Jim Coates

Jim Coates is the founder of Kryotek Arctic Innovation. Kryotek develops and commercializes new tools for climate change adaptation. These range from compact drill rigs used by major mining companies for battery mineral exploration to wildfire sensors and earth imaging technology. Much of his recent work has been on techniques to measure and slow the release of greenhouse gasses from thawing permafrost and monetize the resulting carbon offsets. While working for the Yukon Geological Survey in 2004 and conducting graduate fieldwork on impacts of permafrost thaw in and around Canada’s Klondike Goldfields he was first exposed to the abundance of ice age mammals frozen in permafrost and the placer mining that reveals them. Subsequent PhD research focussed on the engineering applications of electrical resistivity tomography geophysics. His professional life has been relentlessly practical, managing over 300 remote projects ranging from arctic climate change studies with Parks Canada to installing earthquake sensors among the highest mountains in North America with the US Geological Survey’s EarthScope group. In 2012 he travelled to Siberia with Dr. Love Dalen as part of a National Geographic expedition to collect mammoth DNA from the melting banks of the Lena River where he met a number of the leading ancient DNA researchers. The experience was transformative and he was infected by the dream of seeing a live mammoth. He lives in the Yukon with his wife, where they are lucky to have Pleistocene wildlife such as bison and musk ox as neighbours in the Yukon Wildlife Preserve that adjoins their property.