pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

River Ice Measurements for Transportation Safety in Rural Communities

PI: Svetlana Stuefer (UAF), sveta.stuefer@alaska.edu, ORCID: 0000-0003-0740-8335

Co PIs: none

AMOUNT & MATCH: $64,048 from PacTrans; $64,048 Match

PERFORMANCE PERIOD: 8/16/2019 – 8/15/2021

STATUS: Completed

CATEGORIES: Safety, Rural Communities, Ice Travel

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DESCRIPTION: This project is relevant to the cold areas of Federal Region 10 where transportation routes can occur on frozen surface of lakes and rivers. While they exist, these types of winter roads are often the only opportunity for rural Alaskan communities to connect to the state highway system and satisfy community supply needs. The goal of this project is to identify a set of river ice measurements to be used by rural communities to monitor river ice conditions for safe winter travel.

We will work with the city of Tanana, a rural Alaskan community that depends on a winter ice road across the Yukon River to connect to the Alaska Highway system. In the course of preparing this proposal, the PI contacted the Tanana City Manager, who is supportive of the river ice study. He also mentioned that the community has already encountered problems with vehicles sinking through the river ice during the ice road construction.