Exploring the Sun's Role in a Changing Cryosphere
March 31 - April 4, 2025
Fairbanks, Alaska
Aurora Borealis Tour
Aurora Borealis Tour – we are planning this wonderful outing during the overnight hours of Wednesday, April 2nd. We will arrange carpools for everyone to make their way up to Poker Flats* where we will enjoy a night of viewing the Aurora (weather permitting). We will delay our conference start on Thursday to accommodate for this late-night tour! Plan to meet in the lobby of the Wedgewood Resort at midnight on Wednesday! The drive is approximately 30 minutes.
Permafrost Tunnel Tour
We have two group times scheduled for this tour on Thursday morning. Group 1 will be at 9am, and Group 2 will be at 10:30am. Each group is limited to 15 people. The tour takes approximately an hour and a half.
Established in 1963, the Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility, located in Fox, Alaska is part of ERDC’s Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory which provides researchers, scientists, and students with a unique source of data in a natural laboratory. The facility is available to assist engineers and scientists to study warm, ice-rich, fine-grained permafrost in situ – allowing time for detailed research and sampling.
A Deep and Rich Exploration Site
The Permafrost Tunnel stands apart from other cold regions research sites by allowing users to make observations both from above and within the permafrost.
The tunnel was excavated into a silt escarpment that illuminates 45,000 years of details about the soil, including organics, bacteria, and bones frozen in place. The high ice content of the syngenetic permafrost consists of ice wedges, segregation ice lenses, reticulate chaotic cryostructures, and thermokarst-cave ice. The tunnel is refrigerated year-round, preserving the site for long-term sampling and in situ research.
Preserving the Past, Predicting the Future
The tunnel’s walls reveal how a sequence of climate shifts have affected the permafrost in central Alaska during and following the last Ice Age, enabling researchers to better predict future climate change effects on permafrost.
Paleontologists are able to view actual remains of animals and plants preserved by the cold, rather than just fossil records. Microbiologists have discovered bacteria trapped in ice within the tunnel, and were able revive it after being frozen for 25,000 years.
The challenge for permafrost engineers is to design long lasting infrastructure on permafrost at low cost. Here, engineers have the ability to test the mechanical properties and deformation sensitivity of these ice-rich soils, and also test methods for detecting ice content of permafrost with geophysical techniques.
The tunnel has also served as a living classroom for hundreds of engineers, scientists, university students, policy makers, and interested members of the public.