Conducting the measurements, photo: Hanno Meyer, Alfred Wegener InstituteFriday, 17 August 2012

In my previous post I wrote, that I found it interesting how much the shape of the Muostakh island coastline changes. Now within a year, I learned that it can go much faster than I previously realized. Let´s start from the beginning…

There was pretty good weather the first days after we arrived to the island - sunshine and 15 to 20 degrees Celsius - we used the weather diligently to begin our work.

The coastal erosion of Muostakh Island was the main point of this year´s expedition. The area is particularly vulnerable to those kind of changes as the permafrost occurs there as always frozen sediments with high ice content. Due to summer temperatures, frozen deposits can be measured up to 20 meters down. There are also mechanical actions of the waves. Together they ensure that the coast retreats about ten meters per year. This value is the highest in the entire Arctic.

In order to record the retreat of the coastline I measured the entire kilometer in the most affected northeastern coast of the island. Similar research was done in 2011 and the satellite images were compared.

After the fair-weather days, there was a shift to significantly cooler and windier weather. With a further inspection of the coast I was surprised to find that the shoreline and the slope had changed again very strong. New coastal discontinuations were observed, and the material of past coastal abortions had been transported away by the waves. A few days with high temperatures and then heavy swell were sufficient so to move within a short period huge amount of material and alter the coastline significantly.

Greetings
Thomas

 

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Main page of the English translation of the blog "Tundra Stories": http://page21.org/blogs/59-samoylov
Original German blog: http://www.awi.de/de/go/Tundra-Stories