May 30, 2025, by Zofia Danielson

written by Nick Mathews:

Understanding landslide risk means understanding weather, the soils beneath us, and the communities who live upon those soils. In May, the Sitka Sound Science Center conducted fieldwork in Sitka and Petersburg to better understand these three key pieces of the landslide story in Southeast Alaska. 

The first stop was our own backyard: Sitka. In 2021, the Ḵutí team installed three soil and weather monitoring stations on steep hillslopes overlooking Sitka. These stations allow us to observe how local soils respond to rainfall and better understand processes tied to landslide occurrence in the region.  

Though the stations are only four years old, Southeast Alaska’s climate is tough on equipment, and these stations were due for a tune up. To keep data collection going, Ella Neumann (Data Manager), Ruth Johnson (Facilities & Research Technician), and Nick Mathews (SSSC Postdoctoral Fellow) bushwhacked and hiked to the stations to replace batteries, clean and level sensors, and repair damage caused by curious wildlife. 

 

Nick then caught a ferry to Petersburg, where he is working with community members to develop landslide susceptibility maps as part of a project funded by Alaska Sea Grant. 

This trip had 3 main goals:  

1.Groundtruth landslides to better understand the local soil behavior and geologic setting  

2.Meet with community members to share landslide concerns, stories, and ideas  

3.Fly over Mitkof Island in a helicopter to catalog landslides aerially  

Through help from the community and local U.S. Forest Service scientists, Stephen McKay and Emil Tucker, this visit to Petersburg yielded critical information about local landslide behavior and Petersburg’s relationship with landslides.  

This fieldwork also overlapped with Petersburg’s renowned Little Norway Festival, where Nick watched a theatrical production of The Treasure of Huckleberry Ridge, consumed endless shrimp at the communal Viking Shrimp Feed, tossed a herring, and ate Norwegian food. 

This fieldwork kicks off a summer of geohazard research and outreach across the region. Learn more about the project and stay updated at https://www.kutiproject.org/.