Field Notes
By Matthew Jull | Sept/Oct 2025 Research Studio: City Built on Thawing Ground

Fall 2025 marked the second year of City Built on Thawing Ground, a traveling research studio led by Leena Cho and Matthew Jull through the Arctic Design Group and the University of Virginia Arctic Research Center (UVA-ARC). The studio examined how permafrost thaw, snow redistribution, and surface water processes are impacted by the built environment in Utqiaġvik, Alaska. Building on National Science Foundation Navigating the New Arctic (NSF NNA) observation sites, students combined site documentation and targeted thaw probing with interpretation of sensor data to map surface conditions to support planning and design work at parcel and neighborhood scales. The studio was supported by the UVA Environmental Institute Climate Collaborative project "Snow, Water, and Permafrost in Arctic Communities (SNOWPAC) project." 

From September 26 to October 3, 2025, the team completed site work, took field trips, and met with community partners. Students visited NOAA’s Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, met with Iḷisaġvik College faculty and students, and conducted infrastructure-focused visits with the Barrow Utilities and Electric Cooperative (BUECI), the Taġiuġmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority (TNHA), and the North Slope Borough. The trip also included a meeting with Herman Ahsoak, whaling captain of the Quvan Crew, who brought students to Point Barrow and shared knowledge about subsistence hunting. These activities were paired with observation and documentation of building, construction, and maintenance practices, drainage conditions, gravel–tundra interfaces, and tundra vegetation. Students carried out extensive thaw probing around Utqiaġvik to connect surface conditions and processes to subsurface thermal response. 

Studio teams focused on UVA-ARC's four established NSF NNA study sites with sensor arrays—Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital (SSMH), TNHA (“first” 29-plex), Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO), and BUECI—and added a fifth site at the Imaiqsaun Road Corridor (IRC). Student teams developed projects for each of the five sites in response to priorities identified by local partners. The team working at IRC consulted with the City of Utqiaġvik and TRIBN (a local consulting company and project collaborator) on a plan addressing flooding, accessibility, and potential cemetery expansion. The BUECI team developed a neighborhood block plan for future above-grade utilities, accounting for permafrost conditions, maintenance access, and surface water routing, while also considering seasonal community needs. The BEO team developed interconnected single-family housing prototypes treating tundra and surface conditions as primary constraints. The TNHA team proposed multi-family housing near the new hospital site, linking building layout to drainage and ground conditions. The SSMH team proposed temporary patient housing adjacent to the hospital, accounting for varying patient needs, while also considering local variations in permafrost conditions in the area, drainage/watersheds, snow drifting, and factoring in above-grade utilities.  The student teams presented their work at the final review at UVA at the UVA School of Architecture on December 15, 2025. The four-hour review session was webcast so community partners in  Utqiaġvik and others could join if interested.

Overall, the  City Built on Thawing Ground studio used field observations, sensor data, municipal and partner meetings, and published planning documents to develop applied design projects on above-grade utilities, housing, and snow and meltwater conditions affecting permafrost. Outputs include maps, drawings, and other visual materials intended to support planning discussions, maintenance, and future funding applications. Studio materials are currently being compiled into short reports that synthesize these outcomes for the partner organizations in Utqiaġvik.

Field Notes
By Valentina Ekimova | Sept/Oct 2025 Snow and Ice: Tracking Infrastructure Impact in Arctic Aquatic Systems

From 30 September to 7 October, Utqiaġvik, Alaska, greeted us with a surprise: about 3 inches of shorefast ice on our study sites. At the same time last year, these shores were only lightly iced even later in October, so this early, solid ice cover was not what we expected.Our targets were the same three water bodies, now in their early winter mode: Imikpuk Lake, Middle Salt Lagoon, and Isatkoak Lagoon. The method also stayed the same. Using a YSI EXO1 Multiparameter Sonde, we collected shoreline profiles of temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, algal biomass, and fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM) at locations influenced by roads and buildings as well as more tundra-dominated stretches.What changed was the effort required to reach the water. Instead of picking our way through slush and thin ice, we had to work through thick, resonant ice that echoed across Utqiaġvik with every hammer strike. Armed with a hammer and an ice breaker, and with support from our bear guard Emi, we opened holes through the ice at each sampling point. Emi not only kept an eye out after a recently visiting bear, but also helped us break through the ice so we could get the sonde into the water.The cold was not just an abstract metric; our instrument felt it too. The sonde started to freeze between measurements, so we treated it like a small, very valuable field companion, tucking it back into a warm, thermally insulated cover whenever it was out of the water.Despite the conditions, we completed our planned transects and came away with a full set of fall measurements that pair directly with our summer data. Together, these two years of summer and autumn records will allow us to explore how infrastructure and strong seasonality shape the chemistry and thermal structure of Arctic lakes and lagoons. I will share the results in an oral presentation at AGU 2025 in New Orleans, 15–19 December.

Field Notes
By Valentina Ekimova | June 2025

Water, Water, Everywhere: 
Tracking Infrastructure Impact in Arctic Aquatic Systems

In mid-June, Postdoc Valentina Ekimova and Environmental Sciences PhD candidate MacKenzie Nelson returned to Utqiaġvik to continue the summer sampling campaign at three key water bodies: Imikpuk Lake, Middle Salt Lagoon, and Isatkoak Lagoon. These two lagoons and one lake may look calm on the surface, but they carry the chemical signatures of seasonal rhythms, human activity, and permafrost dynamics. Equipped with a YSI EXO1 Multiparameter Sonde, we walked the shorelines and gathered key water quality parameters: temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, algal biomass, and fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM). Shore-based sampling lets us do more than capture snapshots in time; it helps trace solute movement, identify zones influenced by infrastructure, and even hint at the direction of flow. We’ve done this before. Last year’s data showed that areas near roads and buildings were consistently warmer, saltier, and higher in organic material than more remote tundra zones. This year’s mission: to see whether those trends persist or if new patterns are emerging. Field conditions were mostly in our favor, though lingering ice and snow meant we had to do some careful sliding to reach water deep enough for measurements. Still, we wrapped up the week with a solid second summer dataset. Now it’s time to dig into the numbers, track the trends, and get ready for the fall sampling season. These Arctic water bodies are sensitive, responsive, and always in flux. We’ll come back to keep listening to what they have to tell us.

Field Notes
By Mirella Shaban | May-June 2025

Finding Air Quality Hotspots to Inform Dust Mitigation

Another UVA|ARC team traveled to Utqiaġvik this spring to deploy “BigDot” particulate matter (PM) sensors in areas deemed to be potential or observed hotspots for dust, and therefore, for poor air quality. 
Eighteen sensors were deployed across the city. A handful were placed along a major coastal road (Stevenson St.), a major inner village roadway (Laura Madison), and the major roadway into the tundra (Cakeeater Rd.). The remainder of the sensors were placed at suspected hotspots where cars and foot traffic intersect (stop signs, roadways with high foot traffic, the airport).  Data is collected by the PM sensors at hourly intervals, transmitted from a Notecard Cellular XM device, and pulled into a Datacake data visualization database.
For this task, Environmental Sciences and Data Science PhD student Mirella Shaban was joined by partners from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Fairbanks, Alaska. The goal of the study is to identify locations of high PM air pollution in Utqiaġvik and to quantify the frequency and severity of high PM events:

• How often do they cross U.S. EPA and World Health Organization (WHO) standards for daily exposures? 

• What will the data tell us about hourly exposure thresholds (derived from WHO daily exposure thresholds)? 
• What can we infer about the risk to community members and especially vulnerable populations based on the frequency, severity, and location of PM exposures?

PM sensors will be retrieved at the end of summer, and we will start to analyze the air quality data. The findings will inform the community of locations of PM hotspots, potentially inform future public health mitigation regarding dust exposure, and provide a high-resolution dataset community planners can use for dust mitigation efforts.

Field Notes By Hannah Bradley | May 2025 

Social Scientists go to the Field

In mid-May, social scientists Hannah Bradley and Cheri Johnson traveled to Utqiaġvik alongside our colleagues from the Environmental Science and Architecture departments to continue our social studies of how science works.  Watching scientists do science is just one aspect of our research, and it's great to be in the field and lend a hand or hold a ladder. 

Our social science observations covered two aspects of our research: 

1) Observing our colleagues as they organized their data collection, repaired sensors, and met with our community partners. This is part of our study of scientific collaboration: How do we communicate and build relationships with community partners? How do we use sensors to try to answer the questions we all have about Arctic urban environments?  

2) Doing some groundwork for parallel research we are doing as part of the UVA Environmental Institute grant on snow and water management, more specifically about human experiences of the urban environment. We made stops at the Iñupiat Heritage Center, BUECI, and around town, lining up archival sources and interviews that will help us get a better understanding of the history of utilities and public services in Utqiaġvik. 

In both research strands, we want to understand how infrastructure, communities, and scientific research interact to create livable futures for Arctic cities.  

While in Utqiaġvik, we also attended a public meeting of the Army Corps of Engineers and Bryce Contracting about the upcoming seawall construction. This was a fascinating opportunity to see the rocky intersection between big infrastructure projects and Arctic communities. We are excited to try to better understand how big changes like a seawall, or above-ground utilities, will impact the community.  

Field Notes
By Valentina Ekimova |  May 2025

Snow, Pixels, and Probes: Ground-Truthing in Utqiaġvik

In mid-May, we headed into the snow-covered landscape of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, equipped with a Snowmetrics SWE kit and a Voile avalanche probe to ground-truth snow conditions for satellite validation. The goal: to collect accurate snow depth and density measurements to support the interpretation of high-resolution imagery from Sentinel-2, PlanetScope, and SkySat.  Each field site followed a planned grid with sampling points spaced roughly 10 meters apart, spanning open tundra, built environments, and zones affected by wind redistribution. At each point, we recorded snow depth, snow water equivalent (SWE), and GPS coordinates—using a Garmin receiver to ensure precise location data.  The avalanche probe made it efficient to map depth variability across sites, while the SWE kit enabled clean and reliable snow density sampling directly in the field. Key locations included the Taġiuġmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority (TNHA) apartment area, Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital (SSMH), the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO), the Barrow Arctic Research Center (BARC), and several snow fence zones where drifting and early melt create complex patterns.  Next up: pairing these ground observations with satellite imagery from the same time window to assess how accurately the sensors capture snowpack structure and spatial variability. “In a place where snow is as dynamic as the sky above it, there’s something deeply satisfying about linking field measurements to orbital pixels—and watching the science come together.”

Field Notes
May 2025

Sensor Reset

Maintaining the Utqiaġvik Sensor Array includes routine tasks like changing batteries and replacing sensors that have stopped communicating. We have also been working to make the network more robust. PI Howie Epstein and the Environmental Sciences and Data Science teams are investigating what types and numbers of sensors to install to enhance the Utqiaġvik Sensor Array over the next year.  A more expensive Cambell logger installed to measure soil temperature and moisture at the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) operated well over the past winter. The team is also testing some HOBO direct loggers (that require a wired connection to download data) to see if they perform better than the wireless loggers. To be continued...

Book Release

Design and the Built Environment of the Arctic

Edited by Leena Cho and Matthew Jull 

Features 11 new and original contributions from both leading and emerging scholars and practitioners on the Arctic at the nexus of unprecedented socio-environmental transformations. ISBN 978-1-032-66770-6
Press release

Home Projects Notes In Print Contact Subscribe