News Release

Bering Land Bridge Experiences Unprecedented Lake Draining

News Release Date: August 13, 2019

Contact: David Swanson, 907-455-0665

A recent NPS study shows that Arctic national parks are losing lakes rapidly where ice-rich permafrost dominates the landscape even though precipitation has remained largely the same over time. In Bering Land Bridge National Preserve alone, 3 square miles of lakes drained in 2018, a single-year loss that previously characterized a decade’s worth of draining. The study found that major episodes of lake draining in Arctic parks also occurred in 2005-2007 following very warm years in 2003 and 2004. The extreme loss of lakes is continuing during the 2019 record-warm summer, as scientists have already witnessed numerous drained lakes in the northern portion of Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Lakes are an important part of the Arctic; their disappearance will have significant consequences for the animals and people that depend on them.


The full study is avaliable at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15230430.2019.1629222