River Ice

River Ice: Practical Expertise for Cold-Region Challenges

River ice processes – especially ice jams and frazil ice accumulation – can be difficult to predict and highly disruptive. Ice jams often cause sudden flooding with little warning and thus pose an important hazard to municipalities and public safety. Frazil ice, on the other hand, can accumulate in pump station intakes, around trashracks and in other important locations, reducing efficiencies or causing failures during the winter season. Understanding these processes requires specialized expertise and a team versed in a combination of field observation, remote sensing, and numerical modeling techniques. At Avizo, we have the necessary expertise to help clients manage river ice problems with practical, science-based solutions.

Our services include:

• Assessing a river’s ice regime to evaluate how climatic conditions, channel morphology, and hydraulics influence ice cover development and breakup processes
• Identifying ice jam–prone reaches based on morphological and hydraulic assessments
• Performing retrospective analyses to identify the factors responsible for recent ice jams that resulted in damage to communities
• Proposing mitigation strategies to reduce future ice jam damages
• Developing ice jam flood hazard maps to meet regulatory requirements
• Assessing and mitigating frazil ice problems
• Proposing solutions for ice-related riverbank erosion

If you are interested in obtaining specialized expertise on river ice, please reach out. We would be happy to discuss how we can support your project.