Tundra fire on Alaska’s North Slope among the biggest in recent years
- Yereth Rosen
- Jul 8
- 4 min read
A 2,000-acre fire, along with others north of the Brooks Range, fits a pattern of increasing wildfires on the treeless tundra
A lightning-sparked fire that has burned about 2,000 acres of Arctic Alaska tundra is the biggest wildfire on the North Slope in eight years.
The Ikpikpuk Fire, which bears the name of a 195-mile river that flows north into the Arctic Ocean, was discovered on June 22. Though classified as active, it is unstaffed, meaning that there are no efforts underway to fight it. Also burning nearby in the same treeless tundra area is the 618-acre Bronx Fire, along with two small fires of a few acres each.
The North Slope fires were detected by satellite, said Beth Ipsen, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service.
The Ikpikpuk Fire is the biggest North Slope tundra fire since 2017, when the Ketik River fire east of Wainwright burned 2,870 acres, said Rick Thoman, a scientist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In all, 5,421 acres of North Slope tundra were reported as burned in 2017, Thoman said.
Fires occasionally burn in the North Slope tundra when the weather is hot enough, the plants are dry enough and there is lightning to start them, but they are typically very small, Thoman said.
The Ikpikpuk Fire stands out, he said. “A 2,000-acre fire is non-trivial for the North Slope,” he said.
And conditions have been right for a significant fire in the region, he said. “Certainly, it has been extremely warm on the inland North Slope,” he said.
While most Alaska tundra fires are south of the Brooks Range, in Northwest or Western Alaska, fires north of the Brooks Range are becoming more common and bigger, according to scientists.
The frequency of significant wildfires fires on the North Slope tundra has tripled in recent years, according to a 2023 study by scientists from the BLM and UAF. The study evaluated lightning-sparked fires of at least 10 hectares (24.7 acres) that have burned on the North Slope over half a century, from 1972 to 2022. In the first 37 years of that study period, there was an annual average of 0.89 such fires, but in the last 13 years of the study period, the annual average jumped to 2.5, the study found.
Their increasing frequency is a product of climate change, and tundra fires also contribute to climate change because they hasten the release of old carbon stored in the ground, scientists say.
The biggest North Slope tundra fire on record is the 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire, which burned about 256,000 acres and resulted in significant permafrost thaw and the release into the atmosphere of 50 years’ worth of stored carbon, according to scientists from UAF and other universities.
And the mix of plants that grew back in the decade since that fire is different from that in the unburned area, creating more potential fuel for future wildfires, according to a separate BLM study.
For Alaska wildfire managers, the Ikpikpuk Fire and the others on the North Slope are of scientific interest but of low priority for any action, Ipsen said.
“We’ve got a lot going on throughout the state,” she said.
Wildfires have erupted since the second half of June, when Interior temperatures soared high enough to prompt Alaska’s first-ever National Weather Service heat advisories.
A series of fires have spurred evacuations or evacuation alerts in communities along Alaska’s road system, Ipsen said. She named the area between Nenana and Fairbanks, where two fires grouped together as the Nenana Ridge Complex, have been burning on either side of the Parks Highway. North Star Borough residents are on evacuation alert Monday for a different set of fires. And Healy, Tok and Delta Junction are other communities that have been affected by nearby wildfires, Ipsen said.
“We’re talking about really close to people and properties, and it’s all happening pretty much simultaneously,” she said.
In all, over 581,000 acres have burned in Alaska from 363 fires as of Monday afternoon, with 227 of those fires classified as active, according to the federal-state Alaska Interagency Coordination Center.
That includes four new fires discovered in the Kobuk area of Northwest Alaska, potentially affecting the village of Ambler, Ipsen said.
Thoman said he is not surprised by those Kobuk area fires because the region has been extraordinarily hot in recent days. He cited temperature readings above 90 degrees for three consecutive days at an airstrip north of Kobuk.
“It can get hot there, but three days in a row in the lower 90s — that is really remarkable,” he said.
• Yereth Rosen came to Alaska in 1987 to work for the Anchorage Times. She has been reporting on Alaska news ever since, covering stories ranging from oil spills to sled-dog races. She has reported for Reuters, for the Alaska Dispatch News, for Arctic Today and for other organizations. She covers environmental issues, energy, climate change, natural resources, economic and business news, health, science and Arctic concerns -- subjects with a lot of overlap. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
