Coastal Change Research Along Alaska's Arctic Coast

The U.S. Geological Survey has a long history of exploring the Arctic Alaska coastline, beginning with expeditions of the Beaufort Sea coast by Sir Ernest Leffingwell in 1906. Some of the first regional and groundbreaking investigations of coastal geomorphology and coastal processes were completed between the 1960s and 1990s by USGS and other researchers who spent many summers exploring and mapping Alaska's nearshore and coast. Renewed efforts in the 2000s brought much of this previous work into the digital age, notably through the USGS historical shoreline change assessments and the Arctic Coastal Dynamics project and associated database, which remains the most comprehensive summary of pan-Arctic coastal information available today. The launch of commercial earth observing satellites in the 2000s revolutionized the ability to observe coastal change along remote coasts, although regular acquisition continues to be challenging, largely due to inclement weather and limited daylight. Incorporating long-term, foundational datasets, even if restricted in time and place, provide essential context for evaluating the effects of climate change on Arctic coastal behavior today and in the future. There are a limited number of areas where these long-term data sets have been examined, and here we describe more than 70 years of coastal change at Barter Island, Alaska, where measurements and model results show that warming temperatures, shifting wave directions, and an extended ice-free season have led to accelerated coastal bluff loss as well as changes to both erosional and depositional patterns of barrier islands and beaches, which both enhance and mitigate erosional processes on the bluffs.