Libraries Burning

• Published in: Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community
• Main Author: Phyllis Mauch Messenger
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing 2019
• Subjects: anthropology; international; research; Geography. Anthropology. Recreation; G; History of scholarship and learning. The humanities; AZ20-999; Arctic; Climate change; permafrost
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.24926/2471190X.6007; https://doaj.org/article/5c1ea6c6683a419fb469e2a077845464

The impact of climate change on archaeological and heritage sites in the Arctic region is devastating. New techniques of research and analysis are providing increasingly rich data about the long history of humans in the environment. Just as the value of these sites is being recognized more fully, the sites themselves are being destroyed by thawing permafrost, rising sea levels, and increasingly violent storms. Nowhere is this being felt more intensely than in the Arctic, which is warming two to three times as fast as the rest of the planet (Hoag 2019).