Seasonal to Decadal Change of Arctic Coastal Bluffs, Barter Island, Alaska

Abstract:

Warming air and sea temperatures in the Arctic are leading to elevated levels of permafrost thaw and longer periods of ice-free conditions during the summer months which can lead to increased coastal exposure to storm surge and wave impacts. Using recently collected time-lapse photography, historical maps and imagery, and DEM’s derived from airborne lidar and aerial photography using structure from motion (SfM) algorithms, we document coastal bluff change along a 5 km stretch of coast on Barter Island in NE Alaska during a single summer and over several decades.

Time-lapse cameras installed during the summers of 2014 and 2015 on the coastal bluffs are used to create an archive of hourly air temperature and pressure, bluff morphology, and sea conditions allowing us to document individual bluff failure events and conditions at the time of failure. The historical rates of bluff retreat are derived from 1947 T-sheet maps, various periods of satellite imagery, aerial orthophoto mosaics, and more recently acquired lidar and SfM DEM data. Coastal change rates at 50 m transect spacing have been calculated over a seven decade time span. We combine these results with elevation models and bluff geology to estimate overall volume change and sediment contribution to the nearshore. These combined datasets are used to better understand the timing and processes of arctic coastal retreat.