Problems posed by permafrost

General issues

Development of the north demands an understanding of and the ability to cope with problems of the environment dictated by permafrost. Although the frozen ground hinders agricultural and mining activities, the most dramatic, widespread, and economically important examples of the influence of permafrost on life in the north involve construction and maintenance of roads, railroads, airfields, bridges, buildings, dams, sewers, and communication lines. Engineering problems are of four fundamental types: (1) those involving thawing of ice-rich permafrost and subsequent subsidence of the surface under unheated structures such as roads and airfields, (2) those involving subsidence under heated structures, (3) those resulting from frost action, generally intensified by poor drainage caused by permafrost, and (4) those involved only with the temperature of permafrost that causes buried sewer, water, and oil lines to freeze.

A thorough study of the frozen ground should be part of the planning of any engineering project in the north. It is generally best to attempt to disturb the permafrost as little as possible in order to maintain a stable foundation for engineering structures, unless the permafrost is thin, in which case it may be possible to destroy the permafrost. The method of construction preserving the permafrost has been called the passive method; alternately, the destroying of permafrost is the active method.

Permafrost thawing and frost heaving

Because thawing of permafrost and frost action are involved in almost all engineering problems in polar areas, it is advisable to consider these phenomena generally. The delicate thermal equilibrium of permafrost is disrupted when the vegetation, snow cover, or active layer is compacted. The permafrost table is lowered, the active layer is thickened, and considerable ice is melted. This process lowers the surface and provides (in summer) a wetter active layer with less bearing strength. Such disturbance permits a greater penetration of summer warming. It is common procedure to place a fill, or pad, of gravel under engineering works. Such a fill generally is a good conductor of heat and, if thin, may cause additional thawing of permafrost. The fill must be made thick enough to contain the entire amplitude of seasonal temperature variation—in other words, thick enough to restrict the annual seasonal freezing and thawing to the fill and the compacted active layer. Under these conditions no permafrost will thaw. Such a procedure is quite feasible in the Arctic, but in the warmer subarctic it is impractical because of the enormous amounts of fill needed. Under a heated building, profound thawing may occur more rapidly than under roads and airfields.

Frost action, the freezing and thawing of moisture in the ground, has long been known to seriously disrupt and destroy structures in both polar and temperate latitudes. In the winter the freezing of ground moisture produces upward displacement of the ground (frost heaving), and in the summer excessive moisture in the ground brought in during the freezing operation causes loss of bearing strength. Frost action is best developed in silt-sized and silty clay-sized sediments in areas of rigorous climate and poor drainage. Polar latitudes are ideal for maximum frost action because most lowland areas are covered by fine-grained sediments, and the underlying permafrost causes poor drainage.

Structures on piles

Piles are used to support many, if not most, structures built on ice-rich permafrost. In regions of cold winters, many pile foundations are in ground subject to seasonal freezing and, therefore, possibly subject to the damaging effect of frost heaving, which tends to displace the pile upward and thus to disturb the foundation of the structure. The displacement of piling is not limited to the far north, though maximum disturbance probably is encountered most widely in the subarctic. Expensive maintenance and sometimes complete destruction of bridges, school buildings, military installations, pipelines, and other structures have resulted from failure to understand the principles of frost heaving of piling.

A remarkable construction achievement in a permafrost environment is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Completed in 1977, this 1,285-km-long, 122-cm-diameter (roughly 800-mile-long, 48-inch-diameter) pipeline transports crude oil from Prudhoe Bay to an ice-free port at Valdez. The pipeline was originally designed for burial along most of the route. However, because the oil is transported at 70 to 80 °C (158 to 176 °F), such an installation would have thawed the adjacent permafrost, causing liquefaction, loss of bearing strength, and soil flow. To prevent destruction of the pipeline, about half of the line (615 km [382 miles]) is elevated onto beams held up by vertical support members. The pipeline safely discharges its heat into the air, while frost heaving of the 120,000 vertical support members is prevented by freezing them firmly into the permafrost through the use of special heat-radiating thermal devices.

Highways and railroads

Highways in polar areas are relatively few and mainly unpaved. They are subject to subsidence by thawing of permafrost in summer, frost heaving in winter, and loss of bearing strength on fine-grained sediments in summer. Constant grading of gravel roads permits maintenance of a relatively smooth highway. Where the road is paved over ice-rich permafrost, the roadway becomes rough and is much more costly to maintain than are unpaved roads. Many of the paved roads in polar areas have required resurfacing two or three times in a 10-year period.

Railroads particularly have serious construction problems and require costly upkeep in permafrost areas because of the necessity of maintaining a relatively low gradient and the subsequent location of the roadbed in ice-rich lowlands that are underlain with perennially frozen ground. The Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Alaska Railroad, and some Canadian railroads in the north are locally underlain by permafrost with considerable ground ice. As the large masses of ice melt each summer, constant maintenance is required to level these tracks. In winter, extensive maintenance is also required to combat frost heaving when local displacements of 2.5 to 35 cm (1 to 14 inches) occur in roadbeds and bridges.

Agriculture

Permafrost affects agricultural developments in many parts of the discontinuous permafrost zone. Its destructive effect on cultivated fields in both Russia and North America results from the thawing of large masses of ice in the permafrost. If care is not exercised in selecting areas to be cleared for cultivation, thawing of the permafrost may necessitate abandonment of fields or their reduction to pasturage.

Offshore structures

One of the most active and exciting areas of permafrost engineering is in subsea permafrost. Knowledge of the distribution, type, and water or ice content of subsea permafrost is critical for planning petroleum exploration, locating production structures, burying pipelines, and driving tunnels beneath the seabed. Furthermore, the temperature of the seabed must be known in order to predict potential sites of accumulation of gas hydrates or areas in which groundwater or artesian pressures are likely. In addition, knowledge of the distribution of subsea permafrost permits a thorough interpretation of regional geologic history.