Many once crystal clear rivers and streams in Alaska now flow with “milky orange juice-colored” water.
A team of researchers published a new study Monday explaining how Alaska’s melting permafrost, accelerated by climate change, has transformed the state’s rivers into orange, acidified “dead zones.”
Iron oxides, literally rust, created by the thawing of long-frozen mineral ores, as well as sulfuric acid created through that same process, have turned the state’s once-fresh water as acrid as vinegar, turning vegetation black as wildfire and fish are left dead.
One such researcher told DailyMail.com that these “dead zones” could occur “in theory anywhere where permafrost is thawing,” spanning 5.6 billion hectares of Earth’s northern hemisphere.
This orange river effect, which leaves an odor likened to moldy towels and rotting vegetables, can suffocate, burn and sicken aquatic life, threatening the health and livelihoods of local communities that rely on these rivers.
Geochemist Dr Timothy Lyons and his colleagues have published new research explaining how Alaska’s melting permafrost – accelerated by climate change – has transformed the state’s rivers into orange, acidified ‘dead zones’ (photographed above)
“In principle, this process could theoretically happen anywhere (…) that has these types of rocks underneath,” geochemist Dr. Timothy Lyons, co-author of a new study, told DailyMail.com.
“And these are not exceptional rocks,” Dr. Lyons noted. “They’re what we call shales.”
“They contain minerals such as pyrite and iron sulfide, which can oxidize, and not in the large quantities of an ore deposit,” he said. ‘but on the scale of these rocks that are everywhere.’
Alaska’s permafrost – vast underground tracts of ice-covered earth that have remained frozen for tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of years – has reactivated ancient bacteria and released these long-dormant minerals into rivers.
“They call them acidophiles,” Dr. Lyons, who also teaches at the University of California, Riverside, told DailyMail.com.
“They are microbes that can live in extremely low pH conditions and play an important role in oxidizing iron and oxidizing sulfur, creating these acids,” he explained.
“Many of those reactions are catalyzed by the melting of the wetlands.”
Using field reports and high-resolution images from the European Space Agency’s IKONOS satellites, Dr. Lyons and his co-authors identified 75 streams or tributaries and 41 river marshes that were visibly affected by orange acidification (sample image above)
Using field reports and high-resolution images from the European Space Agency’s IKONOS satellites, Dr. Lyons and his co-authors documented 75 streams and 41 river swamps in Alaska that turned orange due to this acidification.
According to the study, which was published in the journal on Monday, the damage spans more than 1,000 kilometers Communication Earth & Environment.
The problem now extends from Alaska’s lower Noatak River basin in the west to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeast.
It has also ravaged Alaska’s Kobuk Valley National Park, which the research team surveyed from the air.
“When we flew the helicopter it was everywhere,” Dr Lyons told DailyMail.com.
“This is linked to human activity,” he said, “nothing less than global warming.”
Elsewhere, including in the permafrost region of Russia’s Siberian tundra, researchers have documented gaseous “methane bombs,” ancient “zombie” viruses, toxic mercury and worse emerging from all this thawing, icy ground.
According to the study, published Monday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, the damage to the ‘orange river’ spans more than 1,000 kilometers. Above is a map from the study with the documented locations in orange
Along the Akillik River in the Kobuk Valley, the team documented a dramatic die-off between June 2017 and August 2018. Two local fish species, the Dolly Varden and the Slimy Sculpin, disappeared from that year when the upper clearwater tributary flowed to orange.
According to the study’s lead author, National Park Service (NPS) ecologist Dr. Jon O’Donnell, what’s happening in these parts of Alaska is likely to spread and persist until governments take action on climate change and work to remedy its impacts.
“There are a lot of consequences,” he said. ‘As the climate continues to warm, we expect permafrost to continue to thaw. Wherever these types of minerals are present, there is a chance that streams will turn orange and be broken down.’
Dr. O’Donnell, who works for the NPS Arctic Inventory and Monitoring Network, described the flows he saw firsthand as “milky orange juice.”
“Those orange flows can be problematic, both because they are toxic, but they can also prevent the migration of fish to spawning areas,” he said.
Rural communities and some ancient indigenous peoples who rely on these rivers for drinking water will need help with emergency water treatment, as well as coping with declining water production, according to the study authors. fish stocks.
Dr. Lyons told DailyMail.com that the acidification of these Alaskan rivers resembles a known pollution problem that occurs in rivers near mining projects. Above is a NASA image of this ‘acid mine drainage’ causing environmental damage to a river in the Rio Tinto, Spain.
Biologist and mathematician Dr. Roman Dial, co-author of the new study, marveled at the long-range impact that the use of fossil fuels by cars and factories around the world has had on this pristine wilderness.
“The alarming thing,” said Dr. Dial, a lecturer at Alaska Pacific University Scientific American‘is how far our human reach is broadly speaking.’
Along the Akillik River in Kobuk Valley National Park, Dr. O’Donnell documented a dramatic die-off of aquatic life between June 12, 2017 and August 30, 2018.
Two local fish species, the Dolly Varden and the Slimy Sculpin, disappeared from the Akillik that year, according to the new study’s findings, as this headwater tributary shifted from clear water to “orange stream conditions.”
Dr. Lyons told DailyMail.com that the acidification of these rivers resembles a known pollution problem that occurs when similar minerals and metal ores flow into rivers as pollution from nearby mining projects.
“There are many examples of ‘acid rock’ or ‘acid mine drainage’ as people call it,” the geochemist explained.
“One of the best known is Rio Tinto in Spain, a mining district that has been active since Roman times,” he noted.
“There’s Iron Mountain (another mine) in California, and so on, and so on… That’s a problem,” he said. ‘But you can deal with it, in the sense that you can use lime and neutralize the acid. You can be more careful with the mining activities.”
Using these methods, Dr. Lyons explained, mining companies and local government agencies have been able to use so-called ‘acid-base’ chemical reactions with imported ‘basic’ compounds such as lime and limestone to counteract the acidification caused by the interaction between ore from metal mining. with bacteria and the environment.
Alaska’s “Red Dog” mine, a major zinc and lead mining project just west of the Notak National Preserve, has faced similar acidified river problems over the years.
But according to Dr. Lyons, the scope of what is happening with the extensive melting of the permafrost covers so much ground that scaling up a similar program would be an extremely challenging feat of geoengineering.
“There is some capacity to monitor what a ‘Red Dog’ does or a ‘Rio Tinto’ does,” Dr. Lyons to DailyMail.com. “This is a much more widespread problem.”
Dr. Michael Carey, a fish biologist at the United States Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center, told DailyMail.com that his federal government agency has not yet developed a strategy to deal with permafrost melting.
“USGS is playing an impartial investigative role for a larger partnership investigating this issue,” Dr. Carey to DailyMail.com.
Dr. Carey, who also co-authored the new study, explained that the agency “provides data that is used by local communities and officials to answer questions they can use to manage the situation.”