The massive 2015 flooding of the Sagavanirktok River in northern Alaska had immediate impacts, including closure of the Dalton Highway for several days, but it also contributed to longer-term ground subsidence in the permafrost-rich region.
The massive 2015 flooding of the Sagavanirktok River in northern Alaska had immediate impacts, including closure of the Dalton Highway for several days, but it also contributed to longer-term ground subsidence in the permafrost-rich region.
That’s the finding by assistant professor Simon Zwieback at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute in a study published Sept. 27 by the journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes.
Zwieback is the paper’s lead author. UAF scientists Mikhail Kanevskiy, Donald Walker, Vladimir Romanovsky and Franz Meyer are among the nine co-authors.
Zwieback, who also teaches at the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics, specializes in using space-borne remote sensing to study the Arctic.
Read more at University of Alaska Fairbanks
Image: Floodwaters flow over and erode the Dalton Highway on May 21, 2015. The flooding contributed to a slow subsiding of ground in the permafrost-rich region. (Photo courtesy of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities)
