Greatest concentration of pingoes

The greatest concentration of ice-cored hills known as pingoes is found on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula on the western Arctic coast of Canada in the Northwest Territories, where there are approximately 1,350 pingoes – around 25% of the global total. A study about the Tuktoyaktuk pingoes was published in Vol. 52 of the journal Géographie Physique et Quaternaire in 1998, authored by J Ross Mackay of the University of British Columbia.

The tallest pingo in the peninsula (and the second-tallest known example in the world) is the 49-m (161-ft) Ibyuk Pingo. The tallest overall is farther west: Kadleroshilik Pingo (or Kadleroshilik Mound) located about 40 km (25 mi) south-east of Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, USA, rises to an elevation of 54 m (178 ft) above the surrounding lake plain.

Pingoes are ice-cored earth mounds found in permafrost-affected areas of the planet. They form via one of two processes - hydrostatically (closed-system) or hydraulically (open-system). Both involve groundwater freezing into a subterranean disc of ice and the resulting pressure/expansion causing the overlying soil above to bulge into a small hill.