Category: News Feeds

Florida gets a lot of attention for its sinkholes, especially when they swallow cars and entire houses. But its sinkhole risk has nothing on Alaska’s.

Much of Alaska’s soil is permafrost – ground that remains below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) for at least two consecutive years. It is often rich with ice, but when that ice melts, the ground can collapse. As temperatures rise, that’s happening more often across the Arctic.

The consequences are the same as in Florida: substantial property damage as the land that buildings, roads and pipes were built on sinks.

Yet despite the high potential for damage, up-to-date maps of permafrost thaw that could help Arctic residents and community leaders prepare are often rare. To fill in the gap, our team, led by hydrologists and data scientists, created an interactive website to track permafrost thaw in near-real time across the Arctic, using a unique quality of the Arctic’s version of the sinkhole.

Clear signs of permafrost thaw

There is no way to directly measure permafrost without digging into it, but there are signs to watch for.

When ice-rich permafrost thaws, the ground surface subsides, creating what are known as thermokarst ponds – depressions that fill with water. Much of the Arctic has become dotted by ponds and lakes that formed this way, as temperatures there rise at two to three times the global average rate.

Looking at satellite imagery, it’s easy to spot these lakes. Watching how they change over time can then provide clues to how the permafrost is changing below.

When big lakes disappear overnight

Sometimes, the same process that started the sinkhole can form new stream channels that drain the lake, leaving a circular basin of bare ground behind. A lake that is several hundred meters long might have taken a millennium to form, yet permafrost thaw triggered by one unusually warm summer can completely drain the same lake in just a few hours.

When a lake abruptly disappears, that’s a strong indicator that the ice-rich permafrost has thawed. Disappearing lakes also provide a way to monitor permafrost over wide areas and track where thawing is most active.

Aerial photos starting from the late 1940s and satellite imagery that became available in the 1970s have helped scientists map what the Arctic’s permafrost landscapes looked like in the past, including where its permafrost lakes were and were not.

Using artificial intelligence, scientists can then quickly analyze new images from across large swaths of the Arctic for signs of permafrost changes, such as the appearance of new ponds or the disappearance of old ones.

An international team of scientists we work with through the Permafrost Discovery Gateway has mapped and now actively monitors over 4 million lakes across the Arctic, including 70 million thermokarst ponds – also known as trough ponds – across the Alaska tundra.

Detecting signs of permafrost thaw in those landscapes can help communities plan for changes to their environment. The new maps can show where land is underlain by ice-rich permafrost, meaning bad choices for building sites, and where the frozen soil has less ice, likely indicating it’s safer for building sites.

Permafrost changes underway in 2026

The Seward and Baldwin peninsulas in northwestern Alaska are hot spots for lakes suddenly draining.

Over the past two decades, this region lost many large lakes that had covered its landscape for thousands of years. In the summer of 2018 alone, almost 200 of the region’s approximately 4,600 lakes lost more than a quarter of their area following an unusually warm winter.

Although winter 2025-26 was on the cold side for Alaska, this region continued to lose lake area – suggesting evidence of permafrost thaw. We found around 30 more lakes that were affected by drainage in June and July 2026.

This process happens with hundreds of lakes across the Arctic every summer, especially in June and July. However, not all lake changes are caused by permafrost thaw.

For example, it is not uncommon that lakes in floodplains and wetlands change dramatically across each season due to the abundance of snowmelt water in spring. Wildlife can also play a role. Beavers, for example, can recreate a lake after it abruptly drained by blocking the newly formed drainage channels.

Living with permafrost thaw

In the past, information about where permafrost was changing was primarily available through scientific studies published years later.

With near-real-time data available today, researchers can more closely study the processes of permafrost thaw, and communities can get up-to-date insights about the status of the permafrost before they plan new construction, and know where they’re likely to have trouble.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At their first candidate forum since the Aug. 18 primary election, the four remaining gubernatorial hopefuls pitched visions for the state’s future that revealed sharp political divides.

Speaking at the event, held at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference in Anchorage, were Democrats Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Tom Begich and Republicans Bernadette Wilson and Dave Bronson. Kreiss-Tomkins has been leading in the still-ongoing primary election vote count, with 22.2 %, followed by Begich at 20.5%, Wilson at 10.2% and Bronson at 8.2%.

The four emerged as the top vote-getters among 17 candidates for governor. Alaska’s election system uses open, non-partisan primaries and ranked choice voting in the general election.

Kreiss-Tomkins and Begich, both former state legislators, presented mostly similar positions. Wilson, a talk-show host, and Bronson, a former Anchorage mayor, also presented largely similar positions that contrasted with the Democrats’ views.

Oil and gas taxes figured prominently in the event.

Both Democrats told the petroleum industry audience that they favored changes that would bring the state more revenues from oil producers. Their plans include a statewide corporate income tax on oil producers that are S corporations, also known as pass-through corporations, that currently do not pay them. 

The main company affected by such a tax would be Hilcorp, a privately held company based in Texas that is a major Alaska producer. As of 2020, Hilcorp had acquired all of BP’s Alaska assets when that oil giant left the state, and now it operates Alaska’s largest oil field in Prudhoe Bay, among others. Unlike BP, Hilcorp pays no corporate income tax to the state. Legislative leaders have been pushing to change that.

Hilcorp is also a main sponsor of the AOGA conference.

Begich said a tax on S corporations and other changes to the state’s tax system would bring in an extra $400 million to the treasury each year.

He acknowledged that the oil industry crowd might not like those changes at first. But ultimately, “it will be forward-thinking for private investment,” he said. “If we have that revenue coming in, we can improve our education system. We can improve our economy in general and make our energy significantly more affordable up here. In doing that, you’re going to attract people to this state.”

Kreiss-Tomkins said all sectors, including the oil industry, will have to contribute taxes to correct a structural deficit problem in Alaska that, for now, threatens to wipe out the state’s savings.

“I am pro-math, and math just doesn’t lie. And balancing a budget is ultimately a math problem, and I think you have to be clear-eyed about where the state is,” he said. Compromises will be needed to address that, including compromises from the oil industry, he added.

Wilson and Bronson, in contrast, said they adamantly oppose tax changes that would wring more revenue out of the oil industry.

Wilson called for deep slashes to the state budget.

“We do not have a revenue problem in this state. We have a spending problem in this state,” she said. 

“The reality is we need to come into this budget, and we need to DOGE the heck out of it,” she said, referring to the mass firings and cuts imposed by the Trump administration through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Bronson said Alaska has made too many changes already to its oil and gas tax system, and that “changing the rules of the game and the tax structure midway through” scares off investment.

“The reality is we don’t have a whole lot of businesses that are lining up to do business with Alaska,” he said.

Both Wilson and Bronson accused the state legislature of blocking a proposed massive natural gas pipeline that would carry product from the North Slope about 800 miles to a yet-unbuilt liquefaction plant in Southcentral Alaska, known as the AKLNG project

There have been efforts over the past half century to build such a pipeline, but none have been economic. In pushing the latest version, Gov. Mike Dunleavy called the legislature into three  special sessions this summer to try to get them to approve sweeping tax concessions for the investment company now involved with the project, the Glenfarne Group. Lawmakers ultimately rejected Dunleavy’s demands.

Wilson said the Glenfarne plan pushed by Dunleavy, unlike all other plans over the past half century, made economic sense, but lawmakers blocked it.

“You had a couple of legislators specifically that are hell bent on seeing Alaska fail. That’s why you don’t have a gas line,” she said.

Bronson drew a similar conclusion.

“We’ve got personal animosities in Juneau, and it comes down to just a few people that are shutting that project down,” he said.

Glenfarne, like Hilcorp, is a sponsor of the AOGA conference.

Kreiss-Tomkins and Begich, in turn, criticized Dunleavy, describing his policies as a major reason why Alaska has had more people leave the state than move to it for 13 consecutive years – the most ever recorded. They were particularly critical of his policies on education.

Under Dunleavy, they said, Alaska has stagnated.

“This governor has just set a record for the most number of vetoes by any governor in Alaska history since we became a state,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “That is a sign of political failure, not political success.”

This year, Dunleavy set the record for the most vetoes by an Alaska governor in a single two-year Legislature, while the number of bills passed has also dropped significantly in recent years.

Candidates also discussed national politics at the forum. The two Republican candidates aligned themselves with President Donald Trump, and they portrayed themselves as hard-liners.

“I’m a hardcore conservative, and I’m proud of that,” said Bronson, who described the differences between candidates as stark.

“We’re at an inflection point in this country and in this state, in this election,” he said. “You can choose socialism. . .Or you can choose capitalism. That’s the choice in this race right now.

Wilson said the biggest danger to the state came from two of the three men who shared the stage with her.

“The greatest policy threat is, God forbid, this state elect a Democrat to this governor’s office.” she said. Wilson said Democratic Party policies regarding oil and gas “are the greatest threat to this industry.” She urged the audience to stick with Republicans and take advantage of the next two years of the Trump administration.

In contrast, the two Democrats emphasized consensus-building.

“Beyond a doubt, I disagree with Bernadette,” Begich quipped in comments directly following those by Wilson.

More broadly, Begich spoke about his approach to governing. While the governor has a responsibility to “be an advocate for the state of Alaska at all times,” including pushing back against the federal government, if necessary, that does not mean unrelenting combativeness, he said.

“What I won’t do is use the state’s power to attack people that are not even living in our state. I think that’s ridiculous,” he said.

Kreiss-Tomkins took a similar tone. He spoke of his time serving in a bipartisan coalition in the legislature that “set aside the more fringe and polarizing issues that I think often bring government and the legislature to a standstill” and prevent progress.

“That is a North Star principle for me. . .trying to find compromise, trying to work from a common-sense, common-ground agenda and get things done to move the state forward,” he said.

Ballots are still being counted, but the top four candidates for governor are unlikely to change. The Division of Elections’ primary election schedule calls for all absentee and questioned ballots to be counted within 10 days of the primary, resulting in a deadline of Aug. 28. The results are to be certified on Aug. 31, which is also the deadline for candidates to drop out.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE