Frozen in Time: Permafrost and Engineering Problems

Abstract

• Frozen in Time offers an advanced and unusually comprehensive treatment of permafrost science and associated engineering problems. The book is a previously unpublished work by Siemon W. Muller (1900-1970), author of the first English-language book about perennially frozen ground. Muller stopped working on the nearly completed manuscript in the early 1960s and, for reasons unknown, set it aside about the time of the First International Conference on Permafrost in 1963. The manuscript remained "frozen" for several decades, until eventually it was discovered in his files. Editors French and Nelson guided the manuscript through the last phase of revision, provided context through an interpretive introduction, and ushered it through publication.

  A comprehensive revision and update of the 1947 edition of Muller's classic, this book reads like a how-to manual for engineering personnel working in pioneering or primitive circumstances. Like its predecessor, the book reviews the large Russian-language body of literature devoted to permafrost, but also covers work published in English.

  Topics include: basic scientific knowledge about perennially frozen ground and the engineering problems associated with it, the geography of permafrost, related elements of landscape science and ecology, periglacial geomorphology, and the physics of frozen ground.

  This book serves as a valuable historical document and is useful to anyone seeking basic knowledge about permafrost and appropriate methods for coping with associated engineering problems.