Quebec Gvn. - Permafrost Loss "Inevitable", Infrastructure Losses Looming

[hatrack]

Take a piece of black paper and lay it on the ground for a while. When the sun shines, it won’t be long before you find a mucky mess underneath and the black paper slides away. That’s the kind of impact that higher temperatures are having on the roads and runways of Nunavik, largely built above a layer of permafrost, or permanently frozen ground.

And this is why the Quebec transport department is scrambling to fix the damage – and avoid future problems – on airport access roads and runways which are buckling and splitting as permafrost melts under Nunavik’s ever-warmer temperatures.

Due to rising temperatures in Nunavik, a recent report from the Transport Department says melting permafrost is now “inevitable” and will become “a problem for all the transport infrastructure” in the region. This, it says, could affect the “security and comfort” of users. This summer, engineers from the department were in Salluit to test three different ways of lessening the impact of melting permafrost on the access road to the community’s airport. This access road is a steep, winding road, notorious for its snowdrifts, where melting permafrost is already beginning to cause damage.

“We thought we should test stabilization methods before applying them on a larger scale because they are very expensive. But it’s clear that Salluit is an urgent case,” said engineer and pavement specialist Guy Doré, who has been one of the lead consultants on the project. “As soon as we can prove the efficiency of the techniques, we must apply them very rapidly because the Salluit’s road is suffering, and the runway is also affected.” If nothing is done to the road, Salluit could see landslides or slippages, similar to the one that occurred there in 1998. This destabilized a neighbourbood of 20 new houses, which cost Quebec hundreds of thousands of dollars to move to new locations.

EDIT

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/climate/60908_02.html