Frozen no more, a case study of Arctic permafrost impacts of oil and gas withdrawal

Almost 2 million acres of Alaska are leased to the oil and gas industry. According to industry estimates, subsurface expansion vertically and laterally from these leases could cover up to 32,170 acres per pad. As industrial oil extraction activities are increasingly performed on this land, impacts to the permafrost environment will include rapid thaw, increased hydrological flux, the release of greenhouse gases, and increased microbial activity. Here we use remote sensing and field observations to provide a first-order characterization of the direct and legacy impacts of oil and gas pads on the warming permafrost tundra of Alaska’s North Slope.