Climate change and the environmental history of permafrost science

I've been reading again today, for class prep, this interesting article from the New York Times about permafrost, climate change, and the scientists and students that are studying the future of the Arctic tundra as it warms.

Melting permafrost has become a significant focus of northern climate science.  This melting promises both to destabilize northern landscapes, and to accelerate climate change itself: as it warms, the permafrost (which contains vast quantities of organic matter) will release more carbon dioxide and methane.  This contribution to global warming from permafrost may approach that of our own burning of fossil fuels.

What's also interesting, in terms of the environmental history of northern science, is how the meaning of permafrost itself has evolved over the last sixty years.  After the end of the Second World War permafrost became the focus of a tremendous amount of research, as soil scientists and engineers tried to figure out how to build roads, buildings, and industrial facilities without warming and so destabilizing their permafrost foundation.  Melting permafrost was a major operational challenge.

Then in the 1960s and 1970s, environmental scientists redefined melting permafrost � evident in highly-eroded gullies that slashed across the tundra � as a symptom of the environmental impacts of development on "fragile" northern ecosystems.  Rather than seeing melting permafrost as a threat to development, as in previous decades, this relationship was, in effect, reversed.

And now, melting permafrost has been once again reconceived, becoming an indicator of the links between Arctic ecosystems and the global environment.  Throughout, we can see the changing meanings of permafrost: in other words, how it's acted as a boundary object, linking scientific activity and social concerns in diverse ways.