Engineering New Foundations for a Thawing Arctic
By Laura Poppick 22 August 2017
Walk the streets of Inuvik, an Arctic town of about 3,000 people in northwestern Canada, and you’ll notice that all the buildings hover above the ground. They rest on wooden stacks, metal scaffolding, or some variation of wood or steel pillars similar to those found beneath docks.
Residents of this town, situated about 100 kilometers south of the Arctic Ocean, raise their buildings to anchor against the ever-shifting permafrost (permanently frozen ground) that heaves and thaws beneath them each year. Some supports or pilings work better than others, evidenced by abandoned lots where houses or other buildings once were.
https://eos.org/articles/engineering-new-foundations-for-a-thawing-arctic
