Reconstructing Landscape Evolution of the Alaskan Coastal Plain Using Indigenous Knowledge

大约20%的北极沿海平原被融化湖泊覆盖，这些湖泊在富含冰的永久冻土上发育。这一景观的更大比例也被排干的融冰湖盆地所破坏，这些盆地成为有机碳沉积物积聚的场所。为了对融湖和融湖盆地进行跨学科研究，首席调查员将采访巴罗村和阿特卡苏克村的因纽特长老。目的是获得湖泊排水事件的第一手资料，确定这些盆地的位置，并利用这些口头传统，在最早的航空照片出现之前确定湖泊排水发生的日期。这个项目在智力上是有价值的，因为其结果将大大增加我们对阿拉斯加北部景观这些重要元素的基本过程的理解。更广泛的影响包括获取巴罗和阿特卡苏克当地长老的传统知识，他们对最近的湖泊排水和洪水事件有第一手和二手信息。该项目符合SGER的标准，即在数据的可用性或获取方面具有严重紧迫性，因为北坡长老拥有独特的生态和科学知识，而这些知识正在迅速消失。

About 20% of the Arctic Coastal Plain is covered by thaw lakes developed overice-rich permafrost. A much larger proportion of this landscape is also scarred bydrained thaw-lake basins, which become sites for the accumulation of organic carbon aspeat deposits. For this interdisciplinary study of thaw lakes and thaw-lakebasins, the Principal Investigators will interview Inupiat Elders from the villages of Barrow and Atqasuk. The objective is to obtain first-hand accounts of lake drainage events, locate these basins, and, using these oral traditions, establish the date of lake drainage occurrence well before the earliest air photographs. This project is intellectually meritorious in that the results will add significantly to our understanding of the basic processes responsible for these important elements of the northern Alaskan landscape. Broader impacts include accessing traditional knowledge of local Elders in Barrow and Atqasuk, who have primary and secondary information on recent lake drainage and flooding events. This project fulfills SGER criteria of having a severe urgency with regard to availability of, or access to data, in that the Elders of the North Slope possess unique ecological and scientific knowledge which is disappearing rapidly.