accounting for this additionality that’s coming from the Arctic, so I do think the messaging needs to be a little bit louder,” she said.
Nunapitchuk is only one of nearly 150 villages that are facing partial and full relocations due to deteriorating permafrost and climate change driven environmental threats. Natali’s team plans to spend more time on the Y-K Delta this summer sampling permafrost and working on ways to pinpoint more stable ground in the region.
