The Wild World of River Ice

The winter river ice season makes managing Canada’s water resources especially challenging: destructive ice jam floods can occur, river flows often reach their annual minimum, and human and ecological uses compete for highly uncertain quantities of water. Furthermore, engineers and policymakers often borrow analytical approaches and technical tools from more temperate regions, which may not be valid for ice-covered waters. In this wide-ranging talk, Dr. Nafziger will provide an introduction to river ice processes and discuss the challenges of working with winter river datasets. Finally, she will provide an overview of some of the recent extreme ice jam flooding events in Alberta and the Northwest Territories and discuss the challenges in forecasting such events.