Rusting Rivers B-Roll: Igning River, Alaska

This is B-roll video of the Igning River, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska from August 26, 2024.

The video shows a helicopter flight over a rusting river flowing through a valley and then into the mainstem river of the Igning River, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska, USA. The impaired tributary water is shown mixing with the unimpaired water of the Igning River. The impaired water affects the mainstem below the confluence where Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma) have been observed spawning. 

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.