Permafrost degradation and devastating floods of the 20th – 21st centuries for the Livelihoods of Yakut Arctic villages

Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North, 677027, Yakutsk, Russian Federation

^* Corresponding author: alexas1306@gmail.com

Abstract

The article uses the example of the Argakhtakh village of the Srednekolymsky ulus of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) located in the middle course of the Alazeya river basin to analyse the consequences of floods during the period of a relatively stable state of the environment and in recent decades, characterized by its imbalance due to global climate transformation, based on analysis of archival data, published literature and own field materials. Due to this, the causes, history and consequences of h floods of 1977-1978 were examined. It is shown that it caused significant damage to agriculture, specifically to the fodder supply of bovine cattle and horses. At the same time the materials found confirm that the territory of the village itself was not significantly affected. A different situation occurred during the floods of 1997, 2007-2008 and 2017-2018. In the first case, not only the farmlands were flooded, but the new streambed of the Alazea River appeared next to Argakhtakh and the local farm zoo was deprived of its stable land connection to the village. The flood rises of the 21st century, apart from disastrous consequences for cattle ranges and meadows, caused damage to the housing stock of Argakhtakh, household outbuildings and infrastructure objects. all this led to a radical reduction in the scale of involvement of the local population in traditional sectors of economic activity (cattle and horse breeding), the elimination of fur farming, the degradation of transport accessibility of the village and the costs of the population to restore the economy.