Toward a Predictive Model of Arctic Coastal Retreat in a Warming Climate, Beaufort Sea, Alaska

Abstract

The long-term goal of this project is to build a set of process-based models of Arctic coastal evolution that will aid in prediction of future landscape and nearshore bathymetric change. Our study is focused on the Beaufort Sea coast within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), approximately halfway between Barrow and Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Our project will help us to identify sites along the Beaufort Sea coast that are at particular risk of becoming eroded in the near future, and to predict future patterns of coastal change as a function of projected changes in sea surface temperature, sea ice conditions, and changes in land surface temperatures. Our approach takes a step beyond the empirical analyses that have characterized past studies of Arctic coastal change by focusing on the development of models fed by new environmental data and retrospective analyses of existing data.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2007
Accession Number
ADA541738

Entities

People

  • Cameron W. Wobus
  • Irina Overeem
  • Robert S. Anderson

Organizations

  • University of Colorado Boulder

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aerial Photography
  • Beaufort Sea
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Sets
  • Environment
  • Ice
  • Materials
  • Measurement
  • Personal Information Managers
  • Photographs
  • Photography
  • Predictive Modeling
  • Reconnaissance
  • Sea Ice
  • Sea Surface Temperature
  • Surface Temperature
  • Water

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Polar and Arctic Studies