The large community ice cellar designs in eastern Chukotka are unique within the Arctic due to the mixed influences from the indigenous Chukchi people and western industry. Community ice cellars here were designed and constructed in the 1950s-60s to accommodate both food stores for local indigenous residents and feed stores for Arctic fox fur farms. Like much of the Arctic, this region is undergoing unprecedented climate change. Air temperatures within the study area have been increasing at an average rate of 0.7°C per decade since the 1950s. Exacerbating the adverse effects of the warming climate is the lack of ice cellar maintenance in communities where the fur industry did not survive the transition to a market economy. Today, all but two community ice cellars in eastern Chukotka have flooded or collapsed. Presented in this work are thermal records from two cellars in the region that allow for both climatic and anthropogenic influences on the cellars’ structural integrity to be evaluated. Particularly effective ice cellar maintenance practices utilized in the community of Lorino were 1) wintertime ventilation, and 2) placing large blocks of river ice in the cellar in spring to mitigate spring and summer warming.

The massive ice (MI) bodies are widespread phenomena on Chukotka coastal plains. Although they have been studying since 1930s, stable isotope method was applied for the ice beds quite recently. In this study cryostratigraphy and stable oxygen and hydrogen isotope composition of MI bodies on the extreme North-Eastern Chukotka (near Lavrentiya settlement and Koolen’ lake) have been studied in detail. It was concluded that studied MI bodies have intrasedimental origin and most likely are dated back to the Late Pleistocene age. Mean δ18O values range from –18.5 ‰ to –15 ‰ whereas mean δ2 H values range from –146‰ to –128 ‰ that is higher than expected for the Late Pleistocene ice bodies in this region, which most likely resulted from isotopic fractionation during freezing of water-saturated sediments in a closed system when forming ice became isotopically enriched compared with initial water. The analysis of co-isotope ratios for MI shows that initial water is mainly of meteoric origin (precipitation, water of lakes and taliks).

Permafrost landscapes are particularly susceptible to the observed climate change due to the presence of ice in the ground. This paper presents the results of the mapping and assessment of landscapes and their vulnerability to potential human impact and further climate change in the remote region of Eastern Chukotka. The combination of field studies and remote sensing data analysis allowed us to identify the distribution of landscapes within the study polygon, reveal the factors determining their stability, and classify them by vulnerability to the external impacts using a hazard index, H. In total, 33 landscapes characterized by unique combinations of vegetation cover, soil type, relief, and ground composition were detected within the 172 km2 study polygon. The most stable landscapes of the study polygon occupy 31.7% of the polygon area; they are the slopes and tops of mountains covered with stony-lichen tundra, alpine meadows, and the leveled summit areas of the fourth glacial-marine terrace. The most unstable areas cover 19.2% of the study area and are represented by depressions, drainage hollows, waterlogged areas, and places of caterpillar vehicle passage within the terraces and water-glacial plain. The methods of assessment and mapping of the landscape vulnerability presented in this study are quite flexible and can be adapted to other permafrost regions.