Permafrost Is Thawing in Svalbard, Posing a Risk to Cultural Heritage and New Buildings

A research project called PermaRICH has estimated how much thawing ground threatens heritage sites and modern buildings in Longyearbyen and Ny-"Ålesund. It ran for three years, between 2023 and 2025. The researchers are now working on passing the results to relevant stakeholders, and the project's datasets will be added to a permafrost monitoring system that is being developed in Longyearbyen. The lead researcher is Line Rouyet of the research institute NORCE.

In Longyearbyen the team analysed 639 heritage sites along with 1,028 modern buildings. In Ny-Ålesund the figures were 90 sites and 128 buildings. The heritage relates to hunting, exploration, mining and military activity, and also includes graves. Methods included satellite images from different dates, which show how the ground moves within a season and from one year to the next, and instruments that record movement of the soil and of the buildings. Aerial photos, old maps and field visits fed new maps of landforms, processes and deposits. From these the team built indicators of where permafrost processes could harm sites and buildings.

Permafrost is ground that stays at or below 0 °C for two years. Its upper layer, the active layer, thaws each summer and freezes again in winter, so the soil shifts. In many places this layer is getting thicker because of climate change. Rouyet said that risk combines hazard and vulnerability, so a building of high societal relevance, such as the hospital or the airport, gets a higher risk estimate than a garage or a cabin. She added that not everything can be saved, and that the aim is to help rank what is urgent.

According to Rouyet, political attention to thawing permafrost in Norway has been limited, and no agency holds overall responsibility for managing the risk. Statbygg and Avinor (the airport operator) work on the problems that affect them, but high staff turnover weakens institutional memory. She said few Norwegian areas are affected apart from Svalbard, some high mountains and the Finnmark plateau.

Partners were NORCE, SINTEF, UNIS (the University Centre in Svalbard), the Geological Survey of Norway and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research.