A geosystems approach to permafrost investigations for engineering applications, an example from a road stabilization experiment, Beaver Creek, Yukon, Canada

The Alaska Highway crosses numerous terrain units underlined by warm and ice-rich discontinuous permafrost highly susceptible to thermal degradation. For years, this infrastructure, which is essential to transportation in northwestern Canada and Alaska, has been showing signs of road damage induced by permafrost degradation. In 2008, Yukon Highways and Public Works, and its international collaborators, implemented a road experimental site near Beaver Creek (Yukon) to test mitigation techniques aiming to control permafrost degradation. Permafrost investigations were done accordingly to a geosystem approach based on the hypothesis that permafrost has a distinctive sensitivity to climate and terrain conditions at a local scale and that [...]