Jay Cumming
Research Question - Can snow manipulation help prevent permafrost degradation along linear infrastructure?
Jay received his MASc in the department of Civil Engineering at the RMC in 2023. He completed his BASc in Civil Engineering at Queen’s University in 2020.
Why did you join the RMC GeoCORE team?
After working for Dr. Siemens as a research student in the summer of 2019, investigating permafrost related issues, I developed a keen interest in the area and wanted to continue permafrost research at a graduate level.
What do you like about the RMC?
Being apart of the Queen’s-RMC Geoengineering center, I really enjoy the weekly seminars that the group puts on! The group gets a diverse range of speakers, which gives ample opportunity to learn about other areas of geotechnical engineering outside of my research area of cold region engineering.
What is your research topic?
I am investigating the manipulation of seasonal snow cover along linear infrastructure as a technique to better preserve underlying permafrost and the infrastructure continues operate at serviceability. Snow acts as an insulator and impedes the flow of heat from the ground to the air in the winter months. Specifically, my investigation of snow manipulation takes place along the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway where currently a snow manipulation project is being conducted whereby at certain locations the ground snow cover is being manipulated to reduce the snow depth and increase the density. My project seeks to develop numerical models calibrated to the field site data to design of an effective snow management plan for along linear infrastructure that will facilitate the preservation of underlying permafrost.
Any interesting results to share?
One example of the work being done is shown in the graph to the left where two trumpet curves were produced from two models simulating ground temperatures from historical weather data from Inuvik from 2003 to 2021. The trumpet curves show temperatures from the final year of the models where one model ran as normal and the other ran with a simulation of snow manipulation being applied three times over the winter months. The trumpet curve with snow manipulation shows a colder profile and has an active layer depth 0.15 m shallower than the normal mode, thus showing the utility of snow manipulation on mitigation permafrost degradation.
What do you like to do for fun outside of school?
I enjoy spending time outdoors hiking, kayaking, and biking in the summer and snowboarding in the winter, along with obsessing over whatever historical topic has piqued my interest at the time!