When we think of climate change we usually think of glaciers melting, which they do! But there’s another issue that probably effects more people more readily: Melting permafrost. This change can, and has in some places, drastically alter the landscape and leave everything built on it an unstable mess.

Permafrost, for those that live in warm areas, is a thick layer of frozen ground, basically. It stays frozen year around and is made up of ice, gravel, and soil in varying degrees. When it melts, the ground sinks in. If it’s mostly rock, then there’s not huge changes but the places where it is soil or mostly ice sink drastically.

In Nome, Alaska where they are already experiencing these sorts of defrosting, roads and sinking, hills are tumbling down and the ground is getting, in general, more impassable. Just one more way that climate change is effecting the world we live in.