Kadleroshilik Pingo

{{Short description|Large pingo located in northern Alaska}}

Kadleroshilik Pingo (or Kadleroshilik Mound{{cite gnis|1894981|Kadleroshilik Mound|28 February 2020}}) is a pingo located about {{convert|40|km|mi|sp=us}} southeast of Prudhoe Bay in the U.S. state of Alaska. Rising to an elevation of {{convert|178|ft|m|sp=us|disp=flip}} above the surrounding lake plain, it is the highest known pingo in the world.{{cite journal |last=Mackay |first=J. Ross |year=1998 |title=Pingo Growth and Collapse, Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula Area, Western Arctic Coast, Canada: A Long-Term Field Study |journal=Géographie physique et Quaternaire |volume=52 |issue=3 |page=311 |publisher=University of Montreal |url=http://www.erudit.org/revue/gpq/1998/v52/n3/004847ar.pdf |accessdate=23 June 2012 |doi=10.7202/004847ar|doi-access=free }}

The pingo's existence was first noted in the 1919 monograph The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska by Ernest de Koven Leffingwell.{{cite journal |last1=Walker |first1=D. A. |last2=Walker |first2=M. D. |last3=Everett |first3=K. R. |last4=Webber |first4=P. J. |year=1985 |title=Pingos of the Prudhoe Bay Region, Alaska |journal=Arctic and Alpine Research |volume=17 |issue=3 |page=323 |publisher=Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado |doi= 10.2307/1551021|url=http://www.geobotany.org/library/pubs/WalkerDA1985_aar_17_321.pdf |accessdate=23 June 2012}} 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.{{cite book |title=The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska |last=Leffingwell |first=Ernest de K. |year=1919 |publisher=GPO |location=Washington |page=96 |accessdate=23 June 2012 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LG7nAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA96}}

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.{{cite book |last=Walker |first=Marilyn Drew |title=Vegetation and Floristics of Pingos, Central Arctic Coastal Plain, Alaska |url=http://www.geobotany.org/library/pubs/WalkerMD1987_thesis.pdf |accessdate=26 June 2012 |type=Ph.D. thesis, University of Colorado, Boulder |series=Dissertationes Botanicae 149 |year=1990 |publisher=J. Cramer |location=Berlin |page=22}} Botanical specimens she collected at the site are in the herbarium of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.{{cite web |url=http://arctos.database.museum/SpecimenResults.cfm?collection_id=6&locality_id=1182477 |title=Locality: Arctic coastal plain, Kadleroshilik Pingo |work=Arctos |accessdate=26 June 2012}}