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Earth Science

Alaska's Arctic Waterways Are Turning a Foreboding Orange (wired.com) 77

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Dozens of once crystal-clear streams and rivers in Arctic Alaska are now running bright orange and cloudy, and in some cases they are becoming more acidic. From a report: This otherwise undeveloped landscape now looks as if an industrial mine has been in operation for decades, and scientists want to know why. Roman Dial, a professor of biology and mathematics at Alaska Pacific University, first noticed the stark water-quality changes while doing field work in the Brooks Range in 2020. He spent a month with a team of six graduate students, and they could not find adequate drinking water. "There's so many streams that are not just stained, they're so acidic that they curdle your powdered milk," he said. In others, the water was clear, "but you couldn't drink it because it had a really weird mineral taste and tang."

Dial, who has spent the last 40 years exploring the Arctic, was gathering data on climate-change-driven changes in Alaska's tree line for a project that also includes work from ecologists Patrick Sullivan, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Institute at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and Becky Hewitt, an environmental studies professor at Amherst College. Now the team is digging into the water-quality mystery. "I feel like I'm a grad student all over again in a lab that I don't know anything about, and I'm fascinated by it," Dial said. Most of the rusting waterways are located within some of Alaska's most remote protected lands: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, the Kobuk Valley National Park, and the Selawik Wildlife Refuge. The phenomenon is visually striking.

"It seems like something's been broken open or something's been exposed in a way that has never been exposed before," Dial said. "All the hardrock geologists who look at these pictures, they're like, 'Oh, that looks like acid mine waste.'" But it's not mine waste. According to the researchers, the rusty coating on rocks and streambanks is coming from the land itself. The prevailing hypothesis is that climate warming is causing underlying permafrost to degrade. That releases sediments rich in iron, and when those sediments hit running water and open air, they oxidize and turn a deep rusty orange color. The oxidation of minerals in the soil may also be making the water more acidic. The research team is still early in the process of identifying the cause in order to better explain the consequences. "I think the pH issue" -- the acidity of the water -- "is truly alarming," said Hewitt.
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Alaska's Arctic Waterways Are Turning a Foreboding Orange More

Alaska's Arctic Waterways Are Turning a Foreboding Orange

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  • Trump (Score:4, Funny)

    by BladeMelbourne ( 518866 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @02:22AM (#63175572)

    Did Donald Trump wash his fake tan off in the Alaskan waterways?

    • Who?

      • He's the nephew of Scrooge McTrump.

    • Damn, beat me to it, was just going to ask whether Trump went swimming upstream somewhere.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        He's the "clairvoyant Chosen One", so he can do it clear from Mar-a-Lago.

        • He's the "clairvoyant Chosen One", so he can do it clear from Mar-a-Lago.

          It's like a parody of the sci-fi novel. He's the Biznatch Grabersnatch!

    • You people are so offensive to Trump. How dare you suggest he ever washes it off.

  • Last time it was limestone erosion caused by acid rain. When acid rain was a thing...

    • Re:Limestone (Score:5, Informative)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @03:24AM (#63175616)

      No, acid rain was limited to the Eastern US (that is where most emissions were produced), not a lot of coal fired power plants in Alaska (13% of generating capacity), nice try tho sport.

      Turns out that regulation worked:

      Acid Rain Program Results [epa.gov]
      The Acid Rain Program (ARP) has delivered significant reductions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, extensive environmental and human health benefits, and far lower-than-expected costs. Together with more recent power sector regulations, including the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), and a rapidly changing energy sector, the ARP has helped deliver annual SO2 reductions of over 93% and annual NOX emissions reductions of over 87%. The Power Plant Emissions Trends page has maps and data highlighting these emissions reductions, and the Progress Reports provide an annual overview of program features and results, from compliance to air quality impacts.

      • Badgerstork is making the point that, at one point in time, acid rain was the media boogeyman for virtually every story about nature being destroyed by man. Though you say that acid rain was localized to a single area, Journalists said that acid rain was affecting everything, everywhere. Acid rain was being named by journalists as the reason for most ecological disasters, truth be damned.

        Now, the exact same damage is being blamed not on acid rain, but on climate change.

        What he is saying is that blaming clim

        • Re: Limestone (Score:5, Insightful)

          by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @05:07AM (#63175700)

          Fair enough. Now why isn't it blamed on acid rain anymore?
          Could it be that we listened, enacted regulation, regulation worked, and acid rain is less of an issue than it used to be?
          Same as what happened with the ozone hole?

          Y2K in IT is another interesting example: everyone and their mother knew about the existence of the issue, then 2000 came and doom didn't happen. Why? Because it was a non-issue from the start, or was it because the issue had been recognized, and dutifully worked on during the 90s?
          The 2038 32-bit unix timestamp overflow is 15 years out, but people are working it already today.

          • Yup, and you still run across people who day who claim with a straight face that Y2K was a hoax, primarily because there was no disaster. They ignore that the reason for no disaster was that an immense amount of work was spent trying to mitigate it.

            2038 is less of a problem in many ways because there are many date formats. Ie, many 32-bit embedded systems just use unsigned integers, mostly for simplicity and to avoid using a different time system. Security certificates use an entirely different time syst

        • Though you say that acid rain was localized to a single area, Journalists said that acid rain was affecting everything, everywhere.

          The most severe acid rain was prevalent in a single region, but it was present everywhere there were significant emissions.

          Acid rain was being named by journalists as the reason for most ecological disasters

          Global cooling myth, troll.

        • Re: Limestone (Score:4, Insightful)

          by laughing_badger ( 628416 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @06:27AM (#63175782) Homepage

          Badgerstork is making the point that, at one point in time, acid rain was the media boogeyman for virtually every story about nature being destroyed by man. Though you say that acid rain was localized to a single area, Journalists said that acid rain was affecting everything, everywhere. Acid rain was being named by journalists as the reason for most ecological disasters, truth be damned.

          Now, the exact same damage is being blamed not on acid rain, but on climate change.

          What he is saying is that blaming climate change is the new âoeacid rainâ.

          Journalists, as a group, didn't say that. I can recall quite a lot of detail in the news articles I read and listened to on where acid rain was being produced, transported to, and dropped around Europe. There was a lot of discussion about what issues it caused, what to do about it, and the pros and cons of differing approaches.

          Could it be that it was an issue with the news sources that Badgerstork and yourself rely upon?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

          Acid rain was being named by journalists as the reason for most ecological disasters

          Er, no it was not. You are making it up. Try harder.

          • Re: Limestone (Score:1, Interesting)

            by guruevi ( 827432 )

            You clearly did not live through the 80s and 90s then. We were told in European schools that acid rain was irreversible, it was worldwide phenomenon and going to and already did wash away monuments and destabilize the cement in buildings.

            You can search engine things yourself, lookup the 80s and 90s media hype around acid rain.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

              You clearly did not live through the 80s and 90s then.

              I did, which is why I know you are talking nonsense.

            • You clearly did not live through the 80s and 90s then. We were told in European schools that acid rain was irreversible, it was worldwide phenomenon and going to and already did wash away monuments and destabilize the cement in buildings.

              I didn't realize how awful European schools were in the 80s and 90s. Here in the US, we usually think of European school as competent, and here you are saying that they were in fact useless and stupid.

              In the US, we were told that acid rain was a product of sulphur content in burning coal. This is not "irreversable": stop burning coal, or burn low sulfur coal. Were European schools really that stupid?

              You can search engine things yourself, lookup the 80s and 90s media hype around acid rain.

              I can find nobody every saying that acid rain is irreversible in a search.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by guruevi ( 827432 )

                You didn't look at all then, first page on Google:
                https://www.upi.com/Archives/1... [upi.com]
                - This is towards the end of the 80s where researchers thought that acid rain could be reversed. This article strongly implies that many people thought it could not be.
                https://www.nytimes.com/1984/1... [nytimes.com]
                - 1984: we risk IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE. West Germany already has damaged 34% of its forests
                https://scholarship.law.nd.edu... [nd.edu]
                - 1987: it CAUSES IRREVERSIBLE HARM. This article clearly says and references research that said it is irre

                • First, these links you post say that the EFFECTS of acid rain can be irreversible. What you claimed earlier was that people said acid rain (not its effects) was irreversible. The fact that the effects can be irreversible is trivial; obviously if you dissolve [cloudfront.net] a marble or limestone monument, stopping burning coal won't make the monument regenerate.

                  Second, you're ignoring the weasel-words in the articles. The articles quoted say "some of which [effects] may be irreversible", and " If we do not act now to re

                  • Re: (Score:1)

                    by guruevi ( 827432 )

                    The third link I posted really does say they are definitely irreversible. The first link implied it was generally understood. I don't have time to dig up more references but you can clearly read the article and read context and understand that it was widely accepted to be or soon to become irreversible.

                    The weaselwords are always there, they're there with climate change (heating or cooling) as well, we risk, we may, perhaps, in the future. So why should I pay attention to it.

                    As I said, we're now burning 50%

                    • The third link I posted really does say they are definitely irreversible.

                      It does... and it doesn't. It says the effects are irreversable, but the actual referenced statement is "A review of recent economic and scientific data shows that acid rain causes serious harm to nature some of which may be irreversible."

              • Stupid. Or on the take. (If a problem can't be fixed, there's no need for profit-harming regulations, is there? We're starting to see seeing the same "It's too late" propaganda about climate change)

                Or they're lying about the schools. Or misremembering/lying to themselves. I've noticed a whole lot of the anti-eco-responsibility crowd seem to be very vulnerable to their chosen "Ministry of Truth" newsytainment sources rewriting the past.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Acid rain was definitely not limited to the Eastern US. For one thing, Los Angeles had an acid rain problem. It may have been more common there than in many other places. It was one of the things pushing California to pass the Clean Air act(s).

      • OK, my memory of 30/40 years ago isn't great so the acid rain part might be bad but I am pretty sure about the limestone thing. I was surprised there was such a thing as orange limestone

  • Foreboding? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CaptainLugnuts ( 2594663 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @04:06AM (#63175652)
    That's the national pumpkin spice reserve!

  • The worst thing is I can see all those idiots coming from the woods:

    "See, bright orange, acidic poisonous water is completely natural. Waste water from our mines help the environment to restore that natural state."

    • ""See, bright orange, acidic poisonous water is completely natural"

      But it is completely natural in spots. The key point is in spots, I was out along Fall Creek in eastern Idaho and found a bluish and sticky side stream going into the main creek. It turned out to be a little warm spring with a bunch of dissolved copper.

      The Red Dog zinc mine in Alaska was found by a man following a biologically dead side stream up grade until he found the deposit of rock so loaded with zinc it was toxic.

      Nature is not a large

  • Good news (Score:3)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @07:13AM (#63175834)

    Once these waters reach the rest of the world in sufficient concentration, we won't have to take any iron supplements anymore. ;-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Umnh...oxidized iron isn't considered bio-available. Hippocrates to the contrary, you need to reduce it before you can get much good from it. (And this is generally good, because too much iron is rather bad, and there's no natural way to excrete it ... well, except menstruation.)

  • So this info is from 2020 and the hypothesis is.... So 2 years later they should know.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I think you are extremely optimistic about how quickly science usually progresses. 2 years later they'll be publishing their papers on what the preliminary results are. Somebody's probably still working on a thesis about it. Then that thesis will need to be evaluated, Somebody else will come up with a thesis that challenges a few of the details. It will take another few rounds of back and forth before things are "considered settled", which means until the next part is challenged by someone else's thesi

  • ...they could not find adequate drinking water.

    Some scientists they are! Even preschool children know that you can melt snow to make water!

  • 'bright' or 'deep rusty' orange? (Score:3)

    by fygment ( 444210 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @10:37AM (#63176148)

    no surprise, 'a professor of _biology_' ... seriously, if it's iron oxide that should be pretty straightforward to confirm or deny. in fact sampling and testing the water should be straightforward. but since this report came out in 2020 either there's an answer being covered up or it was all a hoax maybe made up to make permafrost thawing seem like a more frightening thing than it is OR it was a mining event that was covered up? either way this post's appearance was only to fan the fear of climate change, keep it in the public eye at all costs so the scared people can be taken advantage of [slashdot.org].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      They had to have done some type of "sampling" to figure out that it was acidic - they said it would curdle milk.. How do you know that without conducting some tests?, And sure they could have figured out if it was iron oxide in the water within a few minutes most likely, But they wanted to write an article and make it sound as mysterious as possible?

      Possibly they even tested for the FE2O3 / FeO / FE3O4 and held back mention of that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Ah yes, the global warming conspiracy. A bunch of shadowy groups spread throughout an entire world of countries that don't get along, made up of hundreds of thousands of people who some how never leak a thing to expose the conspiracy are pushing us to... Not pump a bunch of stuff into the air we know for a fact will increase it's heat retention.

      We know for a fact that air with more CO2 in it holds more heat then that with less because we can test this in a lab. Give me a fucking break with this absurd cons

  • blown out of proportion to 'spin' the article

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Citation please

      I'm asking because a region the size of Alaska with its level of snow fall would obviously have hundreds of small waterways during the summer when the sun shines the vast majority of the day at their latitude.

  • Cool. Global warming is turning Alaska into Flint (the place, not the rock).

  • Dozens of once crystal-clear streams and rivers in Arctic Alaska are now running bright orange and cloudy, and in some cases they are becoming more acidic.

    Alaska is on the Pacific Ring of Fire. One of the common causes of water contaminated like that in such regions is vulcanism.

    The Ring of Fire changes all the time. There was a story covered here on Slashdot 7 or 8 years ago about a Canadian island that had hot springs suddenly losing them. They simply stopped after a minor earthquake. Something shifted deep underground and the water went away. A minor tourist industry vanished overnight because of geological activity nobody could do anything about.

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