Julie Brigham-Grette
University of Massachusetts, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Low-lying coastal deltas are among the places most exposed to climate change. In western Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta, Alaska Native villages face sea level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, salt intrusion, and thawing permafrost, the frozen ground that holds up land and buildings.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
Social Science
- Topics
Arctic
Alaska
Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- 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.
- Build high-resolution 3D hydrodynamic models of storm-surge flooding from community-collected bathymetric surveys, water level gauges, and coastal wave buoys, producing predictive flood hazard maps and transferable workflows.
- Evaluate near- and long-term prospects for safe, affordable, resilient, and locally acceptable water, sanitation, and hygiene services in Kongiganak and Mekoryuk under erosion, permafrost thaw, and flooding.
- Produce the first estimates of water- and sanitation-related coping costs for rural Alaskan communities, and compare costs and benefits of service delivery models under different landscape and climate scenarios.
- Co-develop community-based monitoring programs that compare current rates of environmental change with historical trends and Indigenous Knowledge observations.
More about the research
Shrinking sea ice lets storms hit harder. These changes also strain already fragile drinking water and sanitation services, putting health and infrastructure at risk.
Why it matters
Residents of Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages could gain predictive flood hazard maps, monitoring programs they help run, and cost comparisons for water and sanitation options suited to a changing landscape. These tools could guide decisions about infrastructure and services in Kongiganak, Mekoryuk, and other Arctic coastal communities facing erosion, permafrost thaw, and storm surge.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Marie Lowe
University of Alaska Anchorage, AK·Earth & Environmental Science
Estimate riverbank erosion rates in the warming Yukon River basin and their effects on water quality and infrastructure, using numerical landscape evolution models and monitoring stations.
A Joshua Leffler
South Dakota State University, SD·Ecology & Evolution
Manipulate temperature, flooding and goose grazing in a large field experiment in Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to measure how these factors interact to change coastal and inland wetland plant communities.
Carla Klehm
University of Arkansas, AR·Earth & Environmental Science
Build a geospatial database for the Qanirtuuq river that combines remote sensing and modeling data with local residents' observations of river change.
The school
University of Massachusetts: 28 labs on PI Pages, $282M a year on research, 337 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.