Infrastructure and Community Resilience in the Changing Arctic: Status, Challenges, and Research Needs

Temporary coastal erosion control using supersacks in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, August 28, 2019. Photo: Louise Farquharson

Permafrost thaw is one of the world’s most pressing climate problems, already disrupting lifestyles, livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems in the north, and threatening to spill beyond the boundaries of the Arctic as our planet continues to warm. To examine the effects of permafrost degradation, and increase our understanding of what this phenomenon means for the future of the region (and the world), The Arctic Institute’s new two-part permafrost series aims to analyze the topic from scientific, security, legal, and personal perspectives. The second installment of our series features eight new articles on permafrost degradation and its effects on Arctic life, research, and the world at large. But before, check out the seven articles from our first installment, starting with the Intro.

The Arctic Institute Permafrost Series 2021

• Agents and the Arctic: The Case for Increased Use of Agent-Based Modeling to Study Permafrost
• Drunken Forests: Teaching About Permafrost Thaw Through Personal Experience
• The Global Carbon Budget and Permafrost Feedback Loops in the Arctic
• Meltdown – The Permafrost that Holds the Arctic Together is Falling Apart
• Reducing Individual Costs of Permafrost Thaw Damage in Canada’s Arctic
• North but Maybe Not North Enough: Adapting Sub-Arctic Communities and Infrastructure to a Changing Climate
• Climate Change and Geopolitics: Monitoring of a Thawing Permafrost
• Infrastructure and Community Resilience in the Changing Arctic: Status, Challenges, and Research Needs
• Permafrost Thaw in the Warming Arctic: Final Remarks

The Arctic is currently experiencing rapid widespread environmental upheaval driven by climate change that is unprecedented on a millennial timescale. Thawing permafrost and accelerated coastal dynamics are disrupting existing natural and built environments and threatening communities, industries, and cultures in circumpolar countries. Such rapid change also affects our ability to defend and secure the Arctic and its Peoples. Permafrost, ground material that remains at or below 0°C for at least two consecutive years, is a critical component of the cryosphere and the Arctic system. Now, permafrost is warming at increasing rates. Figure 1 shows the rapid warming trends measured in permafrost at six Northern Alaska locations over the past four decades. Widespread degradation of permafrost has already caused significant damage to infrastructure throughout the Arctic, creating a diverse and widespread engineering challenge.

Another engineering challenge, one that will require a multidisciplinary approach, is that of permafrost coastal erosion. Permafrost coasts make up 34 percent of the world’s coastlines. In the past 50 years, Arctic coastal erosion has been accelerating, in part due to permafrost thaw.¹⁾Jones, B. M., A. M. Irrgang, L. M. Farquharson, H. Lantuit, D. Whalen, S. Ogorodov, M. Grigoriev, C. Tweedie, A. E. Gibbs, M. C. Strzelecki, A. Baranskaya, N. Belova, A. Sinitsyn, A. Kroon, A. Maslakov, G. Vieira, G. Grosse, P. Overduin, I. Nitze, C. Maio, J. Overbeck, M. Bendixen, P. Zagórski, and V. E. Romanovsky. (2020) Coastal Permafrost Erosion. Arctic Report Card 2020, R. L Thoman, J. Richter-Menge, and M.L. Druckenmiller, Eds. https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/27897 Over the period of 1950 to 2000, the mean Arctic-wide permafrost-affected coastal erosion rate was 0.5 meters/year (m/yr) while the permafrost coasts along the US and Canadian Beaufort Sea experienced higher erosion rates of 1.1 m/yr.²⁾Jones, B. M., A. M. Irrgang, L. M. Farquharson, H. Lantuit, D. Whalen, S. Ogorodov, M. Grigoriev, C. Tweedie, A. E. Gibbs, M. C. Strzelecki, A. Baranskaya, N. Belova, A. Sinitsyn, A. Kroon, A. Maslakov, G. Vieira, G. Grosse, P. Overduin, I. Nitze, C. Maio, J. Overbeck, M. Bendixen, P. Zagórski, and V. E. Romanovsky. (2020) Coastal Permafrost Erosion. Arctic Report Card 2020, R. L Thoman, J. Richter-Menge, and M.L. Druckenmiller, Eds. https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/27897 Erosion along ocean shores and riverbanks not only threatens communities located there but also national infrastructure designed to serve a broad set of users both in circumpolar regions and throughout the world.³⁾Hughes, Z. (2019) How Climate Change Is Affecting Alaska’s Military Radar Stations, National Public Radio (NPR), February 25, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/02/25/697615977/how-climate-change-is-affecting-alaskas-military-radar-stations. Accessed on March 10, 2021. As an example, more than 85 percent of Alaska Native villages are impacted by coastal erosion and flooding ⁴⁾U.S. Government Accountability Office (USGAO) (2009) Alaska native villages: Limited progress has been made on relocating villages threatened by flooding and erosion. Report to Congressional Committees GAO-09-551, U.S. Government Accountability Office, Washington, D.C., 53 p. because they were constructed in dynamic coastal environments. Relocating these villages, due to accelerated erosion from events such as intense storms,⁵⁾Tsui, E. (2021) Reducing Individual Costs of Permafrost Thaw Damage in Canada’s Arctic. The Arctic Institute. https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/reducing-individual-costs-permafrost-thaw-damage-canada-arctic/?cn-reloaded=1. Published on March 4, 2021. Accessed on March 20, 2021. is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars. Infrastructure damage due to permafrost degradation and coastal erosion also impacts the operations of industries that rely on natural resource extraction, security and humanitarian assistance agencies, and the defense enterprises of arctic nations. Collectively, the threat of permafrost thaw and coastal erosion can destabilize the nation’s security, economy, and well-being.

Degradation and erosion of permafrost have induced substantial damage to coastal infrastructure and facilities across the Arctic, including Alaska. For example, in 2004 and 2005, several consecutive large storms (30-year events) eroded the shoreline of Kivalina, threatening both the school and the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative’s tank farm and eventually forcing the community to plan for relocation.⁶⁾U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). (2009) Alaska Baseline Erosion Assessment: Study Findings and Technical Report. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. In 2016, erosion along the permafrost-affected banks of the Kokolik River in Point Lay resulted in the drainage of the community’s main freshwater source.⁷⁾NSB (2017). Point Lay Comprehensive Plan for 2017-2037. North Slope Borough (NSB), Barrow, Alaska. In September 2017, Utqiaġvik was hit by an Arctic storm, which caused over $6 million in damage to public structures and was declared a federal disaster.⁸⁾Koenig, R. (2017) Disaster declared for North Slope Borough damage from fall storm. KTOO Public Media, Alaska. Figure 2 shows a temporary coastal erosion control measure using large sandbags (supersacks), which were being destroyed by the storm. Permafrost thaw reduces the bearing capacity of piles and footings for civil infrastructure such as residences, public buildings, and elevated utility lines. Even when the ground temperature rises to –1° or –2° C without permafrost thawing, failures may occur due to the reduced shear strength of soil.⁹⁾Williams, P. J., and Wallis, M. (1995) Permafrost and climate change: geotechnical implications. Philosophical Transactions: Physical Sciences and Engineering, 352: 347-358. Uneven surfaces created by differential thaw settlement can affect the functionality and serviceability of aboveground power lines and pipe systems for water, sewage, and fuel. Permafrost degradation is projected to raise the maintenance cost of the public infrastructures in Alaska by U.S. $3.6–6.1 billion by 2030 and another U.S. $5.6–7.6 billion by 2080.¹⁰⁾U.S. Global Change Research Program. (2009) Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. Washington, DC. The costs of permafrost thaw are borne on individual families as well as the society at large.¹¹⁾Nerberg, S. (2021) Meltdown – The Permafrost that Holds the Arctic Together is Falling Apart. The Arctic Institute. https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/meltdown-permafrost-arctic-together-falling-apart/. Published on March 2, 2021. Accessed on March 20, 2021. A recent synthesis of the prevention and control measures for coastal erosion in northern high-latitude communities showed the cost of coastal erosion control measures has continued to increase in the past four decades.¹²⁾Liew, M., Xiao, M., Jones, B.M., Farquharson, L.M., and Romanovsky, V.E. (2020) Prevention and control measures for coastal erosion in northern high-latitude communities: a systematic review based on Alaskan case studies. Environmental Research Letters. 15(9) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9387

As with many other societies on Earth, Arctic peoples have a history of being able to adapt to diverse and challenging environments. Adaptation and resilience in extreme environmental challenges are part of their culture; but when rates of changes are accelerated adaptation becomes much more difficult.¹³⁾Berkes, F., and Armitage, D. (2010) Co-management institutions, knowledge, and learning: adapting to change in the Arctic. Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 34(1): 109-131; Berkes, F., and Jolly, D. (2002) Adapting to climate change: social-ecological resilience in a Canadian western Arctic community. Conservation Ecology, 5(2): 18. Arctic peoples face the added threats of warming and thawing of permafrost, a trajectory that will continue to affect almost all aspects of lives in the Arctic communities. Mitigating the effects of thawing permafrost diverts resources away from other critical needs, affects social networks, and changes subsistence practices, which are already modified due to globalization. Beyond the effects on infrastructure, culturally important aspects of heritage sites (e.g., burial grounds, sacred landforms, and iconic flora and fauna) as well as more pragmatic structures such as ice cellars, are under threat of loss.¹⁴⁾Jones, B. M., K. M. Hinkel, C. D. Arp, and W. R. Eisner. (2008) Modern erosion rates and loss of coastal features and sites, Beaufort Sea coastline, Alaska. Arctic 61(4): 361-372; Irrgang, A.M., Lantuit, H., Gordon, R.R., Piskor, A. and Manson, G.K. (2019) Impacts of past and future coastal changes on the Yukon coast—threats for cultural sites, infrastructure, and travel routes. Arctic Science, 5(2): 107-126; Jorgenson, M.T., Yoshikawa, K., Kanevskiy, M., Shur, Y., Romanovsky, V., Marchenko, S., Grosse, G., Brown, J., and Jones, B. (2008) Permafrost characteristics of Alaska. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Permafrost, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 29: 121-122. Location-based cultural heritage is critical to sustaining cultures in a rapidly changing world.¹⁵⁾Rockman, M. (2015) An NPS framework for addressing climate change with cultural resources. The George Wright Forum, 32(1): 37-50; Samuels, K.L. (2016) The cadence of climate: heritage proxies and social change. Journal of Social Archaeology, 16(2): 142-163. When such heritage is lost it puts a strain on the very elements of resilience that have served indigenous communities well for more than a millennium.¹⁶⁾Jensen, A.M. (2017) Threatened heritage and community archaeology on Alaska’s North Slope. In Public Archaeology and Climate Change. T. Dawson, C. Nimura, E. Lopez-Romero, and M-Y. Daire, eds. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Challenges and Research Needs in Understanding and Addressing the Complex and Interdependent Processes and Impacts

Predicting how permafrost coastlines will change in the coming decades is complicated by the high variability of this system already is at present — even without the influence of climate change. Forcing mechanisms, such as wave regime and sediment supply, act across many different temporal and spatial scales while sea ice, Arctic Ocean storms, tides, and constantly changing wave regimes interact with and influence ice-rich bluffs, deltas, lagoons, and barrier islands. This creates a dynamic system with a diverse and constantly varying morphology. Further complicating the issue is the fact that Arctic coasts represent a key intersection between natural and built environments and social systems that are changing rapidly due to climate and land use changes at local to global scales.¹⁷⁾Fritz, M., Vonk, J.E., and Lantuit, H. (2017) Collapsing arctic coastlines. Nature Climate Change, 7, 6. Although coastal erosion in permafrost regions of the Arctic has been documented for decades,¹⁸⁾Hume, J.D., and Schalk, M. (1967) Shoreline processes near Barrow, Alaska: a comparison of the normal and the catastrophic. Arctic, 86-103; Hequette, A., and Barnes, P.W. (1990) Coastal retreat and shoreface profile variations in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. Marine Geology, 91: 113–132; Jones, B.M., Arp, C.D., Jorgenson, M.T., Hinkel, K.M., Schmutz, J.A., and Flint, P.L. (2009) Increase in the rate and uniformity of coastline erosion in Arctic Alaska. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L03503, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL036205. its social and ecological impacts have only recently been amplified and increasingly recognized due to the accelerating recession of shoreline.¹⁹⁾Jones, B.M., Farquharson, L.M., Baughman, C.A., Buzard, R.M., Arp, C.D., Grosse, G., Bull, D.L., Guenther, F., Urban, F., Kasper, J.L., Frederick, J.M., Thomas, M., Jones, C., Mota, A., Dallimore, S., Tweedie, C., Maio, C., Mann, D.H., Richmond, B., Gibbs, A., Xiao, M., Sachs, T., Iwahana, G., Kanevskiy, M., and Romanovsky, V.E. (2018) A decade of high spatiotemporal satellite image observations highlight complexities associated with coastal permafrost bluff erosion in the Arctic. Environmental Research Letters. 13, 115001; Farquharson, L.M., Mann, D.H., Swanson, D.K., Jones, B.M., Buzard, R.M., and Jordan, J.W. (2018) Temporal and spatial variability in coastline response to declining sea-ice in northwest Alaska. Marine Geology, 404: 71-83; Irrgang, A.M., Lantuit, H., Manson, G.K., Günther, F., Grosse, G., and Overduin, P.P. (2018) Variability in rates of coastal change along the Yukon coast, 1951 to 2015. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 123(4): 779-800. Recent observations suggest that the factors driving increasing rates of coastal change are complex and involve many nonlinearities.²⁰⁾Jones, B.M., Farquharson, L.M., Baughman, C.A., Buzard, R.M., Arp, C.D., Grosse, G., Bull, D.L., Guenther, F., Urban, F., Kasper, J.L., Frederick, J.M., Thomas, M., Jones, C., Mota, A., Dallimore, S., Tweedie, C., Maio, C., Mann, D.H., Richmond, B., Gibbs, A., Xiao, M., Sachs, T., Iwahana, G., Kanevskiy, M., and Romanovsky, V.E. (2018) A decade of high spatiotemporal satellite image observations highlight complexities associated with coastal permafrost bluff erosion in the Arctic. Environmental Research Letters. 13, 115001; Farquharson, L.M., Mann, D.H., Swanson, D.K., Jones, B.M., Buzard, R.M., and Jordan, J.W. (2018) Temporal and spatial variability in coastline response to declining sea-ice in northwest Alaska. Marine Geology, 404: 71-83; Irrgang, A.M., Lantuit, H., Manson, G.K., Günther, F., Grosse, G., and Overduin, P.P. (2018) Variability in rates of coastal change along the Yukon coast, 1951 to 2015. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 123(4): 779-800. As such, understanding how ongoing climate change may influence this dynamic system is a significant challenge as permafrost warming and thawing, changes in ocean temperature, ecological feedback, financial factors, and social factors all interact over different spatial–temporal scales.

Across the Arctic, policymakers, planners, and infrastructure developers currently rely on data that are outdated, sparse, and do not include state-of-the-art knowledge. To date, pan-Arctic geohazard mapping has only been conducted at a relatively coarse spatial resolution of 1 km ²¹⁾Hjort, J., Karjalainen, O., Aalto, J., Westermann, S., Romanovsky, V.E., Nelson, F.E., Etzelmüller, B., and Luoto, M. (2018) Degrading permafrost puts Arctic infrastructure at risk by mid-century. Nature Communications, 9(1): 5147. and there is an urgent need for mapping at high spatial resolution (to support engineering design) as well as an assessment of how changes in circumpolar permafrost conditions could affect infrastructure.²²⁾AMAP (2017) Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA), Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Oslo, Norway. Owing to the increasing economic and environmental relevance of the Arctic,²³⁾Larsen, J.N., Anisimov, O.A., Constable, A., Hollowed, A.B., Maynard, N., Prestrud, P., Prowse, T.D., and Stone, J.M.R. (2014) Polar regions. In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. IPCC, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1567-1612. it is important to gain detailed knowledge about risk exposure in areas of current and future infrastructure.²⁴⁾Melvin, A.M., Larsen, P., Boehlert, B., Neumann, J.E., Chinowsky, P., Espinet, X., Martinich, J., Baumann, M.S., Rennels, L., Bothner, A., Nicolsky, D.J., and Marchenko, S.S. (2016) Climate change damages to Alaska public infrastructure and the economics of proactive adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(2): E122-E131. A decision support tool that leverages advanced analytics coupled with local and place-based knowledge, from a diverse set of stakeholders, is needed to provide defense, industry, and community engineers and planners with guidance for infrastructure adaptation and design in the dynamic Arctic environment.²⁵⁾Brady, M.B. and Leichenko, R. (2020) The impacts of coastal erosion on Alaska’s North Slope communities: A co-production assessment of land use damages and risks. Polar Geography, 43(4): 259-279.

To achieve infrastructure and community resilience, convergent research is needed to understand the complex interrelationships and mutual impacts of continued climate change in the Arctic among the following components: permafrost degradation and coastal erosion, civil infrastructure and development, and community well-being and sociodemographic and cultural resilience. There are five barriers of developing solid knowledge base for convergent research, including: (1) lack of understanding of the interdependent and complex processes of climate change, permafrost degradation, soil-infrastructure and human-infrastructure interactions; (2) uncertainties and quantification of climate change and system responses; (3) heterogeneity of ground materials; (4) lack of in-situ and long-term data to fully understand these complex system responses particularly at the decadal sale and in extreme environments; (5) fully engaging the entire span of communities who have local and place-based knowledge, including millennia of practicing adaptation and resilience.

A Current Research Effort to Advance Understanding of Infrastructure and Community Resilience in the Changing Arctic

IIn order to understand the complex interrelationships and mutual impacts of continued climate change in the Arctic, a convergent research team is formed by the authors and supported by National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) program and Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet) program. Four specific research questions will be addressed by the NNA project. (1) What is the rate and magnitude of permafrost degradation and the associated land loss in the Arctic Alaskan coastal region and what are the key mechanisms driving these processes? (2) How will permafrost degradation and the associated land loss affect infrastructure presently and in the future? (3) What are the anthropological and cultural impacts of permafrost coastal erosion and permafrost degradation on coastal communities? (4) What are the quantitative impacts of permafrost degradation, coastal erosion, and infrastructure disruptions on sociodemographic resilience? (5) How should Arctic coastal communities adapt to future and continued climate change, permafrost degradation and coastal erosion?

The 5-year research project will yield the following intellectual products.

1. A thermal model with high-spatial resolution (30 m) to evaluate and predict the rate, extent, and mechanisms of permafrost degradation in the next century for the Alaska North Slope Borough (NSB) and the maximum entropy principle model (MaxEnt, a machine learning algorithm) to estimate the future rate of bluff erosion and thermokarst development for four study sites in NSB.
2. An infrastructure hazard map and model of the Alaska NSB under the effects of permafrost degradation and coastal erosion over the next century. The hazard map will provide dynamic downscaling of data and projections that represent current and future Arctic conditions. The model will integrate climate and environmental variables into engineering design parameters for load-bearing capacity and time-dependent settlement and will have web-based interactive visualization capabilities.
3. Knowledge co-produced with Arctic indigenous communities on the most urgent issues relating to permafrost degradation and coastal erosion and flooding, as well as observations of these phenomena over an extended period of time. This knowledge will be used to inform the modeling efforts and will be summarized in the form of reports to be publicly available to the communities.
4. A quantitative assessment model of sociodemographic resilience of Arctic communities to permafrost degradation and coastal land loss. Such a model will allow a range of users to have greater confidence that investments made ahead of permafrost degradation will minimize negative trade-offs in terms of economics and community well-being and health.
5. A holistic predictive model that informs the adaptation of local civil infrastructure and the sociodemographic and cultural resilience of Arctic communities under ongoing permafrost degradation and coastal erosion. The ultimate goal of this holistic model is to advance Arctic prosperity and security locally, regionally, and globally.²⁶⁾Hicks, S., McComb, C., and Alessa, L. (2021) Agents and the Arctic: The Case for Increased Use of Agent-Based Modeling to Study Permafrost. The Arctic Institute. https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/agents-arctic-case-increased-use-agent-based-modeling-study-permafrost/. Published on February 18, 2021. Accessed on March 20, 2021. This allows us to forecast the adaptations necessary for civil infrastructure to sustain and for social systems to prosper under future and continued climate change and permafrost degradation. The model will also provide transformative knowledge and tools for policymakers and decision-makers to assess the effectiveness, and trade-offs, of potential technological advancements.

Our work is critical to inform future investments toward adaptations of social systems and the built environment to the rapid changes currently occurring in the Arctic. Findings from this research will inform science-based decisions and policymaking in response to ongoing environmental changes. Such informed decision-making will advance economic prosperity, promote human health, and preserve the security of the United States and the entire Arctic region.

Summary and Conclusions

A warming Arctic is driving rapid changes in both the natural and built environments; it is challenging the resilience of social and cultural systems and it is demonstrating that a resilient Arctic is a resilient world. Our work is ensuring that we can foresee the consequences of these threats and the economic, social and security consequences and provide guidance for mitigation and adaptation. The effort undertaken by the authors to advance understanding of infrastructure and community resilience in the changing Arctic is one of the first of its kind and draws on the diverse skillsets of not only the scientists but also the broad range of collaborating communities, partners, and knowledge holders. Data from this effort will inform intergovernmental and international collaboration and identify the types of investments needed to develop innovative engineering solutions, with the goal to achieve resilient infrastructure and communities in a rapidly changing Arctic.

Acknowledgement

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under grants ICER-1927718, ICER-1927708, ICER-1927713, ICER-1927715, OISE-1927137, and OISE-1927553. Any recommendations or conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Government.

Ming Xiao co-authored the article with Lilian Alessa, Louise M. Farquharson, Dmitry Nicolsky, Benjamin M. Jones, Vladimir E. Romanovsky, Anne Jensen, Christopher McComb, Xiong Zhang, Min Liew and Xiaohang Ji.