Maamcuk Foss walked along the edge of the Kuskokwim River in Akiak. It was storming out, but she had bigger concerns.
“This is all falling in, this is all new,” Foss said, gesturing toward the bank of the river where big chunks of land had broken off and fallen straight into the water. “Within one week we just probably lost about 20 feet.”
Foss is the liaison for the Permafrost Pathways project in her hometown of Akiak. Scientists from the nonprofit joined Foss last month to measure the erosion along the bank using high resolution GPS so that they can keep track of how much land is melting away into the river. They can also use the data to map where it’s likely to erode further, which can help the community know if homes or other infrastructure are in danger.
The Permafrost Pathways team is doing work like this across multiple Alaska communities where permafrost thaw is causing big problems. Houses and roads are sinking into the ground. River banks, like in Akiak, are disintegrating. Permafrost Pathways started two years ago with the goal of mapping the permafrost thaw and putting that data into the hands of the communities themselves. As human-caused climate change continues to warm the region and the permafrost melts more and more, the project is expanding.
“Permafrost thaw impacts everything,” said Darcy Peter, arctic adaptation lead with Permafrost Pathways. “It impacts housing, electricity, food security, water quality, everything.”
This summer, scientists visited three communities they hadn’t been to yet: Akiachak, Kwethluk, and Nelson Lagoon. They also continued their partnership with several others, including Akiak, doing things like repairing a broken temperature sensor and collecting water samples. All are predominantly Alaska Native communities built on top of ground that has remained frozen for hundreds of years. As that permafrost thaws, the effects can be detrimental.
“When it thaws, it sinks and it gets like muck, like a big muck pit, and so many of their homes are sinking and they’re impacted by flooding,” said Sue Natalley, an ecologist and lead of the Permafrost Pathways project. “If you step off the boardwalk, you’ll fall in above your knee. It’s like quicksand, but mud.”
Jessica Howard
Communities control the data
Permafrost Pathways is funded through the TED Audacious Project, a philanthropic program that is housed by the organization that does TED Talks.
The team at Permafrost Pathways tailors their work to each community’s specific needs. In many communities they send scientists to measure temperatures in the ground and teach locals to collect the data themselves. But other communities have asked for data on erosion or flooding, which are consequences of permafrost thaw.
“Everything we do is owned by the tribes,” Peter said. “All the data that we collect, all the mapping that we do, all the Indigenous knowledge that we hear, it goes straight back to the community. Once we install this scientific equipment, they’re the ones who run it, and check on it, and take the data off. So they’re their own scientists, their own map makers.”
Peter said that it’s important for each community to have data about their permafrost because most will have to make a very difficult decision: whether they can “protect in place” or whether permafrost degradation will force their community to relocate off land many of their families have lived on for generations.
Peter herself is Alaska Native and grew up in Beaver, a small Koyukon village in the Interior that is also affected by permafrost thaw. She said that the idea of leaving home is particularly difficult for Native communities.
“We’re so in touch with the land and we know the land so well,” Peter said. “I know all the surrounding woods, and cricks, and everything surrounding Beaver. It’s just home. I can’t imagine ever leaving that, like, that’s where my grandpa’s-grandpa’s-grandpa’s-grandpa has been, and to have to relocate somewhere else, even if it’s nearby, wouldn’t want to do that ever.”
Moving a village
Nunapitchuk, in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, is another one of the communities that Permafrost Pathways has partnered with. The community recently made the difficult decision to move to a new village site about a mile away.
“It’s like things have gotten so inhabitable and unsafe that they didn’t have a choice but to move,” Peter said.
Jessica Howard
Natali said the village chose a relocation site that they thought would be less affected by warming climates, and then had scientists from Permafrost Pathways evaluate the land using geophysical surveys, a flood model, coring the ground, and other assessments.
“I will say their relocation site that we surveyed, everything we found essentially just agreed with what the community already told us,” Natali said. “They wanted to go to this site because they knew it was higher elevation. They knew it had hard compacted sand. We just drilled a hole in the ground. We’re like, ‘Yes, you guys are right.’”
Peter wasn’t surprised by this.
“Indigenous knowledge is just light years ahead of Western science,” Peter said. “That’s, I think, a big part of this project, too, is to amplify Indigenous knowledge and treat it as real science, because it is.”
Jessica Howard
But, Natali said, there’s also power in pairing Indigenous knowledge with scientific data. Having data can often make getting funding for relocation efforts possible.
“It is a long journey ahead,” Natali said. “There are going to be many other communities who are going to be faced with this.
Natali said that Permafrost Pathways scientists will continue their work, but she hopes the federal government will also step up and provide more comprehensive support to communities most vulnerable to climate change.
