The Batagay Crater, a giant depression in Siberia’s permafrost, continues to expand at an alarming rate. Officially known as the Batagay mega slump, this crater has been dubbed the “gateway to the underworld” due to its massive size and the ancient permafrost layers it has exposed. The crater, which formed in the 1970s when part of a hillside in the Yana Uplands collapsed, was not discovered until 1991 through satellite images.
As of 2023, the Batagay crater measures 3,250 feet wide, making it the world’s largest mega slump. The cliff face at the top of the headwall formation stands 180 feet tall. When the crater opened, it revealed permafrost layers frozen for up to 650,000 years, making it the oldest permafrost in Siberia and the second-oldest in the world after Canada’s Yukon Territory.
Recent research has shown that the crater is expanding by approximately 35 million cubic feet yearly. As the depression sinks deeper into the ground, new layers of ancient permafrost are exposed.
Batagay crater’s expanding ancient layers
Additionally, the headwall is receding by 40 feet per year due to the thawing of the permafrost. As the permafrost melts, large amounts of ice and sediment fall into the crater, with some melted material washing into the Batagay River Valley. Thomas Opel, a paleoclimatologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, explains that the region’s permafrost is composed of 80 percent ice, which likely contributed to the hillside’s collapse.
The gateway is located in a landscape of larch and birch woodlands. Deforestation, which began in the 1940s, caused the topsoil to erode more quickly and exposed the permafrost underneath. As the permafrost was primarily made of ice rather than sediment, it melted faster, resulting in the significant collapse of the hillside over the following decades.
The expansion of the Batagay crater serves as a stark reminder of the impact of climate change on permafrost regions and the potential consequences for our planet’s climate. As the crater continues to grow, it is crucial to monitor its development and take action to mitigate the effects of global warming on these sensitive ecosystems.
April Isaacs is a news contributor for DevX.com She is long-term, self-proclaimed nerd. She loves all things tech and computers and still has her first Dreamcast system. It is lovingly named Joni, after Joni Mitchell.
