On certain Alaska farms, the cropland looks as if a giant hole-punch descended on it and pressed. Sometimes the topography appears to be cratered; other times it looks sunken or slumped, signs of disruption underfoot.

These lands are part of the 80 percent of Alaska that sits in a zone containing permafrost—ground that remains at or below 32 degrees Fahrenheit for two or more consecutive years. The thawing of this layer can trigger a process called subsidence, a physical sinking of the land ranging from a few inches to more than three feet deep. In addition to damaging buildings and infrastructure, subsidence impacts soil fertility and waterflows, and releases ancient stores of carbon into the atmosphere, heating it and exacerbating the thawing.

With the Arctic warming two to four times faster than the global average, permafrost thaw is becoming increasingly prevalent—and is expected to accelerate. Increasing temperatures and precipitation, as well as wildfires, drive the thawing; so does clearing land for agriculture, which removes protective and insulating vegetation.

Because the frozen layer lies beneath the “active layer” of soil that thaws annually and can be used to grow crops, farmers don’t necessarily know if their land contains permafrost until they see the signs of its degradation: mysterious crop loss, damaged farming equipment, or ground that sinks gradually over time.

Permafrost Grown, based in Fairbanks, equips local farmers with tools that make it easier to manage permafrost land. The five-year, $3 million project, launched in 2022 and funded by the National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic Initiative, is a collaboration between researchers and producers that studies how certain agricultural practices impact permafrost degradation.

The findings of the project, now in its final year, could prove important for people outside the 49th state, too. Climate change could make farming at warmer, lower-latitude regions more difficult and push agriculture further north in the coming decades. Because its thawing drives climate change, permafrost also has important climate implications on a global scale.

We connected with Melissa Ward Jones, a permafrost geomorphologist and the principal investigator of the Permafrost Grown project, and Glenna Gannon, a sustainable food systems researcher and the project’s co-investigator, to learn more about the permafrost-agriculture intersection and its relevance to farming and food production in Alaska and beyond.

Glenna Gannon (left) and Melissa Ward Jones (right) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Arctic Research Open House with a display of Permafrost Grown handouts. (Photo credit: Laura Weingartner)

What are some of the ways you’ve seen permafrost thaw negatively impact farms in your region?

Glenna Gannon: Some of the earliest questions folks were asking us were about obvious subsidence—areas where the ground has depressions. That could look like anything from the ground sinking to tractors getting stuck and not being able to work the land in that particular area. There’s one peony producer we work with who abandoned their farm field [due to subsidence].

Melissa Ward Jones: There can be a lot of stress and uncertainty when parts of your land are continuously sinking and you don’t know what is causing it, exactly, but you know it’s related to permafrost. The sinking can kill crops, inhibit you from planting the crops you want to plant, and damage farm equipment and fencing.

Subsidence can also impact soil fertility. And groundwater cannot flow through frozen soil, so as it thaws, it also changes groundwater flow patterns.

Are there any protections in place for farmers whose land subsides due to permafrost thaw?

GG: Currently, there’s nothing at the state or federal level, or private agricultural crop insurance, that covers permafrost. Traditional agricultural insurance is designed for “probabilistic” events like hailstorms and drought.

Let’s dig into Permafrost Grown’s model of a diverse research team collaborating with farmers to conceptualize and implement studies. Why was taking this approach important to you?

MWJ: Permafrost Grown focuses on such a big topic that it needed a range of experts from a range of research disciplines as well as collaborator farms that represent a range of cultivation activities and permafrost types.

I think everyone’s background and expertise strengthens the overall project. Glenna was a great fit with her expertise of agriculture and food system sciences and her network of farms. Permafrost science is a broad discipline, and the co-investigators expanded our permafrost expertise: Dr. Mikhail Kanevskiy is an expert in cryostratigraphy, the analysis of permafrost cores. Dr. Benjamin Jones is leading the permafrost drilling, remote sensing, and drone-mapping work. And Dr. Tobias Schwoerer is a natural resource economist who provides expertise in economics and people’s perceptions of risk and decision-making strategies.

How do you choose which types of farms to work with?

GG: We started the project with a smallish cohort of farmers who we already knew were experiencing some challenges associated with permafrost on their farms. As we developed the project, we identified a few more. And then, by year two of the project, there were a couple of farmers who were saying, “I heard about your work. I’d love to be involved,” or “I’ve got this crazy thing going on. Could you guys help?”

We tried to be mindful of folks who had different types of agricultural operations—vegetable crops, grains, or hay, or animal production—as well as the types of permafrost or symptoms of agriculture-permafrost interactions, so that we had a gamut to look at and collect data from.

We currently have 10 collaborating farms in Alaska; nine are in the Greater Fairbanks Region of the Tanana Valley.

You have a number of studies underway, on subjects like how compost and different types of mulches impact land that has permafrost. How do you collaborate with farmers to design and implement this research?

MWJ: Throughout the year, we maintain constant communication. We share an annual survey that asks how their year went and [includes] questions that help us plan for upcoming trials or data collection. We [also] have workshops where we discuss as a group.

GG: We’re also doing farm visits. What’s a bit more unique about this work is that since we live in the same community [as the farmers], we’re not just meeting in an office building once a year. We’re visiting these people at their homes. Melissa’s daughter plays with some of these folks’ kids. We see these individuals in our community. So there is definitely a very local perspective and feeling to this project.

Despite the challenges of things like permafrost and living in the subarctic region, a lot of the farmers have a built-in purpose for doing this work and an attitude of resilience, which is really profoundly positive to work with.

Melissa Ward Jones, principal investigator of the Permafrost Grown project, leads a tour with team members and producers of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory Permafrost Research Tunnel in Fox, Alaska. A cross section of a massive ground-ice body stretches down the tunnel’s right wall. (Photo credit: Laura Weingartner)

What is an example of a specific permafrost-agriculture interaction you’re researching?

MWJ: With our Great Mulch Study, we’re looking at the thermal impact of 11 different mulch types, including straw, paper, and soy-based plastic products, as well as a few synthetic mulches like infrared-transmitting (ITR) plastic mulch.

We’re interested in seeing if some are better suited to potentially mitigate permafrost thaw and identify others that could accelerate permafrost thaw.

GG: And we’re evaluating these different mulches for their intended agricultural use too—looking at weed suppression, moisture retention, and soil warming.

MWJ: [Mulch] is one of the topics of our projects that farmers want to talk to us about the most. Even if you’re not looking at it from a permafrost perspective, it’s still beneficial for agriculture in Alaska more generally to have this kind of data, because this research has just not been done at high latitudes. We’re the only ones to our knowledge who are doing it at this scale.

What does this data collection look like in practice?

GG: Melissa and I have a full replicated trial with all treatments at the Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station in Fairbanks. Some of our partner farms are replicating some of the specific mulch treatments [on their fields]. So that might be one or two of the mulch types with one or two crop types.

No farmer is going to give up a huge portion of their field to set up an experiment when they’re trying to make a living. So we work with folks as best as we can to say, “What’s meaningful to you and not going to disrupt your personal economy?”

Based on your research so far, what strategies can help farmers successfully manage permafrost thaw? Which ones seem to have the opposite impact?

MWJ: For mulches, some early findings show that, from a ground-temperature perspective, “wave selective mulches” like IRT often produce the highest maximum temperatures during the summer. These are also the mulches that produce the highest-yielding plots.

Straw, as expected, has the greatest insulating effect year after year, keeping soil temperatures cool during the summer. In the shoulder seasons, spring and fall, it has the inverse effect of keeping the soil warmer, delaying soil freezing, and preventing soil freezing at deeper depths.

Another thing we have been looking at for the project is compost piles. We have shown that large, active compost piles can cause permafrost degradation year-round, including in the wintertime. Understanding sources of ground heating, but also potential strategies that encourage ground cooling, are important considerations if you are cultivating on permafrost-affected soils.

While we are characterizing a lot of these processes through our work, our project is not necessarily generating or recommending mitigation strategies. Rather, we are providing data and knowledge to support on-farm decision making.

Why is it important to protect permafrost from thaw in the first place? And why is that something that we need to be mindful of in Arctic conditions?

MWJ: It depends on your values. If the permafrost is carbon-rich [and] you want to try to minimize carbon release, that’s one reason [to keep it stable]. If you have ice-rich permafrost, if you keep it stable, you’re not going to get subsidence and have to deal with all those problems.

But then there are also some people who are just like, “I just want to thaw it all and warm up the soil so I don’t have to deal with it.” We’re not saying one is approach is better than the other.

Most of the time, permafrost is presented as a resource that should be protected in every situation due to its climate impacts. Can you talk more about why is this not always the case in the context of the farmers you work with?

MWJ: The upper layer of soil, even though [it’s] unfrozen, can still be below the temperature range needed to successfully grow desired crops . . . So one reason could be to warm the soil for crop growth.

Another is, if you have a permafrost type that only has ice lenses [sheets of ice] near the surface, you could thaw your permafrost to melt all the ice, so all the subsidence that will occur happens. Then you can continue cultivating once the land dries, and future subsidence will no longer be an issue.

I’d also like to point out that permafrost is not necessarily “bad” [for farmers]. There can be positives too. We have heard from farms that some of their most productive lands were in areas that historically had ice-rich permafrost. These areas were self-watering, with the ground ice acting as the moisture source, and were good for many decades until subsidence began to occur.

Also, when permafrost degrades, thaw ponds appear and these can be used as water sources for irrigation. We work with at least one collaborating farm that does this. Notably, other cultures use various stages of permafrost degradation for agriculture. In the Sakha Republic, formerly Yakutia, the Sakha people have used alaas meadows, created by degrading ice-rich permafrost, for animal husbandry and hay production for centuries.

The Great Mulch Study project by Permafrost Grown measures the thermal and moisture impacts of 11 different mulch types on permafrost thaw at depth. (Photo credit: Melissa Ward Jones)

How will the findings from this project be shared and disseminated? I’d imagine you want to get the word out to other farmers in the state, but are there plans to bring in additional stakeholders like government officials or those who make land-use decisions?

MWJ: Our goal is to provide data in a way that farmers can use to make decisions. There are three to four co-op extension publications that will be published after the end of the project, the Great Mulch Study being an example.

We also do a lot of outreach and presentations at various conferences and workshops. There’s a lot of interest from other farmers around the state, but also [from] Division of Agriculture officials.

GG: Our hope, as Alaska continues to have a priority set for increasing agricultural production, is that we are generating information that is also useful to decision makers—whether those be policymakers or folks thinking about farmland conservation—on the types of permafrost-agriculture interactions that are important to take into consideration.

To what extent is it possible to grow Alaska’s agriculture industry without further disrupting its permafrost?

GG: One of my personal takeaways from this project is that we should be thinking very carefully about preserving and maintaining the parts of Alaska that have already been cleared or developed for agricultural production and saving those areas from things like urban development.

There are few, if any, guaranteed ways to determine whether permafrost is present prior to development—especially at the scale of acres—that aren’t cost-prohibitively expensive or not feasible due to remote site access. Any new land-clearing for agricultural development in regions with higher permafrost prevalence is subject to a “hope-for-the-best-and-wait-to-see-what-happens” scenario over the years to decades post-clearing.

This makes investment in developing new agricultural land a risky bet for farmers and helps make the case for why established, “permafrost stable” farmland in Alaska is a valuable asset we should be prioritizing for food production, not development.

This is not to say we can’t develop new farms and ag land in Alaska—it just comes with risks that are unlike anywhere else in the nation, with no support systems in place for producers if it doesn’t work out.

What lessons in place-based, climate-adaptive agriculture can the rest of the country learn from Alaska? Why should people across the world know about what’s happening in the state?

GG: There are climate projections modeling that the future of food production will be shifting northward, into boreal regions with discontinuous permafrost.

Understanding [permafrost] interactions now helps us think about what a northward shift might look like practically and what type of land would actually be suitable for production. I think people have a tendency to go, “Look at all that undeveloped land up there that can all be used for X, Y, Z.” Part of our intent is to understand [underlying permafrost] at a time when there isn’t as much external pressure to develop agriculture in Alaska.

That’s one piece. And this project shows how collaborative research can be performed with farmers. That model could be applied to a lot of different research questions regarding external pressures on agriculture. One example I’m thinking of, because it’s another area I work in, is the conflict between infrastructure development for energy and agriculture. There’s an imposing need for the land to be used one way, but we still need to produce food. So how do we work together?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Alaska’s Thawing Permafrost Could Shape the Future of Farming appeared first on Civil Eats.

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