Focus on permafrost

The Permafrost Group at UD, which is counted among the largest permafrost research organizations in the country, is directly involved in one of the International Polar Year’s official core programs.

The group is co-directed by Frederick E. Nelson, professor of geography, and Nikolay I. Shiklomanov, associate research scientist, and numbers a dozen people with plans to add at least two additional graduate students in September.

Nelson says the group’s largest undertaking is the international Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) program, a network of about 165 observation sites located in both polar regions and selected high mountain ranges.

A primary concern is the effect of subsidence on human infrastructure, particularly given the intense interest in energy exploration in the world’s permafrost zones. “There is a lot of drilling for natural gas and oil, in Russia and elsewhere in the Arctic permafrost regions,” Shiklomanov says.

The UD group also has expanded to develop an Antarctic component.