Alaska: a village melted because of the warming climate

The small Shishmaref village of the Eskimo on a small island adjacent to Alaska, is submerged year by year into the ocean, causing locals to move to the mainland and risk losing their land. they.

The coast of the small village of the Eskimo Shishmaref (Photo: kawerak.org) According to scientists, these are victims of the climate of the Earth is heating up.

The island has a village of Shishmaref located on the regular frozen soil of Chukchi Sea, north of the Bering Strait, 150 km from Russia. The island is about 600 meters wide and 5 km long. According to geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), temperatures in Alaska that have warmed up in at least 30 years have seriously affected the frozen soil on the island.

Under the impact of defrosting, the land on the island becomes vulnerable to floods due to ice melt as well as strong storms that lose soil flaps on the island.

At present, the situation of ice is melting and the waves have fallen on the banks devastated many warehouses, boats, yard and dried fish and when the food reserves on the island become more and more intense. Recently, a house has melted and collapsed, causing 20 people to move deep into the island. But according to local authorities, this 600-person village will have to be relocated to the mainland in the near future.

However, it is feared that indigenous peoples who are annexed to another community on the mainland could lead to the eradication of the traditional values ​​of Shishmaref villagers, which have been on the island for 4,000 years. before.

L.XAN