Editor’s Note

Just a short “Editor’s Note” for this issue. Mike Davies, of the FHwA, and I recently finished editing the proceedings of ASCE’s 13th International Conference on Cold Regions Engineering, held in Orono, Maine, in July 2006. The 80-plus papers include contributions in permafrost and seasonally frozen ground, pavements, hydraulics, water treatment, construction, and the upcoming International Polar Year (IPY). The proceedings represent research and application papers from authors in the United States, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Several of these papers have been targeted as prospective Journal of Cold Regions Engineering papers. For a conference paper to be eligible to be considered for the Journal, it must be significantly altered. The conference paper may often serve as the background and the underlying theory or specific applications are expanded in detail for the Journal. Although conference papers typically report new findings or methods, Journal papers should be of lasting value in the body of literature.

This issue of the Journal has the definite theme of cold regions hydraulics. Two related papers describe the effects of ice on a tidal estuary. The first paper presents a model that simulates the growth and decay of an ice cover over a winter season and the effects of tidal motions on the ice. Three years of field observations were used to optimize, test, and verify the model. The second paper describes in detail the effects of an ice cover on the hydrodynamics of the tidal estuary, as described by the model and field observations.