Ponds drying up

Observation by Sandra Hill on behalf of Apak

I'm writing from Hooper Bay regarding ponds that are drying up or have dried up through the years. Many of our fresh water ponds among the dunes have dried up. Most of which we hauled our drinking water from. Some people who have no water and sewer system to their homes still haul water and have had to find water that are deep enough to fill their buckets with. They have to search for the right ones. I also collected water from the ponds, those in collected from have long since dried or are too shallow to fill buckets from.

LEO Says:

Lake drying is occurring across Alaska and the Arctic, and these changes can have a direct impact on communities that depend on lakes for drinking water and other everyday needs. In 2022, a lake outside Kotzebue that served as a local drinking water source suddenly disappeared. This unexpected event raised important questions for the community and researchers about why the lake changed and what might be happening to other lakes across the region. (See sidebar)

Community observations are an important part of understanding these changes. Lake drying can be influenced by many factors, including changing precipitation, permafrost, groundwater, temperature, and local landscape conditions. By bringing together community knowledge and scientific research, we can better understand what is happening to local water sources, identify potential risks, and support communities in preparing for changes to the water they depend on. Our partners at the Permafrost Discovery Gateway (see link in sidebar) and Alfred Wegener Institute are developing multiple tools to help communities and researchers better understand these changes.

Consult by Ingmar Nitze:

Lakes and ponds in permafrost can be very dynamic, depending on ground conditions, but also weather and many other factors, mentioned in the first comment. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region is an area with especially strong landscape and lake dynamics with frequent water area changes, including lake drainage and loss. Since local communities are dependent on freshwater resources, a better understanding of surface water dynamics is a pressing topic in the permafrost research community. Bringing together local observations and research through LEO is a great way to learn from each other and tackle issues. Here are some helpful tools that Permafrost Discovery Gateway and Alfred Wegener Institute developed to find out about landscape dynamics across the entire arctic permafrost region, which also work in Hooper Bay. Both tools work in the browser on different devices like a computer but also on the phone. The Arctic Landscape Explorer tool (ALEX), developed by AWI, lets people explore landscape changes over the past 20 years. Each color shows a process. In Hooper Bay, coastal erosion (previously reported in LEO) is visible in dark blue, with new beach formation close by, in orange. Many other natural or man-made dynamics, for example construction, can also be explored in {ALEX](https://alex.awi.de/?lat=61.51234&lon=-166.12299&zoom=13&screen=10&layer=composite Our newest tool, LostLakes, is part of the Permafrost Discovery Gateway and allows users to explore more than 4 million lakes across the Arctic. Recently changed (potentially drier than usual or even drained) lakes are highlighted. Users can explore changes by simply clicking a lake on the map. Close to Hooper Bay some lakes seem to be quite dynamic, for example this here north of the community, which likely started to drain in 2025. Please feel to explore under this link or https://lostlakes.arcticdata.io/?lat=61.58134&lon=-166.06145&zoom=12&selected_lake=b6cym4t9rf1d)