Traditional Iñupiat Ice Cellars (SIĠḷUAQ) in Barrow, Alaska: Characteristics, Temperature Monitoring, and Distribution

Ice cellars are a natural form of refrigeration constructed within permafrost. They are traditionally employed by indigenous Arctic peoples to store harvested wildlife. Recent reports from Alaska indicate that ice cellars are "failing" through mechanisms that include flooding and collapse,...

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Published inGeographical review Vol. 107; no. 1; pp. 143 - 158
Main Authors Nyland, Kelsey E., Klene, Anna E., Brown, Jerry, Shiklomanov, Nikolay I., Nelson, Frederick E., Streletskiy, Dmitry A., Yoshikawa, Kenji
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Taylor & Francis 01.01.2017
American Geographical Society
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Alaska
Alternative energy
Analysis
Arctic region
Barrow
Basements & cellars
Environmental aspects
Food
Frozen ground
Global temperature changes
Ice
ice cellar
Icehouses
Inupiat
Iñupiat
Permafrost
Studies
Temperature
thermal regime
Alaska
Arctic region
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Summary:Ice cellars are a natural form of refrigeration constructed within permafrost. They are traditionally employed by indigenous Arctic peoples to store harvested wildlife. Recent reports from Alaska indicate that ice cellars are "failing" through mechanisms that include flooding and collapse, which are often attributed to climate change. In cooperation with local stakeholders, we instrumented five cellars to record internal air temperature in Barrow, Alaska. A decade of thermal monitoring (2005-2015) revealed little thermal change. A survey was also conducted to identify all known ice cellar locations in Barrow. A total of seventy-one cellars were catalogued and mapped. The large number of catalogued cellars shows the importance and great potential loss for the Barrow community if widespread failures were to occur. Although climate change has considerable potential for affecting ice cellars, sediment chemistry, local hydrology, and urbanization are also important impacting factors.
Bibliography:We thank the owners of the instrumented ice cellars for access and information. Local residents Lewis Brower, Harry Brower, Ron Brower, Tom Brower III, Richard Glenn, and Glenn Sheehan provided detailed information about the locations, construction, maintenance, and performance of traditional Iñupiat ice cellars in Barrow. We are grateful to the Native Village of Barrow and the North Slope Borough Planning and Community Service's GIS department for their cooperation on this project. CH2MHill Polar Services, Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, Ukpea⋗vik Iñupiat Corporation, and UMIAQ services provided logistical support. We thank the many field assistants who worked with us on this project. This research was supported by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) grants OPP‐0352958, ARC‐1002119, PLR‐1231294, and a George Washington University Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.
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ISSN:0016-7428
1931-0846
DOI:10.1111/j.1931-0846.2016.12204.x