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📘 Permafrost: the ground that is thawing

Picture a tundra pond at the end of August. Your boots press into soil that thawed for the season; below it, ground may have stayed frozen for centuries. That hidden layer is permafrost.

4
lessons
~20 min
to learn
Adults
level
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What you’ll learn

  1. A frozen ground with a summer skinExplain how permafrost and the active layer are defined and how ground ice creates patterned tundra.Permafrost is a time-defined frozen ground beneath a seasonally thawing active layer, often structured by ice wedges.
  2. When thaw becomes landscape changeDescribe how thaw produces thermokarst, slumps, drainage changes, and abrupt landscape transitions.Melting ground ice changes elevation, water pathways, and slope stability, sometimes turning gradual warming into sudden landform change.
  3. The carbon below the thaw lineConnect thawed organic matter, microbial chemistry, greenhouse gases, and climate feedbacks while recognizing uncertainty.Frozen ground stores old carbon; thaw makes some of it available to microbes, with outcomes shaped by oxygen, water, plants, and place.
  4. What thaw does to people and ecosystemsIdentify effects on foundations, coasts, water, habitat, and the monitoring and adaptation choices available to communities.Thaw changes the physical ground that supports infrastructure and ecosystems, so adaptation begins with local observation and planning.

Questions this course answers

What makes ground permafrost?

Permafrost is defined by a minimum duration of freezing, not by a particular surface appearance.

What is thermokarst?

Thermokarst describes landforms created when ice-rich frozen ground loses volume and settles.

Why can permafrost thaw affect climate?

Thaw can expose old organic carbon to microbial decomposition, producing carbon dioxide and sometimes methane.

Why can a thawing foundation crack even if the building itself is sound?

Uneven loss of ground ice can make one part of the supporting soil sink more than another.

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