An Arctic Researcher Explains Yedoma, the Permafrost Keeping the Planet Livable

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Jenni Doering with Edward Alexander, the senior arctic lead at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

In the far north of our planet, boreal forests and permanently frozen earth, or permafrost, store massive amounts of carbon and keep our global climate in a delicate balance.

But with the Arctic warming four times as fast as the rest of the globe, and fires now routinely burning large swaths of northern forests, that locked-up carbon is rapidly escaping into the atmosphere, where it can warm the planet even faster.

Scientists, including the late ecologist George Woodwell, have been sounding the alarm about this dangerous feedback loop for decades, though for too many in our society the Arctic is out of sight and out of mind. But Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, who are often the first to feel these effects, are raising their voices to spread awareness about their home’s vital role in maintaining a livable world.

Edward Alexander is the senior arctic lead at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and a member of the Gwich’in Indigenous tribe in Alaska. He’s also a co-chair of the Gwich’in Council International. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

JENNI DOERING: Tell me a little bit about where you live now and where you grew up. What kinds of climate impacts has your community been facing in the last few years?

EDWARD ALEXANDER: I grew up in a remote, fly-in-only community in northeastern Alaska called Fort Yukon. It’s eight miles north of the Arctic Circle, and the farthest north the Yukon River goes. It’s at the conjunction of the two largest watersheds in Alaska, the Yukon River and the Porcupine. 

About 65 percent of the Yukon Flats have burned since about 1964—we’re talking about an area that’s burned equivalent to four Delawares’ worth of land just in our immediate neighborhood. Our area has warmed 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit already, just in my lifetime. 

When we think about Arctic amplification, and the Arctic warming four times faster than the global average, this is very pronounced in Gwich’in homelands and in the Yukon Flats in Alaska, the Yukon territories and the Northwest Territories.

DOERING: So we’re talking about multiple threats to the Arctic. It’s warming four times faster than the planet overall, and boreal forests are catching on fire. What is a boreal forest?

ALEXANDER: The boreal forest is the largest forest on Earth. It’s mostly spruce, with willow and some quaking aspen and some birch. 

There are a lot of Indigenous communities, not only in Alaska, but also in Canada and in Russia, that depend on this boreal forest for cultural survival, but also just basic existence—finding food and other kinds of things. 

DOERING: We sometimes hear permafrost referred to as a “carbon bomb” because of all the carbon dioxide and methane that it could potentially emit as it thaws.

ALEXANDER: It can also release nitrous oxide, which is 250 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon. And there’s another kind of permafrost that I’m particularly concerned about, that Indigenous communities in the North are particularly concerned about, that our folks at Woodwell Climate Research Center are also very concerned about, which is Yedoma. 

Yedoma is a type of ice-rich permafrost that has a lot of carbon in it, and has the potential to create huge warming effects for the entire planet, particularly because it thaws as methane, largely, instead of as carbon, like other permafrost.

DOERING: So not all permafrost is created equally.

ALEXANDER: Run-of-the-mill permafrost we generally consider one to two meters deep. Yedoma, on the other hand, can go hundreds of meters deep. That’s an ancient carbon storage that can be 150,000-200,000 years old or more. It’s been there through ice ages and through warm cycles. 

It’s seen a lot of fire during the time that it’s been on the planet, but in the Yukon Flats recently, what we’ve started to see is that the fire has burned so intensely and so deeply that it’s burning off all of the vegetative layer and duff layer above Yedoma, and then Yedoma is starting to collapse. 

Something else of particular concern to me is that none of this is included in modeling for climate change, so the wildland fire crisis across the circumpolar is still considered a stable ecosystem by climate researchers generally, and permafrost is considered a stable system, and it’s important that we understand that there are changes happening here.

The Yukon Flats is very indicative of that, which is why the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has moved to protect Yedoma as a value at risk in the region. A Yedoma deposit thawing could be more emissions than small countries, or if all of the Yedoma thaws, it’d be more than emissions of all the countries.

“Something else of particular concern to me is that none of this is included in modeling for climate change.”

DOERING: What is the process that leads to this permafrost thaw?

ALEXANDER: What happens is this layer of vegetation gets burned off, and we’re seeing it burn more deeply than ever. It burns down into the duff layer, which is like an organic mat that is on the forest floor. The problem with a duff layer burning is that it’s the insulation, essentially, that keeps permafrost frozen. Imagine a cooler; you take the cooler lid off, and then everything inside starts to spoil. That’s essentially what’s going on with permafrost. 

DOERING: What are some things we can do that might help? Are there Indigenous practices that can help with wildfire management, and this connected issue of the permafrost thawing? 

ALEXANDER: We’ve seen 174 million hectares burn across the circumpolar boreal; that’s equivalent to the entire state of Oregon burning and then also the entire state of California and Nevada and Utah and New Mexico and Arizona all combined. 

When we think about this problem, it’s not a chainsaw problem, it’s not an ax problem. It’s not like you can just get a bunch of men and women out in the field and cut a fire line and have this problem solved. If you dig a trench to stop a fire in California, that’s an effective solution there. In the north, and in the Arctic, if you make the same kind of fire line, you can create a long lake because you’re removing the surface layer of insulation from that land. So we have to be really thoughtful about it. 

One of the things that is really promising to manage wildland fire across the Arctic is using cultural practices of Indigenous peoples across the circumpolar north. One such practice is Gwich’in cultural burning, Gwich’in cultural fire, practiced early in the spring, and that as spring comes around, the areas that melt first are these meadows and lake edges. This area becomes uncovered with snow from the heat of the sun in the springtime, but there’s still snow in the forest. 

Traditionally, our people would go out and burn these meadows and burn these lake edges. It helps to increase the forage capacity of the land, so the plants that come back are much more nutritious for all the animals. That’s very important for people who depend on these animals to survive too, right? 

And so that’s traditionally why Gwich’in did these practices. But in the modern context, it creates a fire break. In the summertime, if you have a fire burning through the forest, and then it comes across an area that’s already burned in the spring, it’s not going to burn twice—you’ve already burnt off all of the dry fuel in that area. 

The other reason it’s an important intervention is that when we think about protecting the carbon in that soil, this practice is done early in the spring, when the ground is still frozen, and so you’re protecting all of the carbon in the soil, all the carbohydrates and the roots from the plants that have stored all winter. 

As far as limiting fire extent, limiting fire severity—so, preventing these fires from burning down into some of these deeper peaty areas, exposing the areas beneath it to permafrost thaw or Yedoma thaw—Gwich’in Indigenous practices typically promote mild fire instead of wildfire.

DOERING: It sounds really challenging to live in your home right now, as the climate crisis accelerates and causes all of this damage to the land, to the planet as a whole. What gives you hope and what keeps you committed to fighting such a tough fight?

ALEXANDER: The alternative is not something that I’m willing to concede. 

For people in the Arctic, we’ve dealt with profound change on an order of magnitude that other people across the world have not had to reckon with yet. In order to have some of the hope that I have and optimism I have, I decenter humans from the discussion a little bit, too. It’s not just about us. 

People always say, “Well, we do this for our children in the future.” That’s true. I have children and I care about their future. I also care about the animals and their futures. I also care about the plants and their futures. 

And we can work together, right? Not fight the issue. That’s a real Western idea: “We’re gonna have a battle. We’re gonna fight this thing!” Well, no, don’t. I’m from a small Indigenous community, and guess what? You learn in that community that you’ve got to work together. 

If we understand that we got to work together, we’re going to get there. We will fix these problems.