A Climate Change-Induced Landslide Is Wreaking Havoc on Denali National Park

For decades, the rangers at Denali National Park in Alaska were easily winning their battle against a slow-moving landslide underneath the park’s only road. Now, due in part to the effects of climate change, they are losing very badly. This summer, the National Parks Service has been frantically dropping 100 dump-trucks-worth of gravel every week on the top of the Pretty Rocks Landslide in an effort to keep up with its accelerating pace, which is the result of rapidly thawing permafrost in the country’s fastest-warming state. Two weeks ago, as the landslide hit unprecedented speed, causing the ground around it to undulate with each passing truck, the team conceded defeat and closed the back half of the park weeks earlier than anticipated. The closure is bad news both in the short term—with hundreds of camping and hotel reservations cancelled on a local economy that depends on tourism—and a scary omen for an entire state that rests on similarly thawing terrain. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “This is the canary in the coal mine for infrastructure disruption in Alaska,” says Simon Hamm, the owner of the lodge Camp Denali, who was forced to lead an evacuation of 70 guests and staff and shut down his business weeks early, resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of loss in revenue. “If things continue on the path they’re on, it’s not going to just be Pretty Rock—it’s going to be half ...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change Source Type: news