Experts emphasize need for Interior Alaska wildfire mitigation

By Lizzy Hahn/ ADN

Story previously published in Anchorage Daily News

Photo by John Lyons, BLM Alaska Fire Service
The Goose Fire is seen burning in the Yukon Flats in northeast Alaska, about 41 miles east of Fort Yukon, on Aug. 4, 2022.

Earlier this summer, Interior Alaska wildfires were so widespread, Fairbanks resident Nettie La Belle-Hamer had to prepare a go-box in case the flames encroached too closely on her home.

La Belle-Hamer, deputy director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, brought that firsthand experience along with plenty of scientific knowledge to this year’s Arctic Encounter Symposium, an annual conference focused on the region.

La Belle-Hamer was joined by four other panelists — three of whom live in the Interior — to discuss methods to address wildfires in the Arctic, as well as strategies to implement fire mitigation in the Arctic to protect permafrost melt.

As of Aug. 1, 981,180.7 acres in Alaska have burned in wildfires, according to the Bureau of Land Management. That land mass is the equivalent to the entire state of Rhode Island.

The four Alaska panelists all mentioned the wildfires in the Interior this summer.

“It’s very real to us who are living here and smelling the smoke and seeing the fires summer after summer,” La Belle-Hamer said.

She discussed her background with satellite imagery and how fire burn maps can inform what future fires would look like.

“There’s a huge potential that’s not being realized at the University of Alaska Fairbanks,” La Belle-Hamer said.

By combining the satellite imagery and fire department training at UAF with the science of what has happened in the boreal forest, “we’re actually so much better together,” La Belle-Hamer said.

Edward Alexander, who is co-chair of the Gwich’in Council International, said that if a predicted wind event had actually materialized, “Fairbanks could have easily been evacuated to Anchorage or to Whitehorse.”

As of Aug. 1, there are 187 active fires in Alaska, 10 of which are staffed.

Morten Høglund, former Arctic ambassador for Norway, is a co-leader of the Arctic Wildland Fires Initiative along with Alexander. The initiative was launched in 2023 by the Norwegian Chairship of the Arctic Council.

“We just came to this issue after 65% of our (Gwich’in) homeland … burned during my lifetime,” Alexander said Wednesday. “It’s basically equivalent to four states of Delaware on the upper corner of Alaska there, that have burned.”

“Our area has been slightly warmer than the rest of the Circumpolar Arctic by a couple of degrees,” Alexander said about the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

Not all parts of the globe are warming at the same rate. Alexander noted that the Arctic has warmed four times more than the global average.

Seeing the effects of widespread smoke and fires in the Yukon, Alexander said that he and Høglund were concerned about what would happen once the rest of the circumpolar boreal forest reached higher temperatures.

Lizzy Hahn / ADN
From left: Morten Høglund, Edward Alexander and Nettie La Belle-Hamer participate in a panel on wildfires at the 2025 Arctic Encounter Symposium at the Dena’ina Center on Wednesday, July 30, 2025.

Wildfires in the Arctic have different results compared to wildfires in the Lower 48. Alexander used Alaska and California as an example. In California, wildfires burn down to the soil. Comparatively, in Alaska, the fires burn to the duff — a surface layer that insulates permafrost.

Permafrost is defined as soil or sediment that remains below 32 degrees Fahrenheit for two or more years. Permafrost contains large amounts of organic carbon, and as it thaws, the carbon that is trapped within the soil is released as a greenhouse gas.

The boreal forest, according to Alexander, serves as a protective blanket insulating the permafrost under it. When this blanket burns, the permafrost becomes vulnerable to thawing. Once this blanket is removed, there is no way to prevent or reverse the permafrost from thawing.

Areas in the Arctic contain permafrost whose carbon, when released, “could be more than … a small country’s entire emissions,” according to Alexander.

Last summer, 1.6 million acres of “permafrost-rich lands” in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge were moved to a higher fire protection classification. Instead of letting areas burn in the early season, firefighters will manage the fires more closely under the new classification.

The Yukon Flats spans 8.6 million acres in total.

Alexander pointed out that this area is “affecting our future.” He said that recent fires have burned so intensely on the Yukon Flats that the “yedoma is collapsing.” Yedoma is permafrost that formed in the Pleistocene period, which started roughly 2.6 million years ago.

According to the Woodwell Climate Research Center, where Alexander is a senior Arctic leader, 20% of the permafrost that is vulnerable to thawing is found in Alaska.

Boots on the ground

Alexander and fellow panelist Peter Butteri, a retired Alaska statewide fire planner, both worked as wildland firefighters. By partnering with scientists, Butteri said, firefighters are able to increase their effectiveness. Scientists at UAF like La Belle-Hamer look at various maps of the boreal forest, fire burns, scars and fuel maps to better predict fire activity.

“We’ve got long-term researchers ... providing tools that we use on a daily basis,” said Butteri.

Alexander sees an opportunity to use a new type of fire management in the state.

“As firefighters, we tend to think of things as a chain saw problem or a Pulaski problem,” Alexander said. “You can’t solve the circumpolar wildland fire crisis with a chain saw or a Pulaski (ax).”

Instead, Alexander pointed to how the Gwich’in traditionally kept large wildfires at bay. The Gwich’in practice involves burning off the “dead sticks and matter on the top” in the spring, while the ground is still frozen, Alexander said. These mild fires, as Alexander put it, allow for more biodiversity to return, compared to severe fires that lead to widespread damage.

“Mama moose has got protein shakes everywhere she goes,” Alexander said about the plants that come back after mild fires.

Similarly to mowing a lawn every two weeks, Alexander said that cultural burnings every two years can be used as preventive maintenance.

“If all the world’s permafrost thawed, I mean, there’s no amount of solar panels, or, you know, zero-emission cars or anything like that, that’s going to create food security for humans,” Alexander said.