Exposing the Big Game

Forget Hunters' Feeble Rationalizations and Trust Your Gut Feelings: Making Sport of Killing Is Not Healthy Human Behavior

Exposing the Big Game

As climate change melts Alaska’s permafrost, roads sink, bridges tilt and greenhouse gases release

Posted on by

Exposing the Big Game's avatarThe Extinction Chronicles

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/as-climate-change-melts-alaskas-permafrost-roads-sink-homes-tilt-and-greenhouse-gases-release/?fbclid=IwAR0NXrNQF17eQk5DvdvsFXiDq_Rm2FSKLMe0Pgxj9joP_84tuBQrtvluKz0

Thawing permafrost has caused a tilt on the pilings that support this bridge on the Nome-Teller Highway, requiring increased maintenance as the Northwest Alaska climate warms. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

A mud delta, near Nome in Northwest Alaska, was created by permafrost melting on a nearby hillside. Layers of silty soil washed into the river, changing the waterway for salmon. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

Stunted cottonwood trees can grow in thin layers of soil above the permafrost. But as permafrost has thawed in Northwest Alaska, retired state Fish and Game biologist Charlie Lean says, the cottonwoods have grown much taller than during his boyhood days in Nome. Back then, they were often stubby, just 10-14 inches high. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

As permafrost thaws in Northwest Alaska, a lone spruce tree finds room to grow in a stretch of tundra outside Nome. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

Teller is a Northwest Alaska coastal community born from a gold rush more than a century ago. Now an Inupiaq village, it faces threats from rising seas and stronger winter storms that have been eroding a bluff. On that bluff, the crosses of a cemetery are crooked due to thawing permafrost. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

In a warming Northwest Alaska climate, maintenance costs are mounting on this 73-mile road that connects Nome to the community of Teller. Permafrost under this route is thawing, causing settling, cracking and sloughing that require more frequent repairs. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

The warming that has caused permafrost to thaw also has reduced the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice. Explorers Mike Horn and Borge Ousland, who is show here, encountered open water and as they made an epic trek this fall to the North Pole and south toward Norway. (Courtesy of Mike Horn)

Permafrost comes in many forms. Here is a view of very icy permafrost, known as yedoma, along the Itkillik River in northern Alaska. (Courtesy of Mikhail Kanevskiy / University of Alaska Fairbanks, Institute of Northern Engineering)

A cliff of icy permafrost is seen along the Itkillik River in northern Alaska. It is being eroded by the river. (Courtesy of Mikhail Kanevskiy / University of Alaska Fairbanks, Institute of Northern Engineering)

Very icy permafrost is exposed along the Itkillik River in northern Alaska. (Courtesy of Mikhail Kanevskiy / University of Alaska Fairbanks, Institute of Northern Engineering)

 

 1 of 10 | Thawing permafrost has caused a tilt on the pilings that support this bridge on the Nome-Teller Highway, requiring increased maintenance as the Northwest Alaska climate warms. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

 

By 

Hal Bernton 
Seattle Times staff reporter

TELLER, Alaska — An unpaved highway runs north out of Nome, carving through more than 70 lonely miles of tundra before dead-ending at this Inupiaq village.

Maintenance crews keep the route open during the summer months. The work has become increasingly costly as a layer of ice and frozen dirt under the road softens into soggy muck, and stretches of road bed crack and…

View original post 451 more words

Leave a comment