New company wants to stop northern landslides with biodegradable blanket

It might seem like an unusual way to stop a landslide, but a new company believes a blanket could be part of the solution. Not to keep the ground warm, but to keep it frozen. PermaSee tested its biodegradable green blanket along the Dempster Highway this summer. It's made from wooded fibers, erosion control materials, and native plants. The idea is to stop permafrost from thawing and landslides from growing. One of the company's co-founders and former Tetlet Gwich'in chief says the test was a success. You not only have a solution that heals the land, but you also have a revenue-generating opportunity for those whose lands we may decide to work with. So how does it work? The blanket was tested in the Peel Plateau, an area in the NWT with hundreds of landslides called retrogressive thaw slumps. The land there consists of what's left of an old glacier. When that ice melts, the ground collapses. That exposes more frozen ground to warm air. And the cycle continues, causing these slumps to grow over decades. PermaSee's CEO says the blanket is designed to interrupt that cycle. We're simply using a combination of these materials and testing out different combinations to see what is going to not only do erosion control and hydrologic control, which has been tested in more temperate regions, but it's also providing insulation for long enough That. It allows for native vegetation to grow back. And there's a lot at stake. Ross says there are more than 600 slumps between Fort McPherson and Eklavik. They send sediment into rivers and lakes, threaten infrastructure, and release carbon into the atmosphere. They can also be dangerous for people traveling on the land. Some have steep walls that hunters may not see until they're dangerously close. I know there is a few hunters that talked about it, that, you know, they had a close call of, you know, chasing some animals and going off the slump. But not all thaw slumps are the same. The NWT Geological Survey studied the site where PermaSee tested its blanket. It's a relatively small slump. Others are enormous, moving enough earth to fill 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. A senior permafrost scientist says some are simply too big to stop. Some of the biggest slumps that we study are displacing, you know, millions of cubic meters of material. Those disturbances are, you know, they're They are, it is not possible to sort of arrest their development. Coekele has provided PermaSee with advice on its project. He says it seems like a prudent idea and believes the Green Blanket will have more success on smaller, newer slumps. One of the keys is if, is for us in a warming north to have a series of tools. To be able to think about ways that we can mitigate or slow permafrost thaw in particular areas where we have something that we value. PermaSee says they've tested their product and it works. The company wouldn't say if it had clients yet, but it says it's thinking about commercialization now. Getting their green blanket on the market, selling it and scaling up the business. Leni Lambrink, CBC News, Yellowknife.