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Where is the permafrost?


lemit

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I grew up hearing about permafrost from relatives in North Dakota and Montana, and from my father, who did farm work summers in North Dakota when he was a teenager.

 

Do farmers in North Dakota still battle permafrost? What about ranchers in Montana? It seems to me that if the permafrost is receding, we might be experiencing something like warming on a large scale, almost of global proportions. I can't think of a good term for it, but maybe you can guess what I'm getting at.

 

This gives a hint at what's happening: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_romanovsky.html

 

Does anybody here have other research or personal knowledge of a change in the permafrost? I have to admit I'd particularly like to hear the personal experiences, since that's how I first heard about permafrost.

 

Thanks.

 

--lemit

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I'm afraid I don't have any personal experience with permafrost, but I can offer you this image:

 

File:Circum-Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground Ice Conditions.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

According to that graphic, the only permafrost in the continental US seems to be located in the Rocky Mountains, just west of you. Obviously the map is not very detailed, but I think it is clear enough to say that there is no permafrost in North Dakota.

 

This image is from 2001, but I think it is safe to say that there has not been permafrost in ND (or similar latitudes) for a long, long time.

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I think your mixing up terms here. For N.Dakota its the frost line (depth of frozen ground). During years when theres a lot of cold and no snow, the ground freezes deeper and can affect foundations, fences, roads, driveways, water lines and septic systems. Frost heaves are what do the damage to most of the surface stuff, parts of the ground remain frozen (like a rock) and move due to expansion and like cans of vegetables, the bigger stuff pushes upward. So depending on the type of soil, and its moisture content, frost heaves can cause big problems.

 

Growing up, we had two spots in our driveway that got frost heaves. Below was sand above was clay. The clay remained frozen above the sand and was like a trampoline because as the sand thawed it got smaller and left an air gap. One particularly bad year the neighbors 64 chevy PU broke thru and the front left tire was in a hole all the way to the frame.

 

Waiting for the frost to come out of the ground can slow planting and cause equipment damage when your out plowing and hit one of these ice chunks below the surface.

 

Its also part of the flooding issues in Grand Forks. At that particular point in the USA, the river flows north, so warmer waters from the south are overflowing partly due to the frozen ground working exactly like a concrete road. The water cannot soak in because its still frozen (but this isnt the only issue for Grand Forks).

 

I grew up hearing about permafrost from relatives in North Dakota and Montana, and from my father, who did farm work summers in North Dakota when he was a teenager.

 

Do farmers in North Dakota still battle permafrost? What about ranchers in Montana? It seems to me that if the permafrost is receding, we might be experiencing something like warming on a large scale, almost of global proportions. I can't think of a good term for it, but maybe you can guess what I'm getting at.

 

This gives a hint at what's happening: How rapidly is permafrost changing - Romanovsky

 

Does anybody here have other research or personal knowledge of a change in the permafrost? I have to admit I'd particularly like to hear the personal experiences, since that's how I first heard about permafrost.

 

Thanks.

 

--lemit

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  • 1 month later...

I suspect I did misremember the stories I heard when I was growing up. One of my goals here, so all of you understand that in some cases I might not be as stupid as I seem, is to test some of those stories.

 

It would appear that there wasn't permafrost in North Dakota in the 1930's, even around Bathgate and Pembina. The Kootenai River in Montana at the Canadian border might have been a different story--one of the many stories my great uncle told me while we sat against the heating stove on cold Missouri winter mornings waiting for my mom to cook breakfast. His stories were full of bears and mounties and the relative harshness of the winters he sought to escape by staying with us.

 

Tall tales (which were almost always true) aside, I wonder about the receding boundaries of the permafrost and the resulting carbon release. U.S. News and World Report suggests it's fairly significant: Permafrost Could Be Climate's Ticking Time Bomb - US News and World Report.

 

It occurs to me as I'm writing this that I may have heard stories of permafrost and muskeg from friends or relatives who had been involved in building the Alcan Highway.

 

But I can't find any mapping of the receding permafrost. The carbon sequestered or released by permafrost as it remains stable or thaws is significant to the atmosphere and should be studied more rigorously than I've been able to find. I hope somebody out there has better information than I've seen and will share it with me and the other members of Hypography.

 

Thanks.

 

--lemit

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Carbon is not the only problem. The permafrost that is thawing away in Siberia is releasing lots of methane which is a much more potent greenhouse gas. It's a positive feedback. More methane released - temps rise - releases more methane - which raises temps - repeat.

 

As far as mapping for this stuff, yeah there's a good bit of it.

 

Here's a nice site from Canada that has threee maps showing peatland coverage, permafrost coverage, and carbon in soils.

 

IBCC : Canada's Boreal Forest and Global Warming

 

More here:

 

permafrost global warming map - Google Images

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Bit of trivia picked up today while researching glacial Lake Grantsburg:

 

"Permafrost covered Europe south of the ice sheet down to present-day Szeged and Asia down to Beijing. In North America, latitudinal gradients were so sharp that permafrost did not reach far south of the ice sheets except at high elevations."

 

Last Glacial Maximum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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  • 5 months later...

Here's an article I came across today. I haven't looked for the paper yet, but it seems that the title is a bit exaggerated based on what this snippet says about the study.

 

Permafrost line recedes 130 km in 50 years

 

Quebec City, February 17, 2010–The southern limit of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost, is now 130 kilometers further north than it was 50 years ago in the James Bay region, according to two researchers from the Department of Biology at Université Laval. In a recent issue of the scientific journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, Serge Payette and Simon Thibault suggest that, if the trend continues, permafrost in the region will completely disappear in the near future.

 

The researchers measured the retreat of the permafrost border by observing hummocks known as "palsas," which form naturally over ice contained in the soil of northern peat bogs. Conditions in these mounds are conducive to the development of distinct vegetation—lichen, shrubs, and black spruce—that make them easy to spot in the field.

 

In an initial survey in 2004, the researchers examined seven bogs located between the 51st and 53rd parallels. They noted at that time that only two of the bogs contained palsas, whereas aerial photos taken in 1957 showed palsas present in all of the bogs. A second assessment in 2005 revealed that the number of palsas present in these two bogs had decreased over the course of one year by 86% and 90% respectively.

 

Helicopter flyovers between the 51st and 55th parallels also revealed that the palsas are in an advanced state of deterioration over the entire James Bay area.

 

While climate change is the most probable explanation for this phenomenon, the lack of long term climatic data for the area makes it impossible for the researchers to officially confirm this. Professor Payette notes, however, that the average annual temperature of the northern sites he has studied for over 20 years has increased by 2 degrees Celsius. "If this trend keeps up, what is left of the palsas in the James Bay bogs will disappear altogether in the near future, and it is likely that the permafrost will suffer the same fate," concludes the researcher affiliated to the Centre d'études nordiques.

Les communiqués de presse > Université Laval

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  • 1 month later...
I grew up hearing about permafrost from relatives in North Dakota and Montana, and from my father, who did farm work summers in North Dakota when he was a teenager.

 

Do farmers in North Dakota still battle permafrost? What about ranchers in Montana? It seems to me that if the permafrost is receding, we might be experiencing something like warming on a large scale, almost of global proportions. I can't think of a good term for it, but maybe you can guess what I'm getting at.

 

This gives a hint at what's happening: How rapidly is permafrost changing - Romanovsky

 

Does anybody here have other research or personal knowledge of a change in the permafrost? I have to admit I'd particularly like to hear the personal experiences, since that's how I first heard about permafrost.

 

Thanks.

 

--lemit

 

It is spring again in North Dakota, and we're looking at an over-flowing Red River. Those two factors automatically give rise to discussions in which the term "permafrost" is prominently featured. According the strict definition permafrost is permanently frozen ground, which may have an "active" layer on top that thaws seasonally. That is not how the term is used in North Dakota. While it can be argued that it is not the correct definition...it's the term we use...so work with us here.

 

In North Dakota the term permafrost refers to the depth at which the ground is frozen. In unusually wet year, and last summer and fall were certainly that. The ground becomes saturated and all that ground water freezes with the coming of winter.

 

Spring arrives....the snow cover begins to melt....and the ground which is frozen hard as a rock can not absorb any of it. It's a problem. As we were tossing sandbags yesterday afternoon, more than once I heard a resident ask if anyone knew where the frost line was. ..... just how deep do can you dig before you hit frozen ground. The faster the soil heats up, the easier the flood fight will be.

 

To answer your question...Yes, farmers in North Dakota still fight "permafrost" as it is understood by the natives. And while in North Dakota...do as North Dakotans do.

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