Highway Embankment on Degrading Permafrost

The highway embankment is about 800 km (500 miles) north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in an area where permafrost is degrading rapidly. Soil sampling and installation of instrumentation (temperatures, settlements, lateral deformations and pore water pressures) was undertaken in October 2008. The paper describes the past performance of the embankment, the instrumentation that has been installed, data from the instruments during the first winter of operation, and initial results from the laboratory testing program.