Scientists and tribal governments in Southeast are collaborating to assess risks of landslides and floods. The research will be tailored to each community’s needs.
The Skagway Traditional Council and the Sitka Sound Science Center are working together to identify and monitor geophysical risks around Skagway. The agreement is part of the broader regional Kutí project. Kutí means weather in Lingít.
Sara Kinjo-Hisher is the tribal administrator for the Skagway Traditional Council. She says the Sitka Sound Science Center approached the Tribe in 2020 about the partnership.
Kinjo-Hisher: “At the time we were interested in various things, including flooding, landslides. The project is to come up with some kind of warning system or parameters for things that the community identified that are more important to them.”
The Kutí project originated in Sitka after three people died there in a landslide in 2015. The Sitka Sound Science Center put a monitoring system in place to warn residents when the risk of a landslide is high. In Southeast Alaska, this is mostly related to rain. The center has atmospheric scientists on staff who are working on a classification system for atmospheric rivers. Those are the cloud formations that can span thousands of miles and generate massive rains.
Heintz: “We’ve learned through applying different statistical models that basically the intensity of rainfall over the last three hours is the best predictor of when a landslide might occur.”
Ron Heintz is the research director at the Sitka Sound Science Center. He says the center has reached out to tribal governments around the region and offered to help assess the local risk management needs. In Addition to Skagway, the center is working with Klukwan, Hoonah, Yakutat, Craig and Kasaan.
The center staff starts by meeting with a community to learn their needs.
Kinjo-Hisher: “We just got done with the two public comment events to gather more information and historical insights from community members.”
Kinjo-Hisher says people’s knowledge of their home and memories of the past can help understand some phenomena. Older residents can remember a spot that flooded 50 years ago. An area will react to flooding differently if the soil was compacted by past use, and Kinjo-Hisher says at a recent meeting someone pointed out the location of an old airstrip.
The Science Center staff gathers all that local knowledge, and tries to figure out what the communities want to do with it. In Sitka, this took the form of an app that tracks the risk level for a landslide. Heintz says the scientists had offered to set up an alarm system but realized no one wanted to be responsible for pressing the alarm button.
Projects are customized to each community’s need. In Skagway, the tribe and the science center are agreeing [web: entering into a Memorandum Of Understanding] with the municipality to look at the range to the east of town that has been the source of recent rockfalls.
Heintz: “This fall we are going to put a bunch of seismometers and we are going to get a sense of how much things are moving in and around the Skagway area.”
This will provide a seismic picture of the mountains. Heintz says they plan on conducting a [web: LIDAR] survey this spring, which will provide an even more precise picture.
For their work in Klukwan, Heintz says the priority is to identify where new housing can be built. The village lies between the river that is eroding the land, and the mountain is the source of landslides. Heintz says in this case, they have chosen to not spend much time conducting surveys.
Heintz: “We can basically bring together experts from the community, experts in flooding and landslides and stuff, together in one room and spend the day talking about it and poring over maps, and at least finding some sort of general ideas they could use to at least think about this.”
Heintz says that working in Hoonah, he found landslides are more likely to cut off the roads that residents use to go hunting and foraging. The discussion there is more focussed on food safety.
Heintz says one challenge will be long term funding. The National Science Foundation is providing some initial funds. He says maybe the US Geological survey would provide longer term funding. Heintz envisions community members taking over the day to day monitoring process.
Heintz: “We would want to pay community members to be our eyes and ears on the ground, and so, if you got instruments that are out in the field that need to be services or maintained, that they would be the people that would do that.”
Heintz says community members would also participate in region wide meetings about issues associated with extreme precipitation. They would work closely with their community emergency planning committees and first responders.
