Resilient Arctic Coastal Communities

We aim to contribute to resilient Arctic coastal communities to coastal hazards of erosion, flooding, and ground subsidence under the impact of climate change. Our research involves fundamental study of permafrost degradation from field and laboratory testing to numerical model development on large-strain thaw settlement to developing user-friendly Arctic Coastal Hazards Index maps. Our research can only make real contributions by collaborating closely with the Arctic Indigenous communities. The current projects include “SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A: Resilient Arctic Coastal Communities to Coastal Hazards” funded by NSF CIVIC program, and “NNA Track 1: Collaborative Research: Resilience and adaptation to the effects of permafrost degradation induced coastal erosion” funded by NSF Navigating the New Arctic program. We collaborate with natural scientists, social scientists, community members, corporations, and local to federal entities to address these complex challenges.

NNA research team meeting at Carnegie Mellon Univ, Jan 2023.

Arctic Coastal Hazard Index map showing the predicted coastal hazard potential of North Slope Borough, Alaska by 2060s using RCP8.5 climate forcing (Reference: Wang et al., 2023).

Distributed Sensing for In-situ and Long-term Spatiotemporal Permafrost Characterization

To design resilient civil infrastructure in the arctic and sub-arctic, we need to know how permafrost changes with space (from meters to kilometers scale) and time (from days to decades) and how infrastructure develop affect and interact with permafrost dynamics. We collaborate with geophysicists and the local community in Utqiaġvik, Alaska and use distributed temperature sensing (DTS) and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to understand and forecast long-term variations of in-situ geophysical and geomechanical characteristics of degrading permafrost in the Arctic. This project is funded by NSF Signals in the Soils (SitS) program.

Part of the collaborative research team during DAS/DTS cable installation on the tundra near Utqiaġvik, Alaska, September 2022.

Create Convergent Research Coordination Networks for Permafrost Coastal Infrastructure Systems

Through broad and inclusive collaborations, we are creating convergent and sustainable research coordination networks for permafrost coastal systems, coastal infrastructure system, and resilient coastal communities. Recent efforts include “Conference: Convergence Approaches to Arctic Coasts” funded by NSF Office of Polar Programs, “Collaborative Research: AccelNet: Permafrost Coastal Systems Network (PerCS-Net) – a circumpolar alliance for arctic coastal community information exchange” funded by NSF Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet), and “Convergence NNA: Coordinate a Transdisciplinary Research Network to Identify Challenges of and Solutions to Permafrost Coastal Erosion and Its Socioecological Impacts in the Arctic” funded by NSF Arctic System Science program.

2018 Permafrost Coastal Erosion – Research Coordination Network workshop at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, October 2018.

2023 Arctic Coasts Workshop, Boulder, Colorado, October 2023.

2023 Arctic Coasts Workshop final report

UAS Geophysical Imaging of Permafrost

We are exploring the unmanned air system (UAS) geophysical imaging using multi electromagnetics (EM) instruments for permafrost characterization and environmental hazards detection. UAS Geophysical Imaging has certain advantages over its ground-based and manned aircraft-based EM approaches.

Using drone-based very low frequency electromagnetics (VLF-EM) for permafrost characterization in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, Aug 2024.

STEM Education

Our team is passionate about STEM education for kindergarten to high school students. We believe engineering workforce development should start in elementary school and we want to contribute to educating the next generation engineers and scientists who will build the nation’s infrastructure. We particularly want to attract more Alaskan Indigenous and local students into STEM careers. In the past two years, we collaborated with Iḷisaġvik College and organized STEM summer camps for middle school students and high school students in North Slope Borough, Alaska. This effort is supported by NSF Office of Polar Programs. We also have been working with the State College Area School District (SCASD) to offer STEM programs for middle school students.

2023 STEM Summer Camp for middle school students, at Iḷisaġvik College, Utqiaġvik, Alaska. June 2023.

2023 Middle School STEM Activities Manual (Rubino, Hallissey, Xiao)

2024 STEM Summer Camp for high school students, at Iḷisaġvik College, Utqiaġvik, Alaska. August 2024.