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The State I Am In
Welcome to The State I Am In, a podcast that amplifies the voices and stories of Alaskans, hosted by fellow Alaskan, Manny Coelho. Each week, we dive deep with hunters, aurora chasers, athletes, entrepreneurs, elected leaders, and everyday heroes to explore the topics that matter most in the Last Frontier. Through engaging conversations, we uncover insights, gain practical tools for daily life, and strengthen our connection to this incredible place we call home.
Expect long-form interviews, monthly solo episodes, and a chance to shape the conversation.
Subscribe now to join the journey and celebrate the people and stories that make Alaska unique.
The State I Am In
#009 Landslide Risk in Alaska: What You Need to Know - Dr. Bretwood "Hig" Higman
In this episode of The State I Am In, I talk with Dr. Bretwood “Hig” Higman—geologist, lifelong Alaskan, and founder of Ground Truth Alaska—about life, land, and the very real risks facing our coastal communities.
We explore Hig’s life in Seldovia and his adventures with wife Erin McKittrick, author of A Long Trek Home. Together, they’ve traveled thousands of miles across Alaska by foot and packraft, raising their kids along the way in one of the most remote corners of the state. Their unconventional approach to life and career is not only refreshing—it’s inspiring, and chalk full of lessons about resilience, curiosity, and the land we call home.
We also dig into something more urgent: the growing threat of landslides in coastal Alaska. Hig explains what’s happening, risk vs consequence, where science and culture collide, and what Alaskans need to know—from potential warning signs to what communities can actually do.
This is a conversation about living close to the land, understanding the risks, and staying grounded—literally and figuratively—in a rapidly changing Alaska.
Visit www.groundtruthalaska.org to learn more.
There are these issues that affect everyone when big things happen. So we talked about Mount Spur. a few minutes ago and how when Mount Spur was getting angry, all of a sudden it's in the news everywhere and people are like, you know, all ears are up on, you know, what do we do if it erupts and where's the ash cloud going to move? And what do we know like about how big this eruption could be or what neighborhoods could be affected by this? And, and so to have someone that is kind of in, not, not necessarily volcanoes, but a, you know, a PhD in, Geology is really special to have on the episode because you're able to give a unique and specialized insight to specific topics and we're going to talk a lot about landslides today and just your perspective on that. But what I'm trying to do is bridge the gap in the average Alaskan to your specialty, because when big things happen like an eruption or a landslide. Even though we all have our little niches around the state and things we're interested in, it affects everyone. We feel that loss when a community is affected. We feel the loss when lives are affected and lost. I remember with Wrangell, I think that's the most recent one I can remember was the Wrangell landslide where six
SPEAKER_02:people died. Yeah, there was a death in Ketchikan last year. But yeah, Wrangell was a really bad one. This whole family was lost in their home there. And that
SPEAKER_00:hits home for everyone. So I hope this kind of bridges that gap, brings some awareness to the geohazards that are around the state, things that you're giving your life energy to, to studying and understanding, and that we can kind of catch a glimpse of that and then be aware of your efforts, join you in those efforts, and then be aware of what's going on in the state. policy, things like that as well. So I can't say it enough. Thank you again for Oh, yeah, I appreciate you.
SPEAKER_02:Appreciate you putting this stuff together. Like it's it's really, yeah, it's a whole effort to make something like this. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Cool. So I don't
SPEAKER_00:want to. I want to be brief in this, but I feel like there's so much here. And maybe I talked to Aaron about joining me someday on the show because Aaron McKittrick, your wife, has wrote multiple books that are out there. You can find them in most stores if you peruse around the Alaska author section. A Long Trek Home was one of the first ones I came across when I learned about the work that you were doing. A local teacher told me you should check out This guy named Higg. And I was like, Higg? And then I just, you know, Google search and find you, find the work that you're doing. Find this book called The Long Trek Home by your wife, Erin. You grew up in Soldovia. However, you went to school in Washington.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I went. I did college in Minnesota and then grad school in Seattle and Washington. Yep. And you studied
SPEAKER_00:geology there, correct? Mm-hmm. And tell me about how you, you know, I guess how you met Erin and then the decision to, hey, let's go walk. back home. Yeah, well, let's
SPEAKER_01:go.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, we've met as undergrads. So in Minnesota, at Carleton College, and, and, you know, had a number of interests in common, including hiking, but we had really different backgrounds. I grew up like bushwhacking around in the backwoods in Seldovia, she grew up hiking on trails in Washington State was where she grew up. And, and, and she really came in with this vision of like wanting to do a really big trip. And so from her Her place, she was thinking about Pacific Crest Trail.
SPEAKER_00:Okay,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. At that time, I've become kind of a trail nut. I'm really involved in trails a lot now, but at that time, I was like, ah, trails, that's the boring part. Trails is how you get to the interesting place, and then you go off the trail. So I was like, well, we don't want to do Pacific Crest Trail. It's cool, the idea to spend a long time. I really hadn't even crossed my mind to spend months out at one time. But, uh, so we ended up doing a trip in, um, actually in 2001 that actually started right across the water from here. We actually flew into, uh, the drift river flats out by retail, which was a very random place to start. And we hiked all the way to Chignik, which is way down on the Alaska peninsula. And I spent two months doing that. And, uh, That was really cool. That was an amazing experience. It's on par. Like, I mean, you know, it's just it's it's it's so lucky to be able to have both of those experiences. So. So, yeah. Anyway, we were both pretty hooked. We did a lot of trips over the few years. We were both in grad school. And Aaron was like, yeah, we want to do something that's a year long when we get out of grad school. And she she she she stopped with a master's a little before me. I got my Ph.D. In 2007, it was like, yeah, I guess, you know, ultimately... you need a piece of paperwork with a set of signatures on it, right? That's the PhD. And, you know, you've checked all the boxes and stuff. And a few months before we had our plan to go out the door, I was, like, struggling with writing. And I remember one of my committee members was like, well, maybe you want to just kind of, like, come back after this trip. And I was like, no, I want to walk out the door done. And so I just– it was like this, you know, hell months, several months of just pushing– hard to get all of that done. And then, yeah, I got those signatures on that piece of paper and less than 24 hours later, handed the key to our landlord and walked out the front door and spent over a year walking, ended up out in the Aleutians.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And it's such a wild story. So from Seattle all the way to the Aleutians, it took you a year? Yeah, a little over. And it was all human powered. It wasn't just like, you know, you're hopping planes to the Aleutians. It was, I think the book subtitled like boot, raft, ski, or something like that. And it's just, it's insane to think about that because it's such a unique experience that not many people get. And to take your expertise, so like the PhD, the signed paper, you know, your interest in geology and, you know, what the education that goes along with that. But then like you're saying, to have all of that and then travel with that through this like epic journey, it's just wild. And it's, it's, I'm sure there's a lot of things that we could talk about about that journey. But what changed in you from when you took off to by the time you ended? Oh, interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, one of the things that we've it's like one of these things we say now it's kind of my whole family. We've got a couple of teenagers there we go out and do trips with. And it's not that this is like a simple fact, but it does illustrate it is that it takes about. two weeks to get into the swing of things. And about a month in, you forget your previous life. Like it starts being like, this is life is like, I get up in the morning, I pack up a tent and I go wander off through the mountains and try to get to somewhere. And I'm looking at how much food I have and thinking like, you know, unfortunately I'm not the greatest hunter gatherer. So I need to get to a little bit of civilization and resupply within, well, it'd be nice to be there in a week, but it's going to take us 10 days. I guess we won't eat as much today. You know, uh, uh, It's hard to boil that down into like, here is the thing that I learned. But I would say for me personally, it was a good transition to a life that is not a very conventional career within the kind of the normal American story of like, okay, well, what's the job you get that's as prestigious as possible, that pays as much as possible, and then this will build a good life? And I don't actually have any problem with that model. I'm not like, you know, yeah, not saying anything bad about that model, but the model that I've ended up in is looking around, trying to figure out what can I do that is not getting done where I can provide value to people you know, at whatever scale of community or the world as a whole or whatever. And can I just go and try to do that? And, and then, you know, live a super low cost lifestyle, see what happens. If I can get paid, that's nice. I do. I mean, I'm not separate from the economy. I actually do, you know, need a bit of money, you know, but not a lot. And I don't have to make every decision based on where is there, like, is there a grant I can get? Is there, you know, some particular contract I can pursue or whatever? And if I can't, then I just don't do it. No, I'll jump in and start doing it. And I really think, yeah, that opportunity to spend it, it's like a year-long meditation in a way, right? Walking through the wilderness, right? That actually really helped solidify that. And look at the path both Aaron and I have followed since then. It's like, oh, yeah, we kind of both ended up approaching things that way. And in some ways, quite different paths on the details, like the subjects that we focus on and stuff are different. But yeah, that says something, I think, about the learning in that experience.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. what I think is really cool about that is that you and Aaron just discovered that together about, you know, this is a, this is a path that we can take. That's not as, as followed the past, less, less followed. You started a family and then you had a kid, you had two, you have two kids, correct. And where some people might say, well, well, now we're going to start a family. So trash all of that. And let's just get on the traditional route. You guys didn't do that. And you brought your kids along with that, which I think is awesome because some people would be tempted to kind of throw that ideal away and just kind of conform and kind of held to your guns. So can you talk about what that looked like once you did start a family? Because through, again, some of the stories that I've heard about that you and Aaron and your family has taken, you know, pack rafting through Cook Inlet, living on sea ice for months at a time with children, with like little kids. Tell me about how that ideal with you and Aaron evolved, or I guess was... incorporated into how you raised your kids?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I mean, talk to any parent, right? It's messy. It is not, you know, it's hard. Like, I mean, it's like all of a sudden you're like, you've got a very poorly defined additional job that is really difficult. And like, there's all these expectations and stuff. And definitely we're no different than that. Like, it's a mess. We question what we do. And like, there are things like we were sitting down and having a really frank conversation. There'd be things where you're like, I don't know. I think you could have done this better as parents. One thing that is a little, I think maybe it might make it make a little more sense what we did, you know, going out into the wilderness with our kids. If you do anything, even just like you're, I'm going to go on a road trip and I've got my kids, like something that's really fairly common, that transition, getting out the door, is tough. Yeah. Like this is going to be messy. You know, kids are like, you know, they, that they're, they're going to respond however they respond, which frankly, it's like a completely different story every year of their lives. They keep changing. Like you can't, it's not like you figure it out. And then, so anyway, so true, that transition is really, uh, really tough. And it is a huge barrier. And I think when people think about wilderness with their kids, um, They're like, well, I'll go out for a couple nights, see how it goes. And they're like, oh, my God, I'm never going to do that again. And we had a little bit of, you know, kind of momentum to carry us past that. And so we were like, oh, we're going to go out for a month or two months. And you do, you get past those first few days, and then the kids slot into this new world. Like, you know, I said earlier, two weeks to get into the swing, a month to forget your past life. For young kids, it's maybe five. two days to get into the swing and four days to forget your past life. You know, it happens. And we did really like we did a trip in in 2011. So they were toddlers. They were both in diapers still. And we spent a couple of months out on and around Malaspina Glacier. And that uh that was a first experiment in kind of envisioning what it is to go into the wilderness in a little different way because as just a couple of young adults we're like all right we can go 20 miles a day and so we would stretch these trips between different points and we would do a lot we cover a lot of ground and that was and you'll see a lot of wilderness adventurers that's A key variable is like, oh, it's distance. But we're like, yeah, that's not really making sense with toddlers. And so we started looking for these places that are just phenomenally dynamic wilderness places where you, even if you go two miles, the adults are like learning and experiencing all along the way. The kids are seeing something completely different and they're having a whole experience. amazing time too you know they're like look at this stick i found like that is an awesome stick so uh that has opened up you know that's really made it a lot more possible than it would otherwise be i think you know it's a great you know i talked about it being a great uh way of learning for me as someone who's done all the schooling going out into the wilderness i mean i think many of your audience here in alaska will be like oh yeah the time i spent in the wilderness was a huge educational experience and i think that applies right down to toddlers um we've actually kind of we had a few years where we didn't do as much uh when they were you know kind of actually at a relatively easy age like uh you know eight ten years old Um, but we were, we were doing a lot of trail work and that was taking up some of our wilderness, you know, kind of energy, I guess. And the kids came, I came, especially my, my eldest cat, mine. She was like, okay, we. We need to go and do a proper expedition. I hear all these stories about things I did five years ago. I don't remember it. And so we've been really reinstating that. It's not as much of a public kind of experience as some of the earlier things we did, but it's been really great going out for a long trip still.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. Did they ever... verbalized to you? Like, can't we just go to Disneyland like other families do? Or were they pretty much bought into it just because of the lifestyle you all
SPEAKER_02:live? I mean, I think it's, you know, this is the funny thing. You know, the kids coming from they don't know any better.
SPEAKER_00:Sure, yeah. All they know is what you all do,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. I... I'd say there's still a little bit of that. Yeah. Um, I think, uh, Latia, my younger daughter, you know, is maybe a little more on that. Like, well, okay. You know, expeditions are what we do, I guess, but you know, isn't there maybe something else that would be a nicer in some way. And, uh, But they– I've actually been surprised at how positive they are about it. We definitely don't– you know, as they're maturing, like, it's more and more. It's their choice. We're definitely not going to force them to do anything like this. And they're both– we're going to spend a month out and probably in the Talkeetnas this year. And, yeah, they're really bought into that. And they want to go somewhere less rainy than our last trip. We were in Prince William Sound for a month in 2023, so– Well,
SPEAKER_00:I think it's really cool. Last week, I talked about completely different contexts. I talked about youth sports and how in a very small way, that is one chance for parents to be able to build some kind of resilience in their kids because they experience failure. They have to practice something to get better at something. They have to learn what it is to fall down and get back up, to experience some pain and training. And in a modern context, society you know in youth sports I don't say youth sports youth sports culture but if you go to a public school like there's sports and things like that and if kids aren't going outdoors if they're not taking care of animals or if they don't have much difficulty outside of their I don't know their environment sometimes youth sports can can help with that because now they're they're faced with some challenges I mean you can get that through education sure but It is a different kind of challenge. Sometimes it's painful physically to, you know, to be able to be successful in those things. So I think it's cool. Cool is probably the worst word to use, but I think it's valuable that you are able to. do that in that way with your kids because it builds a type of resilience that I think is probably even greater than what you would find in youth sports. Do you feel like you have resilient kids because of those experiences?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I hope they're resilient. I think that in my mind, you mentioned youth sports seem to do this better than conventional education. And I think the thing that I would, the distinction I would make there is that In sports, as much as there are contrived rules and stuff, ultimately, it is just a property of the system what success looks like or what your experience looks like. You're competing against someone else, and they are who they are. It's not like, okay, if I check these three boxes, then I get an A. It really is you're out there. It may be that you're doing an awesome job, and yet your team loses. And that, I think, is very similar to the wilderness. You go out into the wilderness, you can talk about it in terms of rules. There even are some rules we take with us into the wilderness. It's not like it's complete anarchy once you walk out the door. But... there is this natural system and we use the phrase natural consequences sometimes, which focuses like, I think on the negative aspect of it that like, okay, well, if you, you're like, oh, whatever, I'm just going to go walk into the water over my boots. And then, oh, now I have wet, cold feet. Like, and there is that element of it, but I think it's, it's much more complex than just like enforcing some sort of thing that a parent might want their kids to do. It is this whole experience of the world is what it is. And it's, You can try to project whatever you want onto it. There are some things that it is just what it is. And you don't really get to learn that in a conventional schooling environment because there it is all built. It is an entirely built environment in terms of the rules and things that are going there. Now, that can be really efficient if you're like, I want to learn how to program differential equations in order to model the propagation of a wave. Yeah, going and sitting on the beach is probably not the best way to do that, right? You know, there are people who have struggled with these ideas for many years. If you can be connected to that intellectual pipeline and build on the knowledge of others, schooling is amazing to be able to do that. So I'm not knocking that, but I think that these are two different things, and I think that having both of them in your life is really great. Like, I love being, like, you know, a technical geologist building but also trying to, and I'm a total fumbling newbie at building structures and stuff, but I'm learning there, you know? And I look at the people around me and I'm like, okay, how are they doing? I'm kind of like go make mistakes kind of person. So I'm like, oh, maybe I'll do it this other way. And then it doesn't work. I'm like, okay, I see why everyone does it this way. But that's just as important to me as these highly technical topics. And I feel really privileged to be able to mix those two. And I see the same thing for my kids.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a really good perspective. I want to talk about where Ground Truth Trekking, which evolved into Ground Truth Alaska in 2020. It's kind of a
SPEAKER_02:rebrand thing. So we called it Ground Truth Trekking initially, and then people were like, so can we hire you to guide us somewhere? I'm like, oh, that's not really the idea. So we came up with this idea of changing the name to Ground Truth Alaska, but it's not like we have a marketing department that makes sure this is all straightened out. So I must say it's mostly confusion. But Ground Truth Alaska, it would be our preferred name right now. So where did that begin? Where's the origin of that? Well, actually, so Aaron's work was really the start of that. So back in 2004 and 2005, when there was first this interest in developing a large copper mine by Lake Iliamna, the Pebble Mine, we knew a little bit about that area. We've been through just kind of coincidentally through the area. And and Aaron was reading about this and was like, this seems really big and it seems kind of worrisome because this would put, you know, this facility that potentially would produce a lot of. Well, it's actually acid drainage anyway, like there's a risk to the environment and it's kind of in a really bad spot. And so she thought, well, I'll just go out there and take a look and actually go, you know, got the skill set. And she went solo and went out there and wandered around and kind of started. Actually, I'm trying to remember. Is that correct? Did she go solo initially? Anyway, she led the charge. Her background's in biology. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Molecular biology. And yeah. That may not be correct that she went solo. But anyway, she went and started kind of compiling information, but then paired that with the experience of actually going out there and looking at this place. And that really seemed to help kind of get that conversation going, where this is not just some news reports or whatever. There is a real place that going out and having a tangible experience and all the silly little issues of dealing with the wind and and the rain, and this is some difficult environments and beautiful. And having a story about that, being able to tell what it was like to be there, that was really connected with people. And so it was sort of this realization that this is a way to bring these kind of two ways of thinking together, one being like, okay, we research the chemistry of people iron pyrite dissolving or oxidizing and producing. sulfuric acid, you know, something highly technical like that. And then pair that with the tangible experience of like, what do you learn when you go out without much expectation? You're in a place, you talk to the people who live there. So that, that phrase ground truth, it actually comes out of like, especially out of the military where they're using like satellite images to try to understand, you know, okay, what's going on. But they recognize that when you look from afar and, you don't know for sure what's actually going on there. And that someone being out there physically seeing what's going on, they are finding that ground truth. And that is ultimately this critical piece of understanding what's going on. And so we were kind of attempting to follow that. And I think it provided a lot of value. The organization has evolved and we kind of take it in whatever direction we're going. But it's still that... that inspiration of the sort of deep technical research perspective with being physically in the place, talking to the people that live there, that continues as a core value, I guess, that we pursue.
SPEAKER_00:That's great. And I think one of the things that you, as far as your mission, is to connect those things, those truths you're seeing on the ground, and then bringing that awareness to the public in a different kind of perspective that's not, like you're saying, not the technical reports or maybe the data that we're receiving, but that coupled with the your personal experiences there and documenting that as well. So connecting that with the public is what I'm trying to say. Your background is, or before I move on to that. So also trails, so you guys work on trails. as well, developing trail systems. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_02:The heart of that is one specific trail, which started out as Tutka Backdoor. It's kind of unclear what the name for the whole thing is, but people seem to be starting to settle on the Backdoor Trail in general. A large portion of it is in Kachemak Bay State Park, extends from the south coast, the really remote southern coast at Taylor Bay, through the mountains, and eventually would connect all the way to Seldovia the actual town of Seldovia. Right now, there's a section missing in the mountains behind Seldovia. And so we'll be working on that this summer. And I don't think it'll be continuous till next summer. But yeah, that was kind of a... sort of a happenstance thing to kind of stumble into uh in some of the kind of long-term planning for the state park uh i was part of some of those conversations and i mentioned this route that we had taken as a non-trail route uh through the mountains i was like well you know this would be a natural place to put a trail and the people who were involved were like wow that's an amazing idea that's really exciting and so i like okay if it's exciting let's i thought run with it super naive going into this and i thought like this will be easy you know it's a it's a Good bushwhack. We cut a few branches, you're basically there. Okay, no, this has been a decade of hard work and we're still, it will never be done done. And there is a tremendous amount that we could do. But there have been hundreds of volunteers who've gone out into the field. Yeah, email me if you're interested in doing trail work. I think it's some of the best volunteer trail work experiences you can possibly have. And it's been really, really exciting.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, cool. I didn't want to forget that aspect of it, of Ground Truth, Alaska. Your background, though, is in studying the tsunami record, right? And at some point, you transitioned into geohazards, specializing in geohazards, but specifically landslides. When did that... occur? When did that shift happen?
SPEAKER_02:Well, tsunamis are definitely a geohazard also. Correct. So yeah, in grad school, I was working on tsunamis and worked on tsunamis that were similar to the one that happened in 1964 here in Alaska. But actually, I worked a lot on the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and some others. And looking at the geologic record, so what evidence you would find long after something like that happened. So that was where I started. And I'd always been intrigued by these landslide tsunamis. Like the most famous one is a tsunami that happened in 1958 in Latuya Bay in Alaska. And, you know, how would those compare to these earthquake generated tsunamis? And so then we had in 2015, there was a giant tsunami in a place called Tan Fjord, which is part of Icy Bay. It's just west of Yakutat. And a landslide came out of the mountains, went into the head of this fjord. The highest run-up point that we documented was 633 feet up the mountainside. It's pretty incredible to be standing next to, like, alders that are flattened by this wave, and you're like, I'm way up on a mountain. The water is way down there. Somehow it got up here. This was in 2015? 2015 this happened. And so in 2016, I was in the field there, and I ended up being very deeply involved in the research in the wake of that. And I initially, like even at the end of that, like a couple years into that, I was still barely looking at landslides. I was like, you know, just kind of like, that's not a topic I know very well. I'm really, my background was in tsunamis. But, you know, I was around landslide people and there was a landslide that happened and generated a tsunami in Gruink Lake, really near Homer and Seldovia in 1967. So I started looking at that. There's still, there's a danger that something like that could happen again in the same place. Pretty significant danger. So I was starting to look at that. at that. And then in 2020, so I had a colleague, Chun-Li Dai, she's at University of Florida now. She's very much a she looks at satellite data. She doesn't go into the field, right? She's the other half, you know, I would be more of the ground truth half. She's the remote sensed half. And, uh, she was interested in large landslides and, um, and she asked me for a list of places to look at. And I didn't even really understand what, uh, approaches she was using. Uh, so I gave her just a soup to nuts list. I was like, well, there's something here, there's something there. And, you know, I gave her around 20, 30 sites around Alaska that I knew about this kind of large landslide activity. Uh, And she came back a couple months later, and she's like, well, I'm looking at this one that you sent me, which was one that actually my sister pointed out, Felisa Higman. She had been out kayaking in Prince Williamstown, and she's like, wow, it seems like there's some cracks in that mountainside. That's sort of like what my brother's been looking at. So she sent that to me, and I had sent it along to Chun Li. And she's like, yeah, I'm looking at this one and it looks like the whole mountain is moving. And it's like, that's probably not the case. Like that sounds implausible. She showed some results and it was like, it was kind of like, They were too good. It was like, I don't know, there may be some mistake. And so she's like, well, okay, I'll go back and check things out. And she came back and she's like, well, I'm pretty sure I can just go on this Google Earth time-lapse. There's something you can go online. Anyone can go look at this. I think I can see it moving there. And so I knew that meant that you could see it in these public images, Landsat. It's like one of the oldest satellite platforms out there. So I like pulled up a couple of Landsat images. I'm like, sure enough, like this entire side of this mountain is moving enough that you can see it. And this is quite grainy, low resolution imagery. And so that kind of started a whole thing. There's now a lot of work going on there. The one of the things I took away from that was that, so this is super obvious, like in hindsight, like now I look at that place and I can't unsee it. Like it is super obvious.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And there were other geologists who worked in that area and had looked at that slope, but none of them were looking for this kind of landslide activity. So I thought, you know, maybe we haven't been looking and what else might be out there. And so over the last, so that was 2020 over the last five years. I've spent a lot of my time scouring all the data I can find for signs of landslides in Alaska. And this is, I'll make a distinction between slow landslides. They might move, you know, if they're moving an inch a day, that's not that slow within slow landslides. That's a really fast one. And then there's catastrophic landslides. So these are like, you may not be able to outrun it. This might be going 50 miles an hour, 100 miles an hour. So that's kind of a distinction that I'll refer maybe to a couple times. So I'm looking for both. I'm looking for catastrophic landslides and slow landslides, but primarily the very largest ones. And that's not... just because they're more dramatic and stuff. It's also because I can look at any data and see those. Whereas if they're really relatively small, they're a lot harder to identify. It's a lot harder to actually say much about them just looking at remote sense, so satellite data. Anyway, so that led me to find that actually there is way more going on in Alaska than we realized. There are... just gigantic events happening that often like one person might notice them because it's their backyard right they're like whoa that mountain just fell down and like flattened a huge forest but it's like a local story right and it's not connected into all the other observations that other people are are making so um uh kind of in looking myself at imagery but also like you know pilots email me and like i talk to people on the street and they're like i saw a landslide when i was flying up from seattle and i think i've got it on my phone so So that has led to really recognizing that there's a lot more going on right now than we realized, and it's increasing quite dramatically. So I'm very worried that one of these events will not be like, oh, that's interesting. Some remote forest got a bunch of boulders over it, but it's going to instead be a highway. It's going to go into a lake and produce a tsunami, something like that.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I mean, that's part of what we saw that I mentioned earlier with Rangel and you said more recently in Ketchikan as well. And because our population is kind of dispersed, you know, we don't, not every landslide affects, you know, infrastructure or, you know, human lives, but as they begin to increase. And I think in one of the talks I watched from earlier this year, you said that they're increasing in occurrence over the last, you know, I don't know if it's five years or 10 years and then previous, I don't know if it's because of, you know, they weren't documented prior to that. Or if you're now that the attention is there, you're like, like you're saying like, holy smokes, like this is happening a lot and they're everywhere. Um, but what are the. major ones that keep you up at night that you think about, that you've found? Yeah, if I were to just
SPEAKER_02:start rattling some off, I'll have to stop at some point. There are actually quite a few. But Portage Lake, there's a big active slope that's creeping there. That one, I think, tops my list. And that one with all the infrastructure down. So there's a lot of people around there. There's also like a lot of our infrastructure goes through Portage Valley, like two rail lines, highway, electric transmission. Most of the internet that goes into Anchorage goes through Portage Valley, either from Whittier or from Homer. So it's a really scary place. It's one of the most active slow landslides I've seen. It's produced a couple of small, small, not small, like if you were standing there, you'd be like, that's gigantic. But they're small relative to the ones that generate tsunamis, catastrophic failures. So that one's really top of my list. Berry Arm, where there's a lot of work going on by the USGS, that is really an important place to look. They're Things that happened in 2022 are kind of as scary as it gets, but it didn't fail. That's good. That doesn't mean it won't the next time. There are places up along the Matanuska River, up in the Glacier View area, where a bunch of active slopes, we've seen big failures happen. The most recent really dramatic one was around Halloween of 2023. So this is stuff that's developing right now. Fortunately, that was inland a little ways. Everyone has been... not actually hitting the highway, but there have been things that are close. Um, another one that I'm really concerned about right now is actually, it's a kind of more of a region around Adigan pass. So up in the Brooks range where trans Alaska pipeline goes through there and the Dalton highway, we've known there's some issues with, um, a type of slow landslide that some people call a frozen debris lobe. And there's in particular, one of them that they actually had to move the highway to kind of run away from this landslide. That's moving, uh, Slowly, but not that slowly down the mountain. Well, it turns out there's a lot more going on up there. And like you mentioned, a decade. Yeah, on that timescale, it has really– there are many mountain slopes that have gone from looking totally boring and normal to all of a sudden there's cracks opening up. There's chunks sliding slowly down, some of them failing catastrophically. And if you imagine chunks of mountains sliding– three quarters of a mile down and out into flat areas. So that I really worry about with the pipeline and the highway there. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:especially because, I mean, with planning, you know, we talk about, you know, natural gas and doing new lines or, you know, what we're going to do to develop the resources that we do have. It seems like it should be a huge consideration, you know, what this landscape is going to look like in five years or even if it's safe. to exist where it is now, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I really think that we are leaving these things understudied as we run forward with certain development. You know, we're putting$250 million into a bridge across a landslide in Denali at Pretty Rocks. We're looking at... tens, maybe over$100 million in improvements to the Eklutna hydropower project. There are huge slope instabilities, slow landslides above Eklutna Lake that could threaten that facility. We're talking about, you know,$40 billion for a natural gas pipeline that would go right through this hotspot in the Brooks Range and through a place of somewhat less concern, but not no concern in the Alaska Range. Now, I don't know if we put some, some of that, some tiny fraction, like 0.1% of what we're talking about into research, what will we find? And I don't know, right? That's why you have to do the research is you don't know what the answer is. Uh, but to me, it seems like we are under investing in the kind of preparation and research end of this. We're just running ahead with development without actually understanding what's going on. And this becomes a lot more urgent from my perspective when I see places like the Glacier View, Upper Matanuska area, like the Adigan Pass area, and like Portage, where if I go back 10 years, it's like, eh, it doesn't seem too bad. There's some things to worry about here. And I go to the present, and I'm like, oh, my God, things are coming apart. The fact that that's changing so fast. I mean, I was just having a conversation with someone at Portage, And they're like, oh, okay, well, come back when you've done some more research. And I'm like, you know, there's a lot we don't know, but I want to be clear that if we were having this conversation even three years ago, I would be a lot less nervous. There are changes that have happened in that slope in such a short period of time. So if you're going to pursue some big development project, I'm like, Yeah, I'd like to I mean, I would like to have certainty, but I don't right now. We need to do some research. That may sound like me fishing for money. I'm like kind of the worst at that. And I do a lot of stuff where I do not get paid for what I'm doing. And I'm OK with that. Like, I'm not complaining about that. But the there are things where getting it done does take some money. And I think we need to see. investment in in this research rather than just running full bore i mean there's a yeah i don't know what the cost is but it's definitely millions tens of millions maybe more um a cruise ship facility going in at whittier it's being built you know right now and they are right underneath a chunk of mountain that's moving like an inch a year that's not the fastest in the world yeah but if it was stable it wouldn't move at all you know and we haven't studied it I mean, it's like literally like we could have a two-minute conversation and you would be like the world expert in that because we just don't know what's going
SPEAKER_00:on. And it seems like when the state is going so hard in developing the natural resources or they want to go hard with natural gas and with oil, with the cruise ship industry, you would think that there would be some– concern about protecting those investments. That's one thing to just drive hard and drill, baby, drill, for lack of a better term. But there should be some type of research that goes into that to be able to protect that investment long-term. Otherwise, it could be devastating. To have this knowledge, using the cruise ship example, to have this knowledge and then five years down the line, you have this catastrophic event, and it's like, what were we thinking? And it's like, well, We were trying to do the work to be able to make a plan to, you know, and it kind of falls on on the ground because, you know, I don't know if it's a money thing or, you know, just the quick return on investment is there. And the research is more of a longer grueling, you know, we're not seeing results right away. type thing, but it seems like there would be some, some value in, in doing the work to get the data.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm very understanding and, and, uh, people are like, yeah, we're moving forward. We're going to do a thing. I mean, as now I'm a trail developer and like, I feel like that. I'm like, OK, I've thought through some of the concerns and I've done my best to mitigate those. But like, let's stop talking. Let's build. Right. Yeah. And and so I feel I feel like I'm really understanding of people who are like, yeah, we're just moving forward. We can't just keep talking about this. And and so I think. I think it's ultimately there is no easy answer. And I try to be. If I say something like, I think we're under investing in the research, like I just said, I try to be very self-critical of saying something like that because all that confirmation bias, like whatever, I'm obsessed with disaster. So I'm going to tell you that this is really important and we should be doing more of this thing. You should be skeptical. Like, you know, press me on the details there. And I might be like, well, actually, I haven't really thought about that aspect. You know, there might be things that are just, you know, I've inadvertently ignored or whatever. So I'm very understanding of that enthusiasm to move forward on a project that seems like a good idea. But when I've looked at this problem... I really think we're in a bad place. I think that we need to either really ramp up what we're doing here or it's going to be a situation where, say, there's a direct hit on a cruise ship. Basically, you have a landslide goes into the water and just a few miles away is a cruise ship and that cruise ship rolls over and thousands of people die. Or we see all of our infrastructure in Portage Valley wiped out. Or we see a place that I haven't thought about at all because, you know, I'm just... a geologist looking at some pictures, like I didn't, you know, it's not the one that I was worried about. And all of a sudden things come unglued. Um, I think that the most likely scenario is that we will not be ahead of the curve and it's going to be really bad. Um, so that's where my goal is. I, the way I think about looking at these problems is, um, It's almost like a game. It's like, where do I put my chips on the roulette wheel? I want to do my best to actually get ahead of one of these things. For me personally, it's a lot of guessing. I look at other examples. I'm like, okay, how have different slopes responded over time? What sorts of variables seem important? All right, this one seems pretty important, but I don't want to put all my chips there because I know as a geologist, I'm probably wrong. Ultimately, nature is super complicated. Something different is going to happen. So I want to put some over here too, and I want to put some over there. And a win is that I actually do something useful. How simple is that? Well, it's not as simple as it might seem. We're working closely with stakeholders who are facing these risks. And they are working on changing how they approach things. I'd say we're very early in that process. We're working on trying to get instruments out there that might provide information that would give them a little heads up that maybe something might happen tomorrow. This might be the time to get out of the way. So I really hope it would be so fantastic if... This disaster that without my efforts would just be horrific, that instead we're a little ahead of it. People get out of the way. Maybe there's still serious consequences. Maybe even people still die. But it isn't as bad as it would have been because of my efforts. And I think it's a long shot. I think that the most likely scenario is that we will see something where I'm like, I was trying, but I wasn't there. I didn't think of the right things. I didn't talk to the right people. That is the more likely scenario. But I'm hoping for the best, trying to put my effort in to have some effect.
SPEAKER_00:So this might be a good transition into the metaphor that you used in one of your talks called the bear's dilemma. Do you want to just kind of sum up what you were going for in explaining that? Yeah, I mean, I think
SPEAKER_02:a lot about humans as animals, not unlike a bear. Like, I love bears. I spend a lot of time out in the wilderness. I see bears. And, you know, they're just doing their thing, right? And that's what we'd like to do, too. You know, as humans, like, we're like, yeah, okay, I'm going to go, whatever, just kind of do my thing. And if some, you know, geologist jumps out of the bushes next to the bear and is like, I've got a probabilistic hazard map and I have a pulse coherent radar measuring device and I was wondering if you were interested in them. that bear quite reasonably is not going to be interested, especially if there's something like, okay, I could go catch some salmon over here. And I think people, it's somewhat the same thing. And I love that about people. People are like, they have their thing going on and they've got passion and enthusiasm and me showing up to tell them that I'm really worried about this slope above where they live or whatever. It's not going to make their day like that. That's bad news. And I don't like being the one bringing bad news. And so I'm really understanding if people are like, yeah, you know, I just don't want to have this conversation. And I don't think that's wrong at all. But we do have this one thing that that bears don't have that we have is this whole elaborate civilization, this whole thing of trying to work as a group to. coordinate these huge efforts moving forward into the future. And that can include foresight. And I think one of the things that's an example of where we can aspire to be something that is, I would say, better than the way the bears would. If you had a town, it was all bears, they wouldn't do this. But maybe if it's humans, they would. And that's when we're looking at these... what I would call kind of history-altering disasters. And this is not to minimize something like the terrible experience and the deaths in Wrangell, for instance. But that's something, they clear the road, they have a funeral for the people who have died. They think about how they would prepare for future events, but they can kind of continue on with what they're doing. But if you're a community that's dependent on cruise ship industry and or if you are a cruise ship company and yeah the cruise ship gets rolled over like that is going to change the course of history and um at the very least for years and potentially it's going to put us on you know a different route that is not one that we're that we're looking for if you have an event that you know takes out half of a community i mean we look at the impacts i grew up with stories of 1964 earthquake um and uh and we really in seldovia where i live we look at that as this history altering event um and you know they're just stories right we don't know what history would have been without the 64 earthquake but uh i think that that's the sort of thing where we can if we're really embracing what science can bring to the table and what we can do in planning, that's what civilization has to offer. And we could be in a much better place if we are actually looking ahead to these things and trying to get ahead of that disaster rather than just reacting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree. I had wrote down in my notes that the superpower of science seems to be that it's best equipped to mitigate those disasters those maybe low probability but high impact events. The difficult part is convincing people
SPEAKER_02:that that's important. I mean, one thing to note about science is science does not do things well. Like you said, mitigate. It's not like you just take and science it and then all of a sudden the threat is not there. That takes the people, the stakeholders or maybe the government or whatever to actually step up and do that. And so science, what it can do is it can provide information I look at science as it's kind of the art of being wrong. Like if you're actually, so sometimes when we learn like the scientific method, which I think is not the greatest way to express it, but one of the things that it emphasizes is like build a hypothesis and then test it. But what's really powerful about that idea is that you're hypothesizing, you think you're right, right? You've picked a hypothesis that, because that's what you think is actually going on. But now you're going to be forced to test it. And that means the only information you can get out of this is you can find out that you're wrong, which is not what most people instinctively... Like bears, also, I think if you were to try to convince them to do this, they wouldn't be real into it. Humans too, like if we think we know what's going on, we actually don't want to be wrong. Like that's normal for a human. Science has built this strange culture where... whether through motivation or consequence, negative consequence, you're kind of forced to test your hypothesis and to convince other scientists who maybe don't care if you're wrong, that you haven't, like when you do that test, that you've actually tested that hypothesis. And so you can say, look, it survived this test. But what that means is you have a lot of experiences to be like, I think I know what's going on. I'm really excited about this. I'm going down this road and I've built this whole way of measuring this. It may not be an experiment. It may be whatever it is. And then you make the measurement and you're like, actually i was wrong and i can't i can't avoid it you know and that's a that's a unique power i think of science is that ability to be wrong and and thus to kind of progress understanding however that is not a way to like you don't build a bridge just by being wrong like you can go through and do a bunch of experiments and science up like the idea of a bridge but you need a bunch of engineers you need a bunch of people who know what to do with concrete you need
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_02:It's a different thing to build that bridge. And so science is only part of that equation. But I think it's a very important part.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. One of the things you had mentioned in your talk about the bear's dilemma was that we often can't reduce the probability of a landslide. You have a great, I love that you use pictures and graphs, and it's very visual, and I did appreciate that. You can't reduce the probability of a landslide, but we can move left. And that phrase stuck with me. So can you break down what that means? If we can't reduce the probability, like some of these things we expect to be imminent, how do we shift left?
SPEAKER_02:So there are two components. If we use the word risk in a technical sense, what that means is it's a combination of the probability of something occurring and the consequences of that. So if we imagine landslide, there's a house at the bottom of the hill or a potential landslide, like a slope that's steep or has some signs of slow landslide activity, a house at the bottom of the hill, you can go through and figure out how likely it is that that landslide would happen. And that is part of that risk equation. That's your probability part, which actually is on the vertical axis if we were actually showing this graph. So probability is one piece. The other part is the consequence. So land happens maybe it's actually a relatively small version of the landslide and it like you know a few rocks bounce down and they like make a big hole in the garage and you know take out your lawnmower right consequences you know you're distressed about this but you know it's okay and so that's the low consequence thing and maybe cumulatively like there are more scenarios that look like that and then there's another one where it sweeps through and like you can't even tell where her house was before you know maybe it gets your neighbor's houses too So the consequence, very high, a little lower probability. We kind of want to be able to think about those together. Now, what can you do about it? Well, there are some cases, especially if you've got, you know, a billion dollars at your disposal where you can actually reduce the probability of the landslide, but it is quite difficult and often essentially impractical. So shifting that probability, tough. However, let's say you put, I mean, I'm working on these instruments that I'm hoping we can get down to a cost of under$100, like really minimal systems. You have that up there. You have a whole system so that your phone beeps if the landslide or if the slope above you is starting to behave in ways that look scary. Or you've got really good monitoring of weather forecasts that can help you understand whether the rain that's going to hit that slope could trigger a landslide. And then you're like, okay, well, if this happens, I'm going to get out of here. And you can't take your house with you. So, you know, you're still the potential that all of that investment in your home and stuff would be destroyed. But you don't lose your life. Your family doesn't lose their lives. That is a way of reducing the consequence. And and so that's something that we can do at relatively low cost and move. That's so the left in this case is moving towards lower consequence. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And that's technology that you're developing. It sounds like it's much similar to like a like an early tsunami warning system is kind of what you're working towards to achieve with landslide occurrence, like with with notifying people to, you know, hey. Under these conditions, the risk is higher. You have maps that I already have areas identified that are already at high risk. And so implementing an additional measure to warn people, kind of similar to like when you hear the sirens blaring for like a tsunami or that you get the alerts on your phone, like you were saying, that's something that you're currently developing. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:something that's similarities like... It maybe is, rather than making the analogy to the tsunami warning system, thinking about Alaska Volcano Observatory and monitoring volcanoes is useful. And right now is a good time to think about that because SPUR has been really active. It may well erupt soon. I don't have any secret insider information on that. But Alaska Volcano Observatory is actually a pretty fantastic organization. I would say it's one of, like if I were to point to one model for... government-led, agency-led disaster mitigation. And I'm using mitigation very broadly. They don't prevent volcanoes from erupting, right? But they get information out there in a way that's useful to people and, for instance, aircraft. So in that case, they have all these instruments on Mount Spur, seismometers being a really important example. And they watch for signs that magma is moving up under the volcano, and that that might mean there's an eruption. And so they can't tell you for sure that it is going to happen at 2 p.m. tomorrow, but they're watching this carefully. They have a lot of information. We have a lot of case studies of watching volcanoes in this way, and they're reasonably decent success rate. Like we do actually usually get ahead of the curve on those. So landslides, if we're talking about Another distinction that ends up coming up here is shallow landslides versus deep landslides. And they end up being fairly different approaches for this. So shallow landslides would be like the soil and trees sliding down the mountain. That is Wrangell, that deadly landslide in Wrangell was a very shallow landslide. It was a good example of a large shallow landslide. Obviously terrible. So it's not, you know, they are very important to look at. Shallow landslides, the monitoring approach usually focuses on the weather because these are almost all triggered by extreme rain. Now, you can throw an earthquake in there, complicate the situation a bit. But very often it is extreme rain. We can forecast that a few days in advance. It is really helpful to have more local weather monitoring. And so a lot of people focused on this are working on getting more weather stations out, basically. So, okay, that's one whole direction. Deep-seated landslides, it can be triggered by extreme rain. but not always. And actually fairly often they kind of surprise us if we aren't monitoring really closely. But one thing that helps us out is usually if it's gonna end up going a hundred miles an hour down the mountain, it is actually probably going to accelerate for at least days, maybe even months prior to that failure. So if you can measure how much it's moving as a slow landslide, then you can look for patterns of acceleration that you're like, that is the kind of acceleration. Much like AVO would be looking at Mount Spur, they're like, yeah, this looks like magma rising. So we would say, oh yeah, this looks like the kind of acceleration that might culminate in catastrophic failure. In some ways, if we have the best data out there, we might be able to say two days from now in the afternoon is our best guess. And we might get 50% accurate on that, not 100%. But we might actually have a pretty good estimation like that. A lot of cases, we see these accelerations. We get all worked up about it. And then it slows down, which is great news. But in Norway, they had one case where they evacuated a town like 16 or 17 times. It's pretty frustrating, right? So there's kind of good news, bad news there. The good news is that these big, deep-seated landslides, the sort of thing that can produce a tsunami or can sweep a huge area out of a valley, those usually do have precursory activity. if you're watching for it. And the bad news is that they're complicated. They don't always behave as expected. So you end up facing false alarm issues and that sort of thing. Okay. I do
SPEAKER_00:want to talk one policy, not issue, but something that's very relevant and applicable to what we're talking about today. This was on the 8th, Senator Murkowski's introduced or reintroduced legislation to reauthorize the National Landslide Preparedness Act. So I'm just going to read a portion of this. Many communities across Alaska are still reeling from the aftermath of recent landslides. Landslides. Most recently, Ketchikan is working to stabilize roads following the Wolf Point landslide in March. Many of those facing significant landslide hazards lack access to sufficient data, monitors, and forecasting abilities to warn residents of when they are in danger. Sounds very familiar. I think I just heard this. Senator Rakowski said that this legislation provides resources to communities, allowing them to create response plans and improve emergency preparedness. We must do everything we can to safeguard our communities and protect Alaskans from fatal natural disasters. And that is why I will continue to advocate for the reauthorization of this bill. I mentioned to you earlier that before, you know, learning more about you, studying the things that you've done, if I would have seen that headline roll across my newsfeed, I probably wouldn't have given it much thought. I know like, oh, yeah, we did have a landslide, you know, kind of vaguely remember a few in recent history. But then kind of getting into the weeds with you about this topic, this is it kind of has new life for me seeing that. And I hope that's something that people realize as they listen to this is that, um, it's, it's a pretty serious topic. Uh, it's a very urgent topic and I'm glad to see that, you know, at least this is being reintroduced, you know, legislation is being reintroduced to extend the funding funding for USGS. Correct. Is that where this is all mostly, mostly comes through so that this work can continue to be funded so that, you know, whether, um, Was it weather stations be built so we could get more accurate data and being able to... I don't want to use mitigate now.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, no, it's fine. I'm always a little cautious about that word because some people assume that means stopping the landslide, which it sometimes is used narrowly that way. When I use it, I mean just do anything to make it less bad. So, yeah. So
SPEAKER_00:I see that in the news, but is there any concrete step that you would have people do? Like if you could tell everyone like, hey, do this thing so that we can kind of either, is it awareness? Is it policymaking? Is it just, how do Alaskans affect change concerning this issue?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, I mean, there are actually a lot of things at a lot of different levels. Um, uh, yeah, one thing I'd advertise out there is the state. Now that the landslide program at the state at DGGS, they have a landslide reporter app, really simple, like just put a few bits of information in, but that helps, um, learn about when, especially smaller landslides that we might not be able to study otherwise are happening. Um, and this is through the division at natural resources. Yes. Yeah. So, yep. And, um, uh, so, uh, Actually, I love it when people contact me with questions, with observations about landslides. So you can engage in the information out there, and that's a step in that direction. Anyone who lives below big, steep slopes should be aware that they may have landslide danger there. And it isn't necessarily that anyone's going to come up and knock on their door and let them know about that. It does kind of fall to individuals. This Landslide Preparedness Act... is I think a really important effort and a step forward. And I really think it's awesome that Murkowski has been advocating for that. And she's really was instrumental in getting the initial bill passed a few years ago. And I think what that, I guess that approach is kind of shows an awareness that I don't see in a lot of places of how we have this big problem and we don't really have the structure within the government. Like normally, natural hazards, it is kind of something we tackle with the government. And it kind of makes sense because these are big problems that stretch across jurisdictions. And it's not really, it's not like, oh, let's make this a for-profit thing. Like there isn't like a profit motive to solve the problem. And so it makes sense that the government would be taking these things on. It turns out that for landslides specifically, we are... We have very little like a vo is a really sophisticated organization It was kind of a lot of the existed before but a lot of what has been built there was triggered by a nearly Terrible disaster worked out at the last moment in 1989 when a jet flew into an ash cloud from readout right here And so they've had that's 89 as well and whatever that's 30, you know 36 years They've had some time to kind of figure this out and figure out how do they actually interact with information, get information to where it makes a difference. Landslides, I would say where we are right now is less than 10% of the way towards where AVO is. So we've got a long ways to go. It's going to take a lot of effort and concerted energy from people. And then the other half of this equation is that I think the problem is really bad. And I think we can make that argument in a pretty straightforward way and say, well, yeah, a dozen people, I think 13 people have died in the last decade from landslides in Alaska. It's a serious problem. So we've got that. Looking forward, I think it's actually worse than even that would suggest. But we have this lack of... a infrastructure for tackling the problem and the problem is bad and growing. And so this combination is really scary. I think that we, I think very few people, even people in that are involved in this appreciate just how big a challenge we have in front of us. Um, so from that perspective, uh, I think that one thing that the general public, that I, a perspective I want to get out to the general public is that, um, Thank you. Thank you. Alaskans are great naturalists. We all spend so much time out in the wilderness, or many of us do. And those kind of the things you learn, you go out and you're like, huh, the ground's cracking here. Those trees are tilted. Like, you know, it doesn't take like a PhD in geology to say, okay, there's something going on here. And yeah, I feel like I'm not expressing that very coherently, but I think it's really worthwhile to engage, especially with local representatives and but all the way up to our federal legislative delegation and saying, hey, yeah, I see how this is a concern for me where I live, and so I'd like to see more action on this.
SPEAKER_00:Can people follow the work that you're doing specifically? You mentioned, you know, people are welcome to email you. Is there any way like the people you said you're not really big on social media? Is there any other groups you're affiliated with or where people could kind of see how this progresses like with the work that you're doing?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, you know, I feel like there's some things I do, you know, fairly well. I try to get out and give presentations. Definitely can, you know, if you're like, I not only want to, I'll come give a presentation. I'm happy to chat with people like it could be an opportunity. So that sort of thing is great. I do go on Facebook now and then. If you want to find me there, that's great. I won't say that I post there very much or pay really close attention. We have a website. It's kind of out of date in a lot of ways. It's something where it's like, okay, yeah, we should dedicate energy to this, but then that energy goes somewhere else. So I would say, yeah, I'm really big on one-on-one conversations. I spend a lot of my time talking to people. If you're like, hey, my situation, I think This is a conversation I'd like to have. Really do reach out to me. Maybe we can put the Ground Truth Alaska contact email on there, which is groundtruthtrekking and the email address. But contact at groundtruthtrekking.org will get to me. Yeah, boy, I wish I like I kind of aspire to start a blog. It's so 2005. But actually, my wife started the Alaska Energy blog, along with a colleague of hers. And it's not that it has like millions of views and stuff. But the people who are specifically interested in this, it provides a lot of value. So I really it's like I look at that. And it's like, it's inspiring. I'm like, that would be a way to just kind of get these things out there in a somewhat durable form. But I'm not there yet.
SPEAKER_00:You can also start a podcast if you want to. If I can do it, you can do it, Hig.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, probably. This is where I'd like to partner with someone else who, yeah, although I'm not an audiophile, and it's important to do it right. I can tell you've been working hard on it.
SPEAKER_00:I appreciate that. Well, thank you so much for the work that you're doing. I know you probably don't get thanked enough for the work that you do. And you're passionate about it. You're very knowledgeable about it. But then you're also on the ground seeing it firsthand. And I'm happy just to be a part of that amplification, if you will, of the work that you're doing. And I hope it resonates with people. I hope that more and more eyes are open to, you know, the geohazards in our state and how they're progressing and, you know, the threat that we're all faced because of them or the threat that is there. the threat we're faced with because of them. And I hope it opens some eyes and some ears. And I hope this legislation goes through that Senator Murkowski is presenting. And hopefully, at least the funding will be there to be able to explore this more, to develop these warning systems. Because like you said, we can't necessarily stop them from occurring. We can just do our best to reduce the consequences of them. I hope that happens. Thank you again. I know you got to get out of here, so I want to wrap up, but thank you again, Dr. Higman, Hig, and hopefully we'll see you around. Oh, thanks very much. It was great conversation.