{"id":48154,"date":"2018-07-04T14:51:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T18:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=48154"},"modified":"2025-09-30T14:07:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T18:07:42","slug":"frozen-canoes","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/frozen-canoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Frozen Canoes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\n \n \n \n \n
\n\n
<\/div>\n \n
\n
\n\n

\n Frozen Canoes\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

The last shovel of dirt on a strand of gravel connecting a tiny town to a nearby hamlet rarely marks a national milestone, but when the ribbon was cut on the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway in November 2017, the new road was greeted with a community feast and compared to the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s because the two-lane road didn\u2019t just connect Tuktoyaktuk with Inuvik, it linked Canada\u2019s continental road system to the Arctic shore. For the first time, Canadians now drive from sea-to-sea-to-icy-sea, all year round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the last leg didn\u2019t come cheap. Just 138 kilometres long, the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway<\/a> cost $300 million to build and it can\u2019t lay claim to a single metre of pavement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Frozen
Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Built exclusively during the colder months to avoid damaging the permafrost that underlies it, the packed gravel road has 359 culverts to manage summer melt water \u2013 roughly one for every 384 metres travelled. The highway is elevated 1.8 metres above the tundra to mitigate the effect that thawing earth will have on its integrity in the future, but in spite of this, parts of it will periodically sink. Exactly how much is anybody\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t know precisely how significant climate change will be in northwestern Canada because we don\u2019t know if emissions will continue to rise, maintain their current levels, reduce or even stop in the future, but we do know the effects will be serious,\u201d says Christopher Burn, Chancellor\u2019s Professor in Carleton\u2019s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. <\/p>\n\n\n

\"Frozen<\/figure>\n\n\n

Frozen Canoes:
\nLandscape and infrastructure dynamics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burn specializes in long-term field investigations of frozen ground, and he\u2019s collaborating with researchers from Universit\u00e9 Laval, Yukon College, the University Centre in Svalbard and NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on FROZEN CANOES: Landscape and infrastructure dynamics of frozen >environments undergoing climate change in Canada<, Norway and Svalbard<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funded by the Research Council of Norway, the FROZEN CANOES<\/em> research partnership will develop a course package that draws on geoscientific and engineering knowledge. It could eventually form the basis of an interdisciplinary permafrost master\u2019s program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Frozen
Prof. Christopher Burn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Course work will prepare students to build roads, railways and other structures on permafrost, and the research team will begin by creating online modules in heat transfer, freezing-thawing soil mechanics, climate change, and numerical modelling. They\u2019ll also develop three master\u2019s-level courses to be delivered in the field at Canada\u2019s Yukon College<\/a> and Norway\u2019s NTNU<\/a>, with stipends available to students to fund travel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The multidisciplinary, on-location approach seeks to ensure that future northern development will be adequate to withstand the changing climate. Already, changes have been significant.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n

\u201cClimate change in northwestern Canada has been far greater than we thought it would be 15 years ago,\u201d says Burn.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cIt has exceeded our wildest predictions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next 50 could prove much worse, but even as a changing climate make durable construction in the North more challenging, a melting Arctic Ocean fuels interest in northern development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNorwegian engineering firms recognize that opportunities in permafrost construction won\u2019t be limited to Norway,\u201d Burn says, \u201cbut will include the entire circumpolar region \u2013 Canada, Russia, Alaska and also the Tibetan Plateau.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite its far northerly latitudes, Norway has relatively little permafrost, and FROZEN CANOES<\/em> will draw on Canadian knowledge of warm permafrost development, and Norwegian expertise in optimizing construction for the freeze-thaw cycles of seasonally frozen ground. <\/p>\n\n\n

\"Frozen<\/figure>\n\n\n

Northern Development<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 77 degrees North, Norway\u2019s Svalbard archipelago is nearly 2000 kilometres north of the Norwegian mainland, and 1 degree farther north than Canada\u2019s northernmost community – Grise Fiord, Nunavut. Yet Svalbard\u2019s climate is, by high Arctic standards, relatively mild. Burn compares its permafrost to what\u2019s found in northwestern Canada and northern Qu\u00e9bec, both thousands of kilometres to the south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream current, weather is also milder in mainland Norway than at comparable latitudes in Canada. Norwegian cities like Trondheim experience freeze-thaw cycles like those in Ottawa or Montreal, despite being farther north than Yellowknife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Frozen
Prof. Burn says climate change has “exceeded our wildest predictions.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Norway has managed to build infrastructure that can withstand the rigors of a northern climate and, simply put, they\u2019re better at it than we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNorway is a very wealthy country and has managed its oil money well,\u201d says Burn, who recognized the possibility for collaboration during annual trips to lecture about permafrost at the University of Svalbard\u2019s Arctic Geology Department, where he worked with Hanne Hvidtfedlt Christiansen, principal researcher in the FROZEN CANOES<\/em> partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unlike what we\u2019ve done in Canada. They invest in their infrastructure. Norwegians expect their roads will be pothole-free, year-round. They have an extensive rail infrastructure and they don\u2019t slow their trains down in winter.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

While it remains to be seen if Canadians are capable of building a pothole-proof road, some solutions to permafrost engineering problems can be deceptively simple, such as building to shield foundations from snow accumulation. Snow acts as an insulator, trapping heat and accelerating the thaw. Ensuring the earth stays frozen by exposing it to frigid air makes buildings less likely to sink into softened summer ground. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other engineering solutions \u2013 like those that went into building the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway \u2013 are much more expensive, but avoiding them can prove penny-wise and pound-foolish.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n

\u201cBuilding without considering climate change creates additional costs,\u201d Burn says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cIn the last 10 years, the cost of maintaining the Dempster Highway \u2013 which connects Inuvik with Dawson City, Yukon – has doubled. We need to ask if it\u2019s cheaper to fix something every 10 or 15 years, or to use proper building techniques in the first place and spend money on regular maintenance. It\u2019s true that it can be expensive, but for a community like Tuktoyaktuk, the alternative is flying in food and fuel, and that\u2019s expensive too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Frozen<\/figure>\n\n\n

—
\nClick here<\/a> for more Carleton Stories.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last shovel of dirt on a strand of gravel connecting a tiny town to a nearby hamlet rarely marks a national milestone, but when the ribbon was cut on the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway in November 2017, the new road was greeted with a community feast and compared to the last spike of the Canadian Pacific […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":48163,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13,31],"cu_story_tag":[1920,1927,1925],"class_list":["post-48154","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_type-sustainability","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences","cu_story_tag-indigenous","cu_story_tag-research"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/48154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/48154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98154,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/48154\/revisions\/98154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=48154"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=48154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}