Science of Salmon.org
Yereth Rosen
Oct 28, 2025
When scientists Patrick Sullivan and Roman Dial were heading to a remote area in the Brooks Range in 2019 to map the spread of woody plants there, they were looking forward to seeing a celebrated river that author John McPhee described decades ago as having the “clearest, purest water I have ever seen flowing over rocks.”
When scientists Patrick Sullivan and Roman Dial were heading to a remote area in the Brooks Range in 2019 to map the spread of woody plants there, they were looking forward to seeing a celebrated river that author John McPhee described decades ago as having the “clearest, purest water I have ever seen flowing over rocks.”
What they found in the Salmon River, a waterway that flows through Northwest Alaska’s Kobuk Valley National Park, was much different from what McPhee described in his landmark 1976 Alaska book “Coming Into the Country.” The waters Sullivan and Dial found were reddish-orange and murky from loads of minerals flowing into them.
The Salmon River and its tributaries had become transformed into “rusting rivers,” a phenomenon caused by climate change in permafrost regions.