A landscape in motion
North of the Arctic Circle, the Old Crow Flats is a vast wetland of more than 8,000 shallow lakes and ponds spread across 6,170 square kilometers. This landscape sits on a thick layer of continuous permafrost, ground that has remained frozen for millennia. The permafrost here is exceptionally full of ice, structured as massive ice wedges that crisscross the terrain in polygonal patterns. These wedges, some dating back tens of thousands of years, form the structural foundation of the land.
Now, that foundation is melting. As regional temperatures rise, the ice wedges thaw, causing the ground above to collapse. This process, known as thermokarst, is dramatically reshaping the flats. The most startling effect is catastrophic lake drainage. When a melting ice wedge creates a channel, it can breach a lake's shore, causing the entire body of water to drain into a nearby river system in a matter of days or weeks. Between 1951 and 2009, the rate of this drainage increased significantly. The changes are of great concern to the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, the "People of the Lakes," who have inhabited this territory for countless generations and observe the transformations firsthand.