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The evolving tundra-travel standards
In the decades since people started traversing the North Slope tundra to conduct seismic surveys and drill oil wells, the standards under which government agencies allow off-road travel have evolved in response to changing weather patterns and the need to maximize the time available for off-road exploration.
Unless using one of the few tundra-certified vehicles designed to impart an especially low pressure on the ground surface, no one can travel off-road on the Slope unless the ground is frozen sufficiently and the snow is deep enough to protect the fragile Arctic tundra. On state land in the central North Slope the Alaska Department of Natural Resources determines when frost and snow conditions have met required criteria for general off-road tundra travel, while also when necessary permitting specific projects at specific off-road sites that have met the tundra travel requirements.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management performs a similar function to DNR in overseeing tundra travel on federal land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Six and 12 For many years the universal but somewhat arbitrary standard for permitting off-road travel was the so-called “six and 12” standard — a minimum of six inches of snow and a 12-inch depth of frozen ground. But in response to some very late tundra travel openings in the changing weather patterns of the 1990s, DNR conducted some systematic tests using actual industry vehicles to determine tundra-opening criteria based on measured data, Gary Schultz from DNR told the ice and snow road conference in Anchorage on March 30. Following these tests, the division changed the criterion for ground frost in the coastal plain of the North Slope to minus 5 degrees Celsius at a depth of 12 inches, while retaining the six-inch snow depth standard. However, in the Brooks Range foothills the division used the minus 5 C temperature standard but upped the snow-depth standard to nine inches to protect the tussock tundra that is particularly prevalent in that region, Schultz said.
The division also installed new equipment for monitoring ground conditions and split the state land into four distinct tundra opening areas — the eastern coastal plain, the western coastal plain, the lower foothills and the upper foothills — to enable the issuance of different tundra travel opening and closing dates in different areas.
BLM officially adopted the six and 12 standard for tundra travel, with official tundra-travel opening and closing dates, in northeast NPR-A in 1998, Shane Walker from BLM told the ice and snow road conference. But in 2004 the agency decided to not set any specific snow and ice standard, nor to set opening and closing dates, for tundra travel in northwestern NPR-A. Instead the agency elected to permit off-road activities on a project-by-project basis, using performance based standards for environmental protection, Walker said. In 2008 BLM applied this new permitting criterion to northeast NPR-A, he said.
“The purpose here is to encourage innovation,” Walker said.
However, off-road travel stipulations are tied into specific oil and gas leases in NPR-A, with some leases still bound to the old tundra travel criteria in addition to the new performance-based standards, he said.
—Alan Bailey
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