Evocative photos of Canadian Arctic win New Scientist Editors Award

Natalya Saprunova's photo series exploring coastal erosion and permafrost thaw across Inuvialuit territories in Canada has won the New Scientist Editors Award at the Earth Photo 2026 competition

Natalya Saprunova's photo series exploring coastal erosion and permafrost thaw across Inuvialuit territories in Canada has won the New Scientist Editors Award at the Earth Photo 2026 competition

The realities of a changing global climate collide with years of tradition in Natalya Saprunova’s icy blue photograph, above, part of a series that won the New Scientist Editors Award in the Earth Photo 2026 competition.

The image shows a hunter from an Inuit community in Tuktoyaktuk on Canada’s Arctic coast holding a goose decoy meant to lure migrating birds. In the background, a pale sky touches banks of melting ice and murky water already studded with several faux birds. Indigenous peoples in the region used to make these decoys from reeds, but it isn’t just the materials they work with that have now changed – rising temperatures have affected the actual birds, shifting their migratory patterns and making them harder to hunt. Saprunova documents this and other related changes in her winning series, focusing especially on the melting permafrost.

Below, an Inuit resident of Victoria Island handles fish, another essential resource for the local community, and another animal whose behaviour has changed with the changing climate. Because permafrost thawing accelerates coastal erosion, it also introduces harmful compounds like mercury into the habitats of commonly eaten fish, endangering food supplies.

In Ulukhaktok, on Victoria Island, a resident deals with fish – a vital food source for the community

Taking a wider view in the image below, Saprunova captures the texture of changes to the Arctic landscape itself, a web of sunken polygons filled with water and occasionally studded with conical, ice-cored hills. As permafrost melts, the land becomes uneven and makes it harder for animals like caribou to traverse their home. “The thaw is not just melting ice, it is reshaping the map upon which animals and people have always relied,” writes Saprunova in her submission for the prize.

The situation is even more dire when she photographs the hamlet of Sachs Harbour where whole cliffs of permafrost are disappearing. A rugged, uneven cliff laced with cracks is shown dangerously close to homes, below. The contrast between these neat residences and the eroding land conveys the urgency of climate catastrophe in the Arctic. Canada has the longest inhabited Arctic coastline in the world and some of its inhabitants stand the grim chance of becoming the country’s first climate refugees.

Accordingly, Saprunova photographs Pelly Island, below, which is known to be disappearing. The permafrost that once comprised it is now melting away and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which could, devastatingly, speed up both the rise in global temperatures and the further melting of the island. A cliff of black rock looks monstrously barren, as a nearby tiny human figure looks at the water. Exposed veins of gray and white rock only underline how much climate change is wounding their world.