Rusting Rivers B-Roll: Anatok Creek, Alaska

This is B-roll video of Anatok Creek, Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska from August 19, 2025.

The video follows an orange tributary into the mainstem of Anatok Creek, Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska. In the video shows the precipitation of iron on rocks as the impaired water mixes with the mainstem. The impaired water changes from orange (reflecting iron) to milky blue (reflecting aluminum) indicating a change in oxygen and metal concentrations related to transport and ongoing chemical reactions.  

Rusting rivers are increasingly common in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska. The orange stream color reflects oxidized iron (hence the appearance of rusting), but orange color also indicates elevated heavy metal concentrations and impaired water quality. Our ongoing study aims to document these occurrences, quantify toxic metal concentrations and loads, determine how the interaction of geology, hydrology, and permafrost degradation contributes to the phenomenon, and understand the consequences for stream biota, especially fish.

In 2019, a team of U.S. Geological Survey and Nation Park Service researchers began working on this issue, with the overall goal of defining and understanding changes to Arctic rivers in Alaska to meet conservation goals of the Department of the Interior.

The research team has identified more than 70 locations of rusting rivers throughout the Brooks Range and continue to investigate this phenomenon.