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Story Publication logo December 9, 2015

Thawing Permafrost Across the Arctic, in Pictures

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Russia United states
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Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
English

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Thawing Arctic Soils: A Tenuous Present and a Dangerous Future

The arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. This project explores how the soil in...

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A thawing ice cellar forces Russian meteorologists at the Ambarchik weather station on the shore of the Arctic ocean to install a chest freezer to store food. Image by Eli Kintisch.Russia, 2015.
On one side of a bedroom in the Ambarchik station is one type of wall decoration. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
And another type on the opposite side. Meteorologists spend months at this remote outpost, site of a Soviet-era gulag. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
Scientists call this arctic forest, ravaged by fire, 'Hellhole.' As more and more northern forests burn, researchers want to know whether fire will speed the destabilization of the permafrost, releasing massive bubbles of carbon. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
Leonid is a fisherman who lives in a house between a lake and a small river near Cherskiy Russia. He will soon have to move because thawing permafrost will cause a release of water that will destroy his home. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
Boats, nets and various bit of fishing gear adorn Leonid's sprawling home, which will soon be washed away. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
In 1980, Sergey Zimov and his colleagues created the Northeast Science Station in two small wooden buildings near Cherskiy, in far northeast Siberia. The scientists have made important discoveries about the thawing Arctic. Image courtesy of Sergey Zimov.
Ecologist Sergey Zimov has studied the decaying Arctic permafrost for decades, and has a plan to preserve it with millions of herbivores. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
Zimov has created a nature preserve called Pleistocene Park. Here, in some of the harshest, coldest conditions on earth, researchers are seeing how horses, oxen, moose and other herbivores can tend grasslands and protect permafrost. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
Lying below the vast tundra and taiga of Siberia lies frozen soil called permafrost, some of the most carbon-rich soil in the world. Here Nikita Zimov shows students a tunnel he has built to study the permafrost, roughly 10 meters below the ground surface. Image by Eli Kintisch. Russia, 2015.
Midnight sun over the Arctic ocean in Barrow, Alaska. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Whaling is the cultural heart of the Inupiat community here. Muktuk, made up of whale skin and blubber, is a favorite treat and a lifesaver for hungry hunters out on the tundra. Here it's food for a team of dogsled dogs. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Before a workout the dogs are raring to go. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Same group after a few miles hauling an ATV; now they're serene and pooped. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Archeological sites by the Arctic ocean hold valuable clues about Inupiat cultural heritage. But with less ice growing each fall to protect the coastline, erosion is destroying countless valuable sites. Archeologist Anne Jensen has endeavored to protect such sites. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Walakpa is a disappearing coastal archeological site that Native Alaskans have used to hunt and camp for thousands of years. But coastal erosion is removing the soil that tells their stories. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
In July 2015, Jensen led a team of five scientists in a five-day effort to preserve soil from the site for future study, since a strong storm could wash artifacts away forever. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Barrow is dotted with ice cellars, which use the cold temperature of the permafrost to preserve frozen meat. Price Leavitt, a Barrow construction contractor and subsistence hunter, checks on the cellar he built four years ago. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Bags of walrus meat cover the snow on the floor of Price Leavitt's ice cellar. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.
Beneath the Barrow's frozen ground is the three-mile-long Utilidor system, which provides running water to the town's roughly 4,000 residents. A few inches of water sit on the floor of the tunnel in places where the frozen ground beneath the town is thawing a bit. Image by Eli Kintisch. Alaska, 2015.

Permafrost is thawing all over the Arctic. Eli Kintisch spent a month in the summer of 2015 exploring the implications of the thawing ground in Siberia and Alaska. Researchers on both sides of the Bering strait are struggling to understand the implications for their communities—and the planet.

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