Pinpointing the Location of Buried Waste across the Greenland Ice Sheet

Military sites have historically become major point sources for environmental contamination. With globally changing climate patterns there is even higher potential than before for certain of these waste sites to become destabilized and cause human-ecological harm. During the Cold War, US strategy sought to turn the Arctic into a theater of war, which has resulted in an extensive network of military sites across its now changing land- and ice-scapes. Recent scientific investigations of the abandoned “city under the ice” at Camp Century, Greenland have analyzed the physical dimensions of the debris field, while various other scholars have articulated the historical and geopolitical dimensions that gave rise to this network of sites. We sought to expand existing discussions of pollution in Greenland by conducting an interdisciplinary and comprehensive analysis of military infrastructure in the ice sheet. We applied a mixed-methods approach that joins historical documents review, remote sensing analysis, and ice sheet modeling to expose the larger undiscussed extent of the US’s ice sheet network. With this study, our specific goals are to: 1) determine the positions of all abandoned US military installations across the Greenland Ice Sheet; 2) draw attention to the history and present-day status of these other sites; and 3) introduce these sites within the framing of “waste colonialism” to better understand the threat they pose to ecological resilience.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Geography

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Oregon

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Kuentz, Lily

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ryan, Johnny

• Critical Physical Geography
• Critical Remote Sensing
• Geopolitics
• Polar Science

Statement dc:rights

• All Rights Reserved.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/29207

OAI record oai:identifier

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Ascholarsbank.uoregon.edu%3A1794%2F29207