Nikolay Shiklomanov
George Washington University, DC·Earth & Environmental Science
In the Arctic, the top layer of ground above permanently frozen soil (permafrost) thaws every summer and refreezes every winter. The depth of this "active layer" controls which plants grow, how water moves, and whether the ground stays stable enough to hold houses, roads and pipelines.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
permafrost
active layer
active-layer thickness
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2028
What they work on
- Measure active-layer thickness (the seasonally thawed ground above permafrost), ground temperature and thaw subsidence at long-term sites along three climatic and ecological transects in northern Alaska.
- Standardize instruments and characterize large- and small-scale site conditions at each northern Alaskan CALM site, then compare how strongly each condition controls seasonal thaw.
- Integrate active-layer, ground-temperature and supporting data from almost 300 international sites into the public Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost database.
- Finalize recommended standard protocols for measuring ground subsidence and archiving data, so that permafrost sites can be compared directly.
More about the research
As Arctic conditions change rapidly, tracking how deep the ground thaws, and how that depth varies across places and years, matters for communities, engineers and the climate models that predict future change.
Why it matters
Knowing how deep permafrost ground thaws is critical to building houses, roads and pipelines in the Arctic. These data on thaw depth, its geographic pattern and its trends could help Alaskan developers, engineers, local communities and planners site infrastructure more safely as conditions change. The long-term records may also improve the reliability of global ecosystem models and help check products from satellite missions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alexander Kholodov
University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure long-term active-layer thickness, ground temperature and thaw subsidence at standardized sites along three climatic and ecological transects in northern Alaska, and compare how site conditions control seasonal thaw.
Eric Klein
University of Alaska Anchorage, AK·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Measure water-cycle components in permafrost watersheds in High Arctic Greenland that range from heavily glaciated to glacier-free, to track how sources of river water shift as glaciers shrink.
Kevin Schaefer
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Quantify how different environmental conditions affect mercury accumulation in permafrost-region soils, with uncertainty estimates, by linking mercury pathways to existing models of the land carbon cycle.
The school
George Washington University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $382M a year on research, 225 research doctorates a year.
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