Image

Changing Landscape

March 31, 2018

Tuktoyaktuk means “Land of the Caribou” in the Inuvialuit language, which explains the sculpture in the foreground, but the landscape of the Northwest Territories, Canada, is also of interest for its geochemistry. MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Lauren Kipp traveled there to sample frozen soils from some of the 1,350 pingos—the hills in the background that dot the horizon—that form when water-saturated soils beneath a drained lake bed freeze and expand upward. As the pingos thaw, they release chemicals into rivers and the coastal ocean that may change the biology and chemistry of the region. Kipp is studying this release in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of the carbon cycle and climate change impacts in the Arctic. (Photo by Lauren Kipp, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)