"A new study found that 75 streams in Alaska’s Brooks Range have turned orange due to thawing permafrost, which releases metals like iron, aluminum and cadmium that exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency safety thresholds for aquatic life."
"The writer John McPhee once described Alaska’s Salmon River as having “the clearest, purest water” he’d ever seen. Today, that same river runs orange with toxic metals unleashed by thawing permafrost.
“During the summer of 2019, the clear waters of the Salmon turned distinctly orange and have remained discolored and turbid since,” according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Salmon River’s transformation represents a much larger crisis. In Alaska’s Brooks Range,75 streams have “recently turned orange and turbid,” the study found.
“This is what acid mine drainage looks like,” said Tim Lyons, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside, and co-author of the study. “But here, there’s no mine. The permafrost is thawing and changing the chemistry of the landscape.”"
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