Permafrost is a major actor in the slow-motion disaster movie of pollution, climate change, and environmental degradation. It contains vast amounts of carbon. As our planet warms permafrost thaws, releasing greenhouse gases that enter a feedback loop which accelerates climate change. How bad is this feedback? We still don’t know. We still need to understand the different character and history of permafrost that makes it vulnerable to rapid thaw and erosion.
Geomorphology is the area within Earth Sciences that studies what is happening at or near the Earth’s surface, seeking to understand how physical, chemical, and biological processes form the terrain around us. Each landscape has stories to tell. “Geomorphology is the point where geology meets the human timescale,” says Assistant Professor Madison Douglas. She joined the UC Berkeley Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences in 2024, following an MIT postdoc. She has plans that will make the permafrost talk.
On the first day of class Douglas likes to do an icebreaker: Picture your favorite natural landscape. Raised in New England, she picks Walden Pond. Is Walden an undisturbed, natural landscape or does it have a human history? Most places that we post-industrial people encounter have already been reshaped by human activity. At Walden Pond it isn’t just the parking lot and walking trails – a history of logging coupled with warming temperatures have altered the vegetation, and the depth and contours of the pond and its water composition have been altered from what the retreating glacier left at the end of the last ice age. The climate and the geology made the hole but human actions have created the environment we experience today.
When Earth scientists go to gather data in the field, they aim to understand geomorphological features well enough to predict how they’ll behave in a timeframe that users will value. When will we need to dredge the delta so ships can go into port? When and where do landslides occur in the mountains of California? How can we design levees and dams to provide cheap, renewable hydropower without destroying fish habitats? Models that analyze how water and sediment move across landscapes can answer these questions.
