Kadleroshilik Pingo (or Kadleroshilik Mound[1]) is a pingo located about 40 kilometers (25 mi) southeast of Prudhoe Bay in the U.S. state of Alaska. Rising to an elevation of 54 meters (178 ft) above the surrounding lake plain, it is the highest known pingo in the world.[2]

The pingo's existence was first noted in the 1919 monograph The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska by Ernest de Koven Leffingwell.[3] Leffingwell, who had visited the site in 1911, adopted the Eskimo name for the mound, which he interpreted as possibly meaning "possesses something on top" or "which seems to approach"; he also named the nearby Kadleroshilik River for the mound.[4]

For her dissertation on the ecology of Alaskan pingos, based on studies conducted in the 1980s, Marilyn Drew Walker selected Kadleroshilik Pingo as one of her study sites specifically because of its unusual size.[5] Botanical specimens she collected at the site are in the herbarium of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.[6]

References

  1. "Kadleroshilik Mound". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. Retrieved 28 February 2020.
  2. Mackay, J. Ross (1998). "Pingo Growth and Collapse, Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula Area, Western Arctic Coast, Canada: A Long-Term Field Study" (PDF). Géographie physique et Quaternaire. University of Montreal. 52 (3): 311. doi:10.7202/004847ar. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  3. Walker, D. A.; Walker, M. D.; Everett, K. R.; Webber, P. J. (1985). "Pingos of the Prudhoe Bay Region, Alaska" (PDF). Arctic and Alpine Research. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado. 17 (3): 323. doi:10.2307/1551021. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  4. Leffingwell, Ernest de K. (1919). The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska. Washington: GPO. p. 96. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  5. Walker, Marilyn Drew (1990). Vegetation and Floristics of Pingos, Central Arctic Coastal Plain, Alaska (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis, University of Colorado, Boulder). Dissertationes Botanicae 149. Berlin: J. Cramer. p. 22. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
  6. "Locality: Arctic coastal plain, Kadleroshilik Pingo". Arctos. Retrieved 26 June 2012.

70°01′14″N 147°40′52″W / 70.02056°N 147.68111°W / 70.02056; -147.68111


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