Permafrost coastal setting, Drew Point, Alaska. Photo credit Benjamin M. Jones, University of Alaska Fairbanks. https://permafrostcoasts.org/digital-media/

Rapidly changing environmental conditions both on land and in the Arctic ocean are driving accelerated erosion of the Arctic coast and storm driven flooding of low-lying regions. Erosion both threatens communities and infrastructure, and is a major source of carbon and nutrients to coastal waters.

Coastal permafrost bluff erosion, Drew Point, Alaska. Photo credit Benjamin M. Jones, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Ice wedge polygonal terrain in a permafrost coastal delta. Photo credit Benjamin M. Jones, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

InteRFACE is quantifying both the on-and off-shore controls of coastal erosion and flooding through the analysis of historical data and a hierarchical use of physics-based models to identify the geographic and temporal patterns of coastal change to more robustly couple land and ocean components of ESMs.

Lead

Anastasia Piliouras – PSU

Research Team

Vladimir Alexeev – UAF 
Alec Bennett – UAF 
Diana Bull – SNL
William Eymold – SNL
Jennifer Frederick – SNL
Yu Zhang – LANL
Ben Jones – UAF
Konstantin Lipnikov – LANL
David Moulton – LANL
Svetlana Tokareva – LANL

US Department of Energy

InteRFACE is a multi-institution project funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science.