Alaska’s parks race to record cultural sites that climate change is eroding

Alaska's parklands hold archeological sites, churches, gravesites, trails and other traces of people who have lived there for thousands of generations, and climate change is eroding them. This National Park Service article from August 2024 describes a project, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, to document those places before they are damaged or lost, working with Alaska Native Tribes.

Alaska is home to over 15 million acres of parklands. NPS photo.

Why the race is on

As the Arctic warms, rising air and water temperatures thaw ice and permafrost, and coastlines such as those of the Bering Land Bridge erode faster. The article says Alaska sees more frequent and intense floods, wildfires, permafrost melt, erosion and changing precipitation approximately three times faster than the global average. The region's cultural resources program manager is coordinating work on the impacts and says that climate change affects every park in the region and that the aim is to record resources before significant damage or loss.

Warming is thawing permafrost and speeding coastal erosion at Bering Land Bridge. NPS photo.

Learning from elders

Without close partnership with Alaska Native Tribes the work would not be possible. In oral interviews, elders share what they have seen and what has been passed down about how places and traditions are changing. NPS archeologists then visit the places the elders describe and record them in detail. The records will help parks decide which of the most severely affected and most threatened resources to deal with first, and will feed monitoring protocols and adaptation plans.

The project is also developing options and documents that Tribes can use in their own plans. Those plans could cover tools and techniques for preservation, strategies for emergency response, or support for community members coping with the loss of important sites, and the article stresses that Tribal partners must set their own priorities. The Alaska regional archeologist says staff expect to ask and listen to Tribal and community leaders about which places matter and how they are changing, to help rather than decide for them, while knowing that some loss is inevitable.

Reduced sea ice and thawing permafrost let waves erode northern Alaska's coast. This home was undermined by storms in November 2006 and photographed in August 2007. NPS photo.

At risk are historic gold mining sites, buildings such as churches, gravesites, trails and artifacts older than the arrival of Russian or Euro-American settlers. The NPS will also offer jobs and internships to Tribal youth while elders give oral histories of places and landmarks.

What visitors may see

Visitors may see archeologists recovering artifacts about to be lost to erosion, or youth learning from elders alongside cultural resource professionals at cultural camps. Archeologists also use less invasive technology, such as ground penetrating radar, to find and document buried features and inform later decisions on excavation or moving a site. Alaska's parks are partnering with groups such as universities on noninvasive surveys of subsurface artifacts.

An archeologist surveying in the field. NPS photo.

The project aims to produce guidelines, not just for Alaska's parks but for parks nationwide, by 2029.

Sources

• National Park Service article, August 2024 (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ira-project-alaska-cccultural.htm), a U.S. government work in the public domain. Staff and the author are not named here.
• National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words.