VOLCANO MADNESS: Re: [Geology2] Only in Alaska? Creeping frozen landslide threatens critical highway and pipeline

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Re: [Geology2] Only in Alaska? Creeping frozen landslide threatens critical highway and pipeline

How odd.... climate change is clearly taking its toll as the article suggests.

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 7:21 AM, Lin Kerns <linkerns@gmail.com> wrote:

Only in Alaska? Creeping frozen landslide threatens critical highway and pipeline

Laurel Andrews
August 13, 2013

If left alone, the mysterious, icy landslide will reach a highway critical to Alaska's North Slope oil patch -- and after that will even threaten the trans-Alaska pipeline itself. But there's still plenty of time to stop it. Dr. Ronald Daanen / DNR

A massive landslide of frozen debris and ice is inching its way toward the Dalton Highway, outside of the Gates of the Arctic National Park Preserve, and nobody is quite sure how to stop it. If left to its own devices, in the next ten years the little-understood formation will reach the highway which serves as the only ground link between Alaska's road system and its critical North Slope oil patch. If the slide isn't stopped, it will eventually threaten the trans-Alaska pipeline itself.
As new evidence shows that the formations -- called frozen debris lobes -- have sped up over time, researchers are calling for more studies on the huge, frozen landslides, and the Department of Transportation is assessing how to best handle the threat to the state's infrastructure.
The best solution, for now, may be to simply get out of the landslide's path.
R
ead the rest of this long article here:
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130813/only-alaska-creeping-frozen-landslide-threatens-critical-highway-and-pipeline

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