Chaim Andersen, infrastructure planning co-ordinator for the Nunatsiavut Government.

Photo by Frey Blake-Pijogge

This story was originally published in

The Narwhal

and appears here with minor style edits.

In central Nunainguk (Nain), the largest community in

Nunatsiavut

(northern “Labrador”), Joey Angnatok used shipping containers to build his warehouse.

He placed the two sea cans on hefty steel H-beams, leaving some room beneath them, should he need to jack up one end or the other against the sloping, ever-changing ground.

The land under them, he says, is “alive, like it’s always moving.”

Some of the Nunatsiavut region is underlaid with permafrost, a layer of soil, sediment, rock and ice — sometimes all of them together — that remains frozen for more than two years.

Permafrost is ubiquitous across the Arctic and much of the subarctic. Some of the oldest layers are believed to have remained frozen for hundreds of thousands of years.

But despite its longevity in some places, as the climate warms, permafrost thaw is becoming an increasingly inescapable problem.

“I hate it,” Angnatok says, “because I own a few properties around town, and unfortunately the melting of the permafrost is playing havoc with the foundations and movements of the buildings.”

READ MORE:

Climate change is melting ice roads — a lifeline for remote Indigenous communities

That’s why he built his warehouse to mitigate the undulating effects of permafrost thaw.

“Because the land was so bad there,” he explains, “I figured we’d try something different instead of your normal ‘pour the concrete down and then build your wood structure on that.’”

Three years after building, he says he’s still holding his breath.

Nunainguk, the administrative capital of Nunatsiavut, is a community at the forefront of change.

What’s happening here is being seen elsewhere in the

North

, and is predicted to continue as the climate warms — thawing and reshaping the foundations on which communities are built.

As “Canada” eyes expansion and development in the Arctic, thawing permafrost could have a big impact.

Lichens, crowberry and bakeapple thrive on permafrost, offering animals vital food sources — and impacting wildlife as it thaws

A peat plateau near ‘Rigolet, Labrador.’ The slightly raised permafrost is surrounded by wetter peatland.

Photos courtesy Yifeng Wang

Climate change and human activity drive permafrost thaw

In another part of the community, there used to be a convenience store, Puffin Snacks, in which everything — including the building itself — was tilted to one side.

“If you walked into the building, you just started running in,” recalls local resident Michelle Saunders, research manager with the Nunatsiavut Government, “because it was just so sloped.”

Puffin Snacks, too, was built on permafrost.

A study on

permafrost in the town

, published in 2021, shows that much of the infrastructure across the community has been impacted in some way as the ground shifts and sinks beneath it.

As the climate changes — far faster in the Arctic than elsewhere around the world — permafrost is thawing as temperatures rise.

Robert Way, an associate professor at Queen’s University in the Department of Geography and Planning, is from “Labrador” and is one of the authors of the study on permafrost in the town.