Collaborative Research: Diamonds and Oil from the Tundra: A System Study on the Impact of Changing Seasons on Mining and Oil Exploration NSF Award 0902130

This project seeks to understand how changing season length, principally winter, affects transportation systems that rely on ice roads in the Northwest Territories, Canada. From this small system, we then seek to generalize the results to an assessment of the impact of seasons on transportation and economic decisions in the North. Most of the project work consisted of riding on the ice roads, discussing their construction and operation with officials, and mining public data archives for climate and socio-economic data. On-site research consisted of visiting Yellowknife twice, along with the outlying communities of Dettah and Wha-Ti. We met with both representatives of the Joint Venture Ice Road (business -- serves the three mines) and the Government of Northwest Territories Ice Roads (government -- serves three native communities) (Fig. 1). We drove on both ice roads twice, once in January 2010 to see their construction, and once in March 2010 to see the finished product just before the road closed. We also conducted a survey about the reasons people use the government ice road between Dettah and Yellowknife and administered the survey by creating a roadblock in conjunction with the Department of Transportation of Government of Northwest Territories. Some images from the field work appear in Figure 2. We did a preliminary estimate of the economic impact of creating the Joint Venture road, as well as an economic impact of the Dettah ice road and its reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. As part of the research we created a weather/snow/ice model based on historical data, allowed for snow plowing in this model, estimated load bearing properties, and estimated failure rates and economic costs based on reasonable estimates and historical data.

本项目旨在探究季节时长变化（尤以冬季为主要影响时段）对加拿大西北地区（Northwest Territories）依赖冰路的交通系统所产生的影响。随后，本研究拟以该小型交通系统为基础，将研究结论推广至北方地区季节变化对交通与经济决策的影响评估工作中。本项目的大部分工作包括：实地通行冰路、与相关官员研讨冰路的建设与运营模式，以及从公共数据档案中挖掘气候与社会经济相关数据。实地调研期间，我们先后两次造访耶洛奈夫（Yellowknife）及其周边的德塔（Dettah）与瓦蒂（Wha-Ti）社区。我们会晤了合资冰路（Joint Venture Ice Road，商业运营，服务三座矿区）与加拿大西北地区政府冰路管理部门（Government of Northwest Territories Ice Roads，公共服务，覆盖三个原住民社区）的代表（见图1）。我们两次通行两条冰路：2010年1月实地考察冰路的施工过程，2010年3月则在冰路即将封闭前探访完工后的冰路状态。此外，本研究联合加拿大西北地区政府交通运输部（Department of Transportation of Government of Northwest Territories）设置路障，开展了关于民众使用德塔与耶洛奈夫之间政府冰路的原因调研。本次实地调研的部分影像资料见图2。我们还对合资冰路的建设经济效益、德塔冰路的经济效益及其二氧化碳（CO2）减排效益进行了初步估算。作为研究的核心组成部分，本团队基于历史数据构建了天气-积雪-冰面耦合模型，该模型支持清雪作业模拟，同时基于合理假设与历史数据估算了冰路的承载性能、失效概率及经济成本。