Alaskan Permafrost

Although Alaska ('The Great Land' in Aleut) is America's self-styled 'Last Frontier' - it's becoming one of the first states to feel the ecological and economic bite of global warming. It's changing, and rapidly, and villagers that were traditionally pick-up-and-move type people, are now having to count the cost of relocating with the modern infrastructure they've come to rely on. And it's not cheap.

Along certain roads are signs warning you that you cannot step off the road onto the tundra - as any footprints/damage you make may remain for decades in the fragile environment. Today this permafrost is melting, causing villages to sink into the tundra. Additionally, as coastal ice floes melt, waves are getting unrestricted access to batter shorelines - causing rapid erosion.

"This place is sinking," said Joseph Tommy, 48, who was born in Newtok. "If the erosion keeps on coming, we will be in a grave situation."

So once again, Newtok must move, leaving residents and officials grappling with an unprecedented crisis looming over scores of Native villages along Alaska's increasingly battered western coast.

It's no longer a matter of just packing up and going for these once-nomadic people. The crucial difference this time: finding the funds to move or replace millions of public dollars in schools, clinics and local government offices. Replacement costs are beyond the reach of the remote, cash-strapped communities that typically rely on subsistence foods for economic survival -- costs that no single federal or state entity is equipped to shoulder.

"We've become complicated with the rest of the world," Nick Tom, Newtok's former tribal administrator, said as he led visitors through mud and snow, pointing out shifting houses and the crumbled soil fringing the Ninglick. "We can't even move an inch without any money."

It's a problem taking on a new urgency as the effects of climate change escalate in a region many consider the harbinger of global warming. Erosion and flooding are nothing new for seaside and river communities. But many are increasingly vulnerable to melting permafrost and shorter periods of shorefast ice that historically protected them from powerful ocean storms....

"Over the last decade the pace of retreat of the ice is actually ahead of climate models," Walsh said. "The changes we're seeing are more rapid. We could be in for some interesting times."...

Rural Alaska is crumbling.

Winds and water continually wear away at scores of Native communities. Every year whole chunks of land simply wash away.

And this vast place is eroding in other ways too....

Native languages are fading. Youngsters in even the most remote villages weigh their lives against the hype and glamour blasting from their TVs and computers. - Anchorage Daily News

As grave as these problems are for the villagers concerned, the melting permafrost also brings a chain reaction of events we should be aware of. Tundra, which is said to cover over 10% of the earth's surface, is a natural carbon sink - sequestering huge volumes of CO2, estimated to be a third of all CO2 stored in the earth. As the permafrost melts, the soil's 'metabolism' speeds up - micro-organisms break down decaying matter faster and release vast amounts of CO2, and worse, methane, into the atmosphere at an accelerated rate.

Permafrost is land that stays frozen throughout the year and there are vast expanses of it in the Antarctic and the northernmost Arctic.

For thousands of years, the permafrost has mopped up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stored it in its soil, mainly because the decomposition of dead vegetation is extremely slow in such low temperatures.

However, with rising temperatures in the Arctic, microbes decompose dead plant matter at a higher rate, releasing carbon dioxide that then adds to the problem of global warming.

U.N. scientists say the vicious cycle appears to have already begun. - Space.com (back in 2001)

During the short summer tundra's plants take in carbon dioxide, sunlight and water in the process of photosynthesis. Plants normally give off carbon dioxide after they die and decompose. But because of the short, cool summer and freezing winter temperatures, plants can't decompose. Remains of plants thousands of years old have been found in the tundra permafrost. In this way the tundra traps the carbon dioxide and removes it from the atmosphere. Today global warming is melting the permafrost of the tundra and every year several feet of tundra are lost. As the tundra melts, the plant mass decomposes and returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. - Blue Planet Biomes

Further Reading:

• The New Yorker. The Climate of Man Part I
• U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change. Overview: Alaska
• MSNBC: Native Alaskan's List Warming Impacts
• BBC: Earth's Permafrost Starts to Squelch
• BBC: Alaska Natives Left Out in the Cold