Roads, bridges, pipelines and other types of infrastructure in Alaska and elsewhere in the Arctic will deteriorate faster than expected due to a failure by planners to account for the structures’ impact on adjacent permafrost, according to new research.

The researchers say planners must account for the sideward repercussions of their projects in addition to the usual projection of the direct top-down effects.

The finding was presented in a May 31 paper in The Cryosphere, a publication of the European Geosciences Union.

UAF Geophysical Institute geophysics professor Vladimir Romanovsky is among the 13 authors of the paper. Principal researcher for the project is Thomas Schneider von Deimling of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany.

The research focused on a portion of the Dalton Highway on Alaska’s North Slope about 10 miles south of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. Sensors monitored the temperature at seven locations, three to the west of the highway and four on the east.

The researchers found that top-down thawing isn’t confined to the area beneath the road surface. They found instead that thawing spreads outward, leading to destabilization of the embankment and subgrade and that it is caused by the formation of taliks — areas of ground that have thawed and remains unfrozen year-round — under a roadway’s toe, the prepared zone at the base of the embankment and abutting the natural terrain.

Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Alaska Fairbanks. Original written by Rod Boyce. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.