Kenji Yoshikawa drills a hole to monitor permafrost
in the Seward Peninsula village of Wales.
Photo by Ned Rozell
This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
Fifteen days, 15 villages, more than 800 miles traveled by snowmachine, and Kenji Yoshikawa’s spring permafrost tour, phase 1, is complete.
From Emmonak, a village at the Yukon’s mouth where he found no permafrost, to Shishmaref, a village just south of the Arctic Circle with what he considers “cold” permafrost, Yoshikawa now has a better idea of what lies beneath western Alaska. This understanding is just in time to help other permafrost researchers flesh out a permafrost map of Alaska in time for a summer conference here in Fairbanks.
For the record, Yoshikawa found no permafrost where he drilled in villages at the mouth of the Yukon–Emmonak and Kotlik. Farther north, in Stebbins and St. Michael, he found permafrost, including “very warm” permafrost at St. Michael.
“This will be a perfect location to watch for changes in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said of St. Michael.