The U.S. Permafrost Association (USPA) is pleased to announce the USPA Technical Training Webinar Series. The webinars are offered on Zoom. Each webinar is 1 hour long, including a 50-min lecture and 10-min Q&A. Certificate of Professional Development Hours (PDH) will be provided to participants who request it after each webinar. The webinars are free for USPA members and all students. For non-USPA members who are not students, the registration fee is $20 for each webinar. The webinars will be moderated, recorded, and uploaded on the USPA website. Future participants can register and watch the webinar individually and receive PDH. Registration fees for non-USPA members to watch the recorded webinar are the same as in the live webinars.
The first USPA webinar on Permafrost Overview is sponsored by Arctic Foundations, Inc., Shannon & Wilson, PND Engineers, Inc., GW Scientific, and Katherine Schexneider.
2023 Webinars
Webinar #1: Permafrost Overview
Date: Wednesday 25 October 2023
Time: 14:00-15:00 EDT (10:00-11:00 AKDT)
Instructor: Prof. Vladimir Romanovsky (Geophysics, University of Alaska Fairbanks)
Content of Webinar: Definition of Permafrost and its geographical extent. Seasonally thawed and seasonally frozen layers (“active layer”). The most important properties of permafrost: temperature, thickness, ice content, and type of frozen material. Different forms of ice in permafrost. Thermal state of permafrost and its recent changes. Stages of permafrost thawing: increase in summer thawing depth vs. supra-permafrost talik formation. Different approaches to permafrost preservation.
Brief Introduction of Instructor: Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky is a Professor Emeritus of Geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). He was the past President of USPA and past Vice-President of the International Permafrost Association. He led the Geophysical Institute Permafrost Laboratory at UAF. His work involves internationally coordinated research on permafrost temperature changes in Alaska, Russia, Canada, Greenland, and Mongolia. He conducts numerical modeling of past, present, and future permafrost dynamics and remote sensing of permafrost and periglacial processes.
Webinar #2: Geotechnical subsurface exploration in permafrost
Date: Wednesday 15 November 2023
Time: 14:00-15:00 EDT (10:00-11:00 AKDT)
Instructor: Prof. Ming Xiao (Civil Engineering, Penn State University, and President-elect of USPA)
2024 Webinars
Webinar #1: Introduction to pile foundations in frozen ground
Date: January 2024
Instructor: Dr. John Thornley (Senior Geotechnical Engineer, WSP) & Andrew Daggett (Geotechnical Engineer, WSP)
Webinar #2: Permafrost geomorphology
Date: February 2024
Instructor: Dr. Eva Stephani (Research Geographer – Permafrost, U.S. Geological Survey)
Webinar #3: Thermosyphon
Date: March 2024
Instructor: Ed Yarmak (President, Arctic Foundations Inc.) & Dr. Anna Wagner (Research Environmental Engineer, CRREL)
Webinar #4: Thermal modeling using TEMP/W and TEMP/3D
Date: April 2024
Instructor: Seequent Company
Webinar #5: Permafrost remote sensing
Date: October 2024
Instructor: Dr. Kevin Schaefer (Senior Scientist, NSIDC, University of Colorado)
