Rae Landriau will be presenting Performance of Drilling Waste Sumps, Western Arctic Canada.
Date: 16 October 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Petroleum resource exploration and development has occurred in the Northwest Territories since the 1920s. Freezing-point depressants, mainly potassium chloride, were added to drilling fluids to facilitate drilling into permafrost. Disposal of these fluids was typically in large man-made pits (sumps). Sumps were excavated in permafrost, with the intention that frozen ground would contain the fluids indefinitely. Climatic warming in northwest Canada has raised the temperature of near-surface permafrost, increasing the potential for failure of sumps in the region. Using electro-magnetic surveys, ground conductivity on and off sumps can be collected and analyzed to detect the presence of these fluids and determine if they have migrated.
Hannah Macdonell will be presenting Development and demonstration of a statistical ranking framework for ground temperature models, tailored towards permafrost environments.
Date: 18 September 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Models used to simulate permafrost variables such as ground temperature are important tools for understanding the current state and future conditions of permafrost. However, few objective methods of establishing model accuracy exist for permafrost environments. Additionally, models often range in their performance given different conditions such as terrain type or seasonality. Hannah will be presenting her master’s research that looked at (1) identifying patterns in ground-temperature model performance under different testing conditions and (2) developing a quantitative measure of ground-temperature model performance in permafrost zones.
Tabatha Rahman presented Ice-Wedge Volume, Distribution, and Development in the Barrens of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Northern Manitoba.
Extensive ice-wedge polygon networks are found in the ‘Barrens’ of northern Manitoba, a 50,000 km2 zone of continuous permafrost tundra that emerged from the Tyrrell Sea less than 5,500 years ago. Tabatha will present empirical results of ice-wedge volume and tri-dimensional distribution, and will focus on the environmental conditions associated with the growth and degradation of ice wedges in this uplifted permafrost peatland. Knowledge of wedge-ice morphology and development is essential for the prediction and mitigation of risks associated with anticipated permafrost thaw in the Barrens.
Usman Iqbal Ahmed will be presenting Precise Change Detection with Airborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) & Optical Photogrammetry Data and its application to Active Permafrost Regions.
Permafrost thaw can cause several problems; the ground becomes unstable and can cause damage to infrastructure such as roads, buildings, and pipelines. It can also cause erosion and changes in the landscape, which can have ecological and social impacts and disruption of indigenous ways of life. Monitoring these changes is a key factor in reducing the impact of such disasters as well as timely reaction/adaptation to such changes. I am exploring the option of developing a change detection method using Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry and Optical Photogrammetry data for precise change detection. I will present the results of our controlled experiment with simulated permafrost related changes to showcase the capability of our method in active permafrost thaw environments.
Rae Landriau will be presenting Performance of Drilling Waste Sumps, Western Arctic Canada.
Date: 29 May 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Petroleum resource exploration and development has occurred in the Northwest Territories since the 1920s. Freezing-point depressants, mainly potassium chloride, were added to drilling fluids to facilitate drilling into permafrost. Disposal of these fluids was typically in large man-made pits (sumps). Sumps were excavated in permafrost, with the intention that frozen ground would contain the fluids indefinitely. Climatic warming in northwest Canada has raised the temperature of near-surface permafrost, increasing the potential for failure of sumps in the region. Using electro-magnetic surveys, ground conductivity on and off sumps can be collected and analyzed to detect the presence of these fluids and determine if they have migrated.
Usman Iqbal Ahmed will be presenting Precise Change Detection with Airborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) & Optical Photogrammetry Data and its application to Active Permafrost Regions.
Date: 22 May 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Permafrost thaw can cause several problems; the ground becomes unstable and can cause damage to infrastructure such as roads, buildings, and pipelines. It can also cause erosion and changes in the landscape, which can have ecological and social impacts and disruption of indigenous ways of life. Monitoring these changes is a key factor in reducing the impact of such disasters as well as timely reaction/adaptation to such changes. I am exploring the option of developing a change detection method using Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry and Optical Photogrammetry data for precise change detection. I will present the results of our controlled experiment with simulated permafrost related changes to showcase the capability of our method in active permafrost thaw environments.
Tabatha Rahman will be presenting Ice-Wedge Volume, Distribution, and Development in the Barrens of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Northern Manitoba.
Date: 15 May 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Extensive ice-wedge polygon networks are found in the ‘Barrens’ of northern Manitoba, a 50,000 km2 zone of continuous permafrost tundra that emerged from the Tyrrell Sea less than 5,500 years ago. Tabatha will present empirical results of ice-wedge volume and tri-dimensional distribution, and will focus on the environmental conditions associated with the growth and degradation of ice wedges in this uplifted permafrost peatland. Knowledge of wedge-ice morphology and development is essential for the prediction and mitigation of risks associated with anticipated permafrost thaw in the Barrens.
Gabriel Karam will be presenting The Effects of Environmental Controls on Epigenetic Ice-Wedge Cracking.
Date: 8 May 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Ice-wedge polygons are a widespread periglacial feature in the continuous permafrost regions. To better understand the mechanical aspects of their formation, the extended finite-element method was employed to simulate the cracking process. Four case studies will be presented, which evaluate the effects different environmental controls and explore the growth of wedges over multiple years.
Andrew Clark will be presenting Advancing Arctic coastal erosion measurement and monitoring through UAV-SfM and object-based image analysis.
Date: 1 May 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Arctic coasts are vast and exhibit some of the highest rates of erosion in the World due to the presence of permafrost. Rates of erosion are expected to increase with warming air and water temperatures, reductions in Arctic sea ice extent and duration, sea level rise, and increased storm severity and frequency. This presentation will describe the use of emerging technologies (UAV-SfM and OBIA) to further our understanding of Arctic coastal processes, specifically, volumetric erosion, and broad scale delineation of multiple shoreline proxies for monitoring and quantification of erosion.
Astrid Schetselaar will be presenting Climate change induced increases in maintenance costs for Yukon highways, 1994–2022.
Date: 17 April 2024 Time: 13:00-14:00 Eastern Time Location: Zoom (details are posted in our Teams site).
Transportation networks in Canada’s North are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Rising ground temperatures and permafrost thaw have been a cause of road damage as the bearing capacity of the ground is significantly reduced. Hydrological changes may further induce hazards, such as landslides, washouts, and icings (aufeis). Astrid’s presentation will outline a retrospective assessment of climate change-induced maintenance expenditures for highways in Yukon. Changes in costs are linked to climate, physiographic, conditions and underlying permafrost.
The NSERC PermafrostNet seminar video for November is now available.
Erika Hille presented her seminar on Characterizing the response of Arctic streams and rivers to permafrost thaw. Erika walked through her research on the relationships between thawing permafrost and water chemistry, covering Caribou creek, Rengleng river and the Miner river.
