Ming Xiao
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Engineering
As the Arctic changes, coastal communities on Alaska's North Slope face worsening coastal erosion, flooding and ground subsidence (sinking land) caused by thawing permafrost, ground that normally stays frozen year-round. These hazards threaten homes, roads and other infrastructure, as well as food security and community wellbeing.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
permafrost
Arctic
Alaska
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Establish ground- and drone-based monitoring of permafrost change on Alaska's North Slope, and combine it with satellite remote sensing and image processing to track erosion and subsidence.
- Build high-resolution GIS- and web-based maps with "what-if" scenario tools that project year-by-year coastal erosion and flooding risks for at least the next 20 years.
- Work with the North Slope Borough and Seward Peninsula communities to identify the needed solutions, data gaps and technical requirements for infrastructure facing permafrost degradation, erosion and flooding.
- Conduct techno-economic analyses of candidate technologies and system-level solutions to assess the cost and feasibility of resilient Arctic infrastructure.
More about the research
Both projects aim to help Alaskan communities measure these risks and plan for them. They combine field monitoring of permafrost with remote sensing, and develop solutions together with Indigenous communities, government and industry partners.
Why it matters
Alaskan Arctic coastal communities are losing land, homes and infrastructure to erosion, flooding and permafrost thaw. High-resolution risk maps, decades-long hazard forecasts and co-developed engineering solutions could help residents and local governments decide where to build and how to protect infrastructure. The approaches could also be adopted by other coastal regions in Alaska and the lower 48 states.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Emily Seelen
University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK·Earth & Environmental Science
Develop river-erosion forecasting tools for Alaskan permafrost rivers using satellite imagery analyzed with sub-pixel and machine-learning change detection, combined with theory on permafrost erosion and mud transport.
Julie Brigham-Grette
University of Massachusetts, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure and model rates of land change and altered water flow caused by rising sea level and collapsing permafrost across villages and traditional-use landscapes in Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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.
The school
Pennsylvania State University: 60 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 743 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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