Alaska's Changing Arctic: coastal security and infrastructure
Alaska's Coastal Ecology and Infrastructure
The Arctic Ocean occupies a roughly circular basin and covers an area of about 5,427,000 sq mi, one and a half times larger than the United States.
Alaska’s North Slope and northwestern Seward Peninsula border the Arctic Ocean via the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The state’s extensive coastline totals approximately 34,000 miles — more than the rest of the United States’ coasts combined.
Alaska’s coastal systems are formed and reshaped through dynamic wave action in the open water period and sea ice formation in the winter. These forces redistribute sediment, carbon, nutrients and contaminants into the marine environment.
Alaska’s Arctic coasts are defined by marine and terrestrial ice. Sea ice, particularly shore-fast sea ice, calms wave activity. Sea ice is significant to the people of Alaska as a habitat for animals, a platform for hunting and fishing, a hazard for ships, a traditional source of freshwater and a buffer to shorelines. As sea ice diminishes, it opens up marine areas for faster and safer transit, but also exposes thawing permafrost to the full force of wind and waves, increasing coastal erosion. This threatens infrastructure and community security along Alaska’s northern shores.
Scientists categorize the state’s coasts by type — deltaic and lowland plain, permafrost coastlines, rocky areas and Arctic coastal islands. Rocky shorelines are far less vulnerable to climate-change linked erosion. Coastline vulnerability varies regionally, as shown in the graphic on the next page.
The human relationship to coastlines ranges from small-scale subsistence regulated by millennia‑old community practices, to large-scale industrial operations related to ship traffic and governed by the International Maritime Organization Polar Code. This can affect human and environmental security across several levels of governance. Decision-making depends on understanding the importance of the relationships between human uses, ecological dynamics, climate and infrastructure.
Human coastal uses
People living on Alaska’s northern coastlines face challenges of geographical isolation, limited transportation options, shifting seasonality, and the effects of ice and cold on equipment and infrastructure. Prior to the 20th century, Indigenous Alaskans generally practiced annual cycles of migration to and from coastlines. With colonization, forced relocation and settlement of Indigenous populations ended these practices. Numerous government-sponsored projects pushed Indigenous communities into sedentary patterns surrounding western infrastructure and institutions, often located coastally. It is important to note that the vulnerability of many coastal communities is less a product of their people and stewardship of natural resources and far more a result of colonial and state government and settler decisions.
Millennial Uses by Alaska Native Peoples
Coastal regions contribute heavily to uses and services that include cultural, spiritual and aesthetic heritage; food and raw materials; flood control, stabilization and storm protection; climate regulation and carbon sequestration; water supply, filtration and regulation; biodiversity; and recreation, education and tourism.
The patterns of Indigenous settlement, land use and trade along Alaska’s Arctic coast and river basins were shaped by the region’s unique plants and animals providing for a community’s nutritional and cultural needs. A majority of Alaska’s coastal communities continue to practice subsistence ways of life. Successful harvests depend on local knowledge of marine mammal habitats, avian flyways and the dynamic navigability of coastal waters. As Alaska’s coasts have become subject to an increasing variety of uses — subsistence, transportation, resource development, large-scale fisheries — there is a growing need to ensure coordination and communication among all users. One long-standing example is the Open Water Season Conflict Avoidance Agreement between the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, oil and gas interests and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The Inuit Circumpolar Council has also begun planning an Arctic Council framework for monitoring Arctic subsistence species to support pan-Arctic monitoring networks. Thriving Arctic species provide food and cultural continuity for rights holders and others.
Complex and Competing Coastal Uses
Uses of the coastal regions are complex, interconnected and overlapping. Alaska’s coastlines are the site of critical infrastructure for communities and industries, including wastewater plants, tank farms for storing fuel, and landfills, all of which are regulated by a range of authorities.
The federal agency responsible for much of the marine and coastal management in Alaska is NOAA, which has developed the Arctic Environmental Response Management system, an open access interactive web tool with dozens of data layers representing meteorological, environmental, ecological, structural and sociocultural factors.
U.S. security policies are generating additional infrastructure and training activities along Alaska’s coasts, such as the U.S. Air Force long range radar sites and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District $400 million Port of Nome expansion project. The Corps of Engineers has also analyzed coastal erosion and storm risk at Utqiaġvik, resulting in plans for a $600 million coastal protection (sea wall) project. Careful planning must take place so that sea walls do not accelerate erosion along adjacent coastal habitats and areas of community uses.
New uses of coastal areas, such as cruise ship tourism, can create economic and sociocultural conflicts, such as disagreement over the acceptability of using subsistence hunting, fishing and whaling activities as tourism attractions. Other challenges include highly variable and seasonal demand that may strain local populations and infrastructure.
The Alaska Coastal Management Program
In 1972, the federal government passed the Coastal Zone Management Act, encouraging coastal states to develop and implement coastal zone management plans under the National Coastal Management Program. Thus, Alaska established the Alaska Coastal Management Program, which gave the state greater authority over nearshore areas that would otherwise be managed exclusively by the federal government.
State programs involved all levels of government: NOAA, relevant state departments and agencies, and local governments, who were tasked with implementing Coastal Management Programs through land use regulations and other policy mechanisms. CMPs give state and local actors the advantage of participating in legally binding consistency reviews for federal actions that affect the coast. Participation further made both states and municipalities eligible for federal funding for staffing and implementation.
Of greatest urgency when the Alaska program was adopted were regulation of the newly operational North Slope oil complex, centered on Prudhoe Bay, and oil and gas exploration on the outer continental shelf in the Bering and Chukchi Seas. The North Slope Borough, Northwest Arctic Borough, City of Nome and the Bering Straits all had functional local input into coastal management through approved plans by 1989.
Alaska actively participated in the National Coastal Management Program until 2011. Discontinuation left it as the only coastal state in the nation that has opted out. As a result, Alaska does not qualify for some
Alaska actively participated in the National Coastal Management Program until 2011. Discontinuation left it as the only coastal state in the nation that has opted out. As a result, Alaska does not qualify for some funds, and struggles to effectively compete for other funding sources due to lack of proactive planning across jurisdictional boundaries. These limitations have reduced local coastal control.
What is Infrastructure?
Broadly speaking, infrastructure is the material basis that enables people, organizations, societies, cultures and communities to operate. It can be thought of as not only as fixed installations such as roads and bridges, but also as an interdependent network of physical and information assets, including logistics and communication technologies, data and information highways, and the skilled operators and engineers managing them. Infrastructure can be funded privately, publicly or as a shared private/public partnership.
Essential infrastructure is required to provide for the wellbeing of a society, including transportation systems, utilities, schools, power generation systems and communications hubs. The State of Alaska defines critical infrastructure as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the state that the incapacity or destruction of the systems and assets would have a debilitating effect on security, state economic security, state public health or safety, or any combination of those matters” (AS 26.23.900), and is in alignment with federal policy that identifies 16 distinct critical infrastructure sectors. This definition plays an important role when aligning state policy with federal agencies, funding sources and regulations.
In Alaska coastal communities, natural infrastructure also plays an important role, providing necessary access to resources in the form of transportation routes (ice trails, snowmachine paths). It may protect archaeological sites and artifacts. Natural infrastructure may directly provide sources of food and water, or may offer means of preserving food, as in ice cellars (siglauq). It may also offer protection against threats. Barrier islands, for example, shelter coastlines, protect communities and ecosystems, and provide sites for communities themselves. Threats to infrastructure include coastal erosion, flooding, thawing permafrost and the Arctic climate. Coupled with remoteness, these threats contribute to the difficulty of building and maintaining infrastructure in the Arctic. Now-aging infrastructure was often sited and constructed before contemporary impacts to sea ice formation along the coast.
For late-season storms the lack of sea ice and hence lack of coastal protection can amplify the damage. In 2022, ex-Typhoon Merbok caused 11-foot storm surges, loss of coastline and an estimated $7.5 million dollars in damages. Such autumn storms require urgent repairs to prepare communities for winter. Materials may need to be brought in by air. Easily damaged critical infrastructure such as water and fuel tanks, power production and distribution, communications, and water/wastewater systems require outdoor repair that is challenging or impossible at certain times of the year. Damaging coastal storms are expected to continue under a changing climate. In some cases, this may require a strategic retreat or relocation of villages.
A 2019 Denali Commission Report “Statewide Threat Assessment: Identification of Threats from Erosion, Flooding, and Thawing Permafrost in Remote Communities” identifies 25 communities that have an immediate erosion threat to critical infrastructure and life-safety concerns requiring outside support in case of an event. All the communities damaged by Merbok are on this list. Unfortunately, many of the listed communities do not have access to local rock for shore protection. These communities also may not have the expertise to undertake required repairs.
Solutions must be developed on a case-by-case basis. Strategic retreat may allow expenditures over time rather than under emergency conditions. For example, Unalakleet is slowly moving the community to higher ground. Newtok, however, required a rapid retreat of individual structures. Shishmaref residents,
located on a barrier island, considered moving to a new location, partial retreat, or construction of erosion protection structures. The community agreed to move to the mainland, but a state survey showed that the proposed new site was suffering major permafrost degradation. Often, there is no single ideal solution.
Numerous coastal erosion protection systems, such as sandbags, have been tried with limited success. Sheet piles may be effective, provided they are driven deeply enough. Sheet pile is generally reserved for ports, where a wall is required for berthing ships. Large rock structures called rubble mounds, which serve to dissipate wave energy, are the most common type of shore protection.
Ongoing Biogeophysical Changes
The majority of Arctic permafrost coasts are already eroding. Projected intensification of wave and storm dynamics, coupled with loss of protective ice and frozen ground, will continue to test the ability of communities and the state of Alaska to plan and respond.
The offshore open water season in northern Alaska has lengthened by one to three months in recent decades. From 1979 to 2014, there was nearly a tripling of the number of wind events during open water conditions at Utqiaġvik. The rate of erosion is on the rise, and coastal erosion rates in the Arctic are already among the most extreme on earth: average rates of retreat are up to sixteen feet per year.
Landfills are a form of infrastructure vital to public health. Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation, with consultants and tribal communities, are responsible for the state’s solid waste management. Many remote landfills lack standard liners required by the Environmental Protection Agency due to exemptions. There are 184 unlined Class 3 sites, and 13 unlined Class 2 sites. The majority of Alaska Native tribal landfills are unlined. Without lining, a community is largely dependent on permafrost to prevent leaching. There was a big push with assistance from the Indian General Assistance Coordinators to modernize and permit many rural landfills in 2016, but for northern coastal communities this success must contend with both permafrost thaw and erosion. In addition, there are 364 Formerly Used Defense sites — legacy waste — in Alaska. Of these, 248 — many on northern coasts — are defined as having toxic, hazardous or radioactive waste. As of 2019 these FUDs have yet to be decontaminated and continue to pollute the waters that the Indigenous populations are forced to rely on as food and water sources.
The “Combined Threat” of Erosion, Permafrost Thaw and Floods
The 2019 Denali Commission report explains how these three hazards create a feedback loop. Usteq is a subset of the combined threats, and represents the impacts flooding and erosion can have upon sites also subject to permafrost thaw such as the rapid crumbling in Newtok. Once ice-rich soils are battered by storms or otherwise exposed from erosion they can thaw very rapidly. The figure on page 17 highlights some of the complex interactions. Arctic coastal changes impact the human environment by threatening coastal settlements, infrastructure, cultural sites and archaeological remains. Changing sediment fluxes also impact the natural environment through carbon, nutrient and pollutant release on a magnitude that remains difficult to predict.
Future Modeled Coastal Changes
Coastal erosion along permafrost coasts is expected to continue at high rates or even accelerate in response to further climate warming. Coastlines are projected to change as they erode or islands are submerged, leading to linked changes in coastal geopolitical boundaries and Alaska’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Typhoon Merbok, on its northward path, passed over North Pacific waters that were the warmest on record for that time of year — conditions likely to become more common. Coastal storms also lead to saltwater intrusions that contaminate water supplies.
New data and models are offering enhanced predictive capacity. Community-involved observation networks like the Sea Ice for Walrus Outlook sponsored by ARCUS and the Eskimo Walrus Commission have been adding to our knowledge of the ways in which climate warming is affecting parts of the coast, and will continue to be crucial.
Based on climate projections from a set of 13 global models, increased storm activity is likely in the Bering Sea and along the northeastern Alaska coast near Kaktovik. These future scenarios are consistent with recent data suggesting increases in high-wind events in Western and Northern Alaska.
Arctic winds can be expected to increase not only due to climate-driven increases in the frequency of low pressure centers, but also due to loss of sea ice, which tends to increase wind speeds due to changes in surface roughness and vertical mixing of air.
Policy implications for coastal ecology and infrastructure
Continuing to develop community-led vulnerability assessments will be important to plan for climate-driven changes such as permafrost thaw and erosion. Planning will rely on local knowledge, existing data on trends, geophysical data on the coastal sediments, and climate models. These assessments — and the implementation of their recommendations — cannot all follow the same template or rely on the same funding sources or agency support, because biophysical, economic, and social resources and challenges vary by location. For example, where erosion rates are high, FEMA disaster funding may not be available, since these funds require reestablishing prior conditions. Where planning suggests a need for altered siting or new construction materials or methods, state permitting will be necessary.