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• ANNUAL REPORT 2015
Coastal erosion is a worldwide problem that will grow ever more important as sea levels
rise and coasts are battered by more powerful storms. But nowhere is coastal erosion a
bigger challenge than in the Arctic, where frozen soils result in erosion rates that are 3-4
times faster than in more temperate regions.
EMILIE GUEGAN
saw Arctic villages struggling with erosion first-hand, when she
sailed along the Northwest Passage in 2008. “It was a huge problem with the native
communities,” she said, “They have a lot of erosion problems, and many had to move
their communities.” Guegan was so affected by the situation that when she saw an
announcement posted by SAMCoT for a PhD position on Arctic coastal erosion, “I knew
it was for me,” she said. She and her Russian colleagues had also observed clear signs
of severe erosion on the Russian coast, this time during field campaigns in 2014. When
they arrived at their research site along the Baydaratskaya Bay coast, the sea was still
covered in ice. As Guegan and her colleagues looked at what was causing the cliffs they
were monitoring to erode, they realized that the two key factors were the frozen soil,
commonly called permafrost, and the amount of snow cover.
Snow insulates the cliff faces along Baydaratskaya Bay, which, when it melts, causes the
bluff itself to melt away and retreat. This is a case where wave action clearly had nothing
to do with the erosion, since the bay is completely covered with sea ice.
“As we saw the snow bank retreating, we saw the coastal bluff, which was 10 metres
high, literally melting away,” she said. “We need to understand first what is happening
so we can design proper protection for the coast,” she says. “If we don’t know what is
triggering this retreat, we can’t build a design to protect it. We need to understand the
behaviour of the frozen soils we work with in the Arctic.” That is what she is working on
right now!