Faculty Affairs and Academic Programs
Madison Douglas
Physical Sciences; Math
Earth and Planetary Science
UC Berkeley
Community-based Monitoring of Permafrost Degradation near Kotzebue, Alaska
Climate change is thawing permafrost, causing landscape erosion and liberating carbon that can be released as greenhouse gases and amplify warming. Predicting the magnitude of this permafrost-carbon feedback requires understanding linkages between carbon cycling, surface waters, and sediment transport in the Arctic. This is critical for landscapes containing yedoma, ice- and carbon-rich permafrost that collapses and releases ancient carbon when it thaws. However, models to predict yedoma thaw do not exist, and developing new models that incorporate carbon fluxes requires field measurements of rapid erosion and permafrost collapse. To address this challenge, I propose to establish a community monitoring program in Kotzebue, Alaska to capture a timeseries of water quality measurements and drone imagery in summer 2026. This effort would include trips by Berkeley researchers to Kotzebue to train community members, establish continuous monitoring instrumentation, and conduct outreach. The trips would occur in the spring immediately before ice breakup and in the fall when streams begin to freeze over. Between these trips, local collaborators would collect samples and drone imagery, in particular following summer storms or erosional events. These community-based efforts will quantify water quality and erosion caused by permafrost thaw and build capacity for community members to monitor their lands. Simultaneously, these observations and measurements will be used to develop numerical models for yedoma degradation processes and associated carbon fluxes. These models could then be used to predict local or pan-Arctic erosional hazards and constrain the permafrost-carbon feedback.
