II. Permeating the Underground

Literature Review Reference Projects: theoretical approach Reference Projects: spatial analysis

Reflecting a very specific period and way of relating to the underground, images like this one of an archaeological dig relate to the European fascination at that time with discovery and exploration as a means of conquering the underground. What I appreciate from this image are the exaggerated bones, and reflective torch light. These create a sense of whimsy, and juxtapose the scientific with the imaginary.

Vertical section of the cavern at Gaylenreuth in Franconia, frontispiece from George Cuvier’s Essay on the Theory of the Earth (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1827)

Literature Review

Responding to the call for permafrost to be better understood through its sub-surface conditions, I decided to engage specifically with the underground realities of frozen ground (i.e not just the way permafrost manifests on the surface). To do so, I have looked into literature which discusses the agency of the underground and the ways humans have related to it - including how landscape architects work with it.

The human-underground relationship is equally as nuanced as permafrost itself, being a site for burial, fear, spirituality, safety, industrialization, extraction, growth... This has triggered a plethora of stories centering life underground. Minerals found underground for instance, were once considered to be “living organisms that grew inside the earth”1, propagating and spreading in veins like a tree’s trunk. “Mining was therefore an enterprise of dubious morality, comparable to mutilation and violation.”2 This discussion surrounding the penetration and extraction of the earth has come to the surface again, as mechanisms such as the Capitolocene3 and the Green Shift4 require massive amounts of minerals to be taken from the ground.

How these minerals, processes, and memories buried underground, are engaged with through landscape architecture was a large part of my initial research for this diploma. The following works were selected for their specific approaches in understanding the agency, fluidity, and evolution of the underground.

1. Rosalind Williams, Notes on the Underground, (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018), 24. 2. Ibid: p. 24. 3. Jason W. Moore, “The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44, no. 3, 2017. 4. Aniella Sophie Goldinger and Caitlin Jakusz Paridy, “Re-assessing the assessment: Impacts of green colonialism in Sápmi” KERB Journal, 30, 2022 (in print).

(key quotes) ‘...there is a recognition that coal is the product of compressed climate events too, and its burning unleashes the geologic compression of those events.”

“Coal is a constellation of an intense material expression that is simultaneously: solar repository, underground physicality, social bond, form of solidarity, modes of communication with geologic time, colonial force, a mode of political subjectification, geomaterial, a form of social and biological reproduction, an expressive sensibility, a sexuate object, an inhuman and historical force.” (p. 216) *

“Numerous mining accounts suggests that it is a mistake to think of the mine as dead rock or inert matter instead of a living thing. This shift in register changes everything, the relation between the surface and what is below: it is a change of geography and a change of material relation, with the seams and the rock and the corpeal knowledge of formations as nontheoretical movements of the earth. Knowing the life of coal, its folds and its flows, as one knows the other bodies - intimately, through touch rather than language- is what drew an attachment to the otherworldliness in the heart of the word, in the “black velvet” embraces of the pit.” (p. 222)

(notes) As discussed throughout the Territorial Studio visit to Longyearbyen this Fall, there is an identity crises present within the community. As a town built from and around coal mining, the subsequent closure and erasure of this legacy has left a void in the type of town Longyearbyen wants to be. While the coal mining heritage is protected, the movement of permafrost, pushes its foundations to become damaged, while filling up mine shafts with ice and water.

While many of the inhabitants now are not directly affiliated with the coal mines, the above and below ground landscape surrounding them is. As the landscape changes is there a way for these memories of and in coal to evolve as well?

Queer Coal: Genealogies in/of the Blood

by Kathyrn Yusoff

resource type: literature field of study: inhuman geographies, philosophy journal: Philosophia, vol. 5, no. 2, (2015): 203-229.

Exploring the nuances and intricacies of our human relationship to and from coal, Yusoff presents a “genealogical account of coal in the Anthropocene” in two directions: “the specificities of bodies, sites, and political formations in which coal comes to matter and through inhuman agency and its continuance notwithstanding the human” (p. 203). She presents this narrative of the Anthropocene through the “inter-implications of substances and subjects in coal mining: explicitly mining is considered as an aesthetics, method, and epistemology that elaborates on an inhuman sociality of the blood.” This sociality is explored through the 1984-1985 coal miners strike in the UK, as then prime-minister Margaret Thatcher worked to privatize the coal industry, cut government subsidies, and break up unions.

Coal, coal miners, and this geological intimacy: “has underwritten the bodies politic of the country and its specific forms of reproduction - in colonialism, where coal effectively operationalized the infrastructure of empire..., and even judicial powers... but also in the corporeality of miners’ bodies, coal dust under the fingernails, accidents and blood spilt in the earth, the blood work of toil, workers socialized in solidarity through their labour, because such conditions demand solidarity. A seam cannot be worked alone and the mutual exposure of the work along the line meant that vulnerability was/is shared regardless of individual intent. Knowledge was passed along the coal seam.” (p. 218)

What Yusoff concludes with, is that this severing of coal mining communities divided families and towns, while also disconnecting humans to this deep relationship with the underground and the geological processes within.

“Turning against the inheritance of coal without proper consideration of what was inherited, turns against the sociality of the blood that it enabled; after the closure of the pits, the geosocial relations of fossil fuels went underground, hidden from view and inner experience, in pipelines and shipping containers, entombed in a zombie Anthropocene body politic and fetishism of energy.” (p. 227) Thus reorienting our human relationship to the underground is critical to discussions around the future of this earth: our methods of energy production, and the manners we build/extract/fill.

(key quotes) “Efforts to penetrate and disturb the ground and penetrate into the subsurface have long been represented as transgressive, risky, and masculine.” (p.49) *

“...proposals for deep geological burial function by creating both a spatial and temporal disjuncture between the sites of waste production, temporary storage and the ultimate fate of radioactive material. As illustrated by the science of stratigraphy...distance from the surface carries connotations of literal separation from human activities and a temporal projection into a distant past or seemingless timeless future.” (p.52) * “Indeed it is not without irony that in proposals for the burial of radioactive waste the geological features of proposed disposal sites, made visible by expert assessments, have served to destabilize visions of subsurface stability and permanence. Research in the fields such as paleoseismicity and the reconstruction of historic climate change and geologic dynamism is increasingly problematizing whether bedrock might ever be considered a stable repository for waste disposal (Morner, 2001).” (p. 53) *

“The proposed burial and subterranean storage of radioactive waste and carbon depends upon concentrated social work to tame and secure these unruly passengers and their geological environs, imaginatively as well as materially. These labours to realize the future promise of subterranean burial is but one indication of the need for accounts of underground political ecologies to dwell more thoroughly below the surface.” (p. 56)

(notes) *Deep geological deposits for nuclear waste are a growing “solution” to dispose of toxic nuclear waste for varying durations. In Finland for instance the construction of 60-70km’s worth of tunnels underground for the storage of nuclear waste for 100,000 years is on going(Gordon H, 2017). In England the practice is similar where facilities across the North are being built to house million’s of tonnes of nuclear waste for a finite period of time in geological terms (Greene T, 2021). The hope in both cases being that at some time in the future, some technological revolution will have been made to deal with these materials.

**When Svalbard’s mines are closed for instance, their life is not finished. The underground remains hollowed or filled with toxic materials, lingering below the surface. Sealing them up and leaving (see page 34-35) permits the disassociation of space; erasing the heritage, and ingrained reciprocity which is owed to this land and the people who worked within the ground. How might the landscape create markers of sites of “ongoing obligations and care”?

(references) Helen Gordon, “Journey deep into the Finnish caverns where nuclear waste will be buried for millennial,” Wired, last modified April 24, 2017, https:// www.wired.co.uk/article/olkiluoto-island-finland-nuclear-waste-onkalo.

Tommy Greene, “Nuclear storage plans for north of England stir up local opposition,” The Guardian, last modified August 23, 2021, https://www. theguardian.com/environment/2021/ aug/23/nuclear-storage-plans-fornorth-of-england-stir-up-local-opposition.

Earthly graves for environmental futures: Techno-burial practices

by Matthew Kearnes and Lauren Rickards

resource type: literature field of study: social, cultural, and human geographies journal: Futures vol. 92 (2017): 48-58

This article stood out to me from the beginning due to its unique comparison of traditional ritual burial practices with that of nuclear waste disposal and CO2 storage. These burial practices are one manner that humans have engaged or used the separation of surface and underground as a space of transition. As they describe, these “waste disposal practices often entail ongoing relations of care and obligation,” (p. 51) “[enabling] the liberation of soul from the body, and conversely the liberation of the living from the dead, while marking the continuing obligations that living have to the deceased.”

In relation to the burial of radioactive waste however, this marked transition is not apparent, as nuclear deposits in underground storage facilities transition from temporary to semi-permanent spatial arrangements and responsibilities to this material repeatedly shifts hands over time (p.52)*. With these disposal practices, the stability of the underground is appropriated; lulling the public into a false sense of security around the storing of materials like nuclear waste below the surface.

The authors conclude with the point that a false sense of security of the stability of the underground is created through the schematization of these nuclear waste disposal projects, reducing the geology to a black hatch or void. Additionally, geospatial imagery presents “a space that is static, stable, and transparent site for waste disposal” (p. 55). These practices might be challenged with the consideration of tombstones or other architectural designs to identify “sites of ongoing obligations and care, whilst also locating these sites in webs of cultural meaning and significance” (p. 55). In this way, the connection to the underground and these spaces of disposal might be related to in a different manner, as symbols of our ongoing human relationship to extraction and sense of responsibility to land which has been impacted**.

(key quotes) “Underlying bedrock, soils, infrastructure, and the biotically active rhizosphere form complex assemblies that deceptively read as a singular “ground.”” (p. 119) *

“Legacies of soil modification or contamination, while invisible to the eye, prompt landscape strategies that arrest or exploit time: capping or diffusing, attenuation or remediation, or complete displacement of toxic soil.” (p. 121) * “‘Light, water, wind, and weathering, these are the agents by which [building] is consummated,’ Frampton writes of the markings of time on buildings. These same elements alter landscape surfaces, but also catalyze vegetation growth, erosion, and other entropic change, through addition and subtraction—and are part of the palette of available design considerations.” (p. 123) *

“Curation’s root in cura, “to care” resonates with one of landscape architecture’s underpinnings- the idea of stewardship. Further, the contemporary use of “curation” as a practice of organizing and exhibiting also relates to landscape architecture’s potential to reveal and amplify aspects of the landscape.” (footnote #23, page 179)

(notes) *I particularly appreciate this idea of landscape architect as weaver. It denotes this idea of taking care in the organization of individual elements into a whole.

**Within the Arctic these underground assemblages, and fluctuations are even more important to consider as landscape architects. As seen in permafrost, it is not just through tree canopies which the geological forces are made present but through rock slides, foundations sinking, coasts eroding and exposing layers of geological time...

Substance and Structure I: The Material Culture of Landscape Architecture

by Jane Mah Hutton

resource type: literature, spatial analysis field of study: landscape architecture journal: Harvard Design Magazine, vol. 36 (2013): 116-123.

Using the 1960s definition of tectonics which arose out of plate tectonic theory, Hutton reflects on its relevance within landscape architecture as it “describes the structure of the earth’s surface in relation to the large scale, long-durational processes that form it” (p. 118). She remarks that this definition relates fundamentally to “the material culture of landscape architecture: while shaped with design intention, landscapes are pre-conditioned, tempered, and altered by on-going action outside of human control” (p. 118).

This manifests within landscape architecture through “the role of non human forces in the making of form, the illegibility of the ground, the coalescence of extant and introduced materials, and finally the on-going energetic inputs of maintenance regimes” (p. 118).

In the case of the ground and its illegibility, she describes the assemblage of materials woven and stacked* by landscape architects. Referring to the ground conditions of Central Park, “the ground is assembled of differentially permeable, intricately bound systems, which characterize its resistance to water, gravity, load, and wind” (p. 119). In this landscape over one hundred miles of sewer and water management infrastructure was weaved into varying layers of sub-soils, and subsequently sealed with gravel and pavers. Even though time, resources, and care is put into these resources, their visibility is only “revealed above the surface through the density and expanse of tree canopy, the orchestration of wetness and dryness, and the friability or cohesion of slopes” (p. 120).

This below ground temporal-material reality is therefore a part of what landscape architects must curate;** “...it is through engagement with geological and biological action and the non-linear yet powerful relationships between structures and formal expression where landscape tectonics finds its poetics of construction” (p. 123).

Reference Projects: Approach

The following reference projects were selected for their ways of approaching the underground; be it in their theoretical exploration of the underground through imagination and theory, their attempts to bring vegetation, light, and flows into sub-surface infrastructure, or a critic of the separation between visible and invisible when working on landscape remediation efforts.

Each project contains a summary and reflection on its relevance to this diploma work.

In Jobst drawings the Underground stations are heavily annotated and layered, reflecting the dynamism of being within its stations and tunnels. I think the use of architectural drawings and theories which are specific and precise creates an interesting juxtaposition with highly imaginative or future theories of these spaces.

I intend on balancing my lexicon of permafrost conditions in a similar way with the use of technical drawing conventions, specific scales and terminology, alongside the imagination of how these more-than-human processes take place and how they will appear as climate change increases their fluidity.

(top and bottom image) Mark Jobst, A Ficto-Historical Theory of the London Underground, architectural drawings (2017)

A Ficto-Historical Theory of the London Underground (2017)

by Marko Jobst

resource type: representation + method field of study: architectural history/spatial analysis

Using fictional story telling and academic writing, this book explores the London Underground through architectural histories, theories, and imagination. As one of the busiest underground spaces, Jobst argues that it has remained largely unacknowledged within the world of architectural theory, as a novel building type or nuances of movement which “brings together the built environment, technologies of transportation, and the techniques of the body in a high specific conjunction.”1 To counteract this, he documents, describes, reflects and draws out the spaces of the Underground as nuanced, complex, and full of movement through this ficto-theoretical lens.

* I am particularly drawn to this project as an exploration of an underground space through architectural theory and imagination. The balance of these two spheres is something I hope to work with in my own diploma. As the underground has historically been a source of imagination within science fiction writing I hope to keep this legacy in mind within the representation of sub-surface permafrost conditions and the conceptual design development for mine #7 into the distant future.

While I greatly appreciate the drawings completed with this book, I hope to challenge the representation of underground space as a void. Instead, I plan on representing the underground as full of texture, movement, and life and hope to avoid using solid black to fill in the gaps between temporalmaterial conditions.

1. Marko Jobst, “A Ficto-historical Theory of the London Underground,” Site-Writing, last accessed October 17, 2017, https://site-writing.co.uk/a-ficto-historical-theory-of-the-london-underground-2017/.

(top image) The light vaults allow for low light growing plants, like moss, to grow underground. The openings permit the exchange of air, moisture, and water from above to below.

Rasmus Hjortshoj, photograph, N.D, https://coastarc.com/c-i-s-t-e-r-n-e-r-n-e

(bottom image) Mirrors and water create reflective surfaces for the light to bounce off of, creating an ephemeral atmosphere and connection between the surface and the subterranean.

Jens Markus Lindhe, photograph, N.D, https:// www.dinesen.com/no/inspiration/the-cisterns-x-sambuichi/.

The Cisterns x Sambuichi

by: Hiroshi Sambuichi

resource type: project example field of study: installation/spatial design

“The various characteristics of the cisterns that could be considered problematic — the constant flow of water, the extremely high humidity level, the 17 seconds of echo and the absence of daylight — were to sambuichi the best possible starting point for a project...”1

The Cisterns is a multipurpose exhibition space located under the Frederiksberg Hill in Copenhagen2. Once the primary source of water for the city, its now used to host various exhibitions and events. It’s collaboration with the Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi resulted in an exhibition where water, natural light, mirrors, and walkways juxtaposed the hard, dark, concrete features of the cistern.

* When I first found this project I began to imagine the potentials for landscape architecture underground. Manipulating light, shadow, atmosphere, vegetation, textures, and water can transform a dark subterranean cistern into a space for the fluid dynamics of the underground to be on display.

What openings are needed to let light in while revealing conditions below? How do you angle walls, use materials or surfaces to distribute light and shadow? What species of moss, lichen, fungi can survive and thrive in these spaces? What environments do underground pools create for species? How does water dripping across a rock shape the surface in a few days, years, centuries?

1. Astrid La Cour, in Philip Stevens, “hiroshi sambuichi brings nature to subterranean copenhagen with cisternerne installation,” Designboom, last modified July 31, 2017, https://www.designboom.com/art/hiroshi-sambuichi-cisternerne-installation-water-copenhagen-rasmus-hjortshoj-07-31-2017/. 2. “The Cisterns x Sambuichi,” Dineseen, last accessed October 31, 2022, https://www.dinesen.com/no/inspiration/ the-cisterns-x-sambuichi/.

(top image) This 3D scan of the Svea mine reflects the disconnect present between the surface and underground as the details presented are only that of the exterior - not the boreholes and chambers excavated within the mountains.

Store Norsk, Screenshot of Svea 01 3D Scan, image, December 13, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cKoqDmrXYwE.

(bottom image) An interior image of Svea mine whose chambers were sealed up; left to be a marker of the extractive actions of the Anthropocene. Will these chambers collapse? Permafrost is present in this area and therefore as global temperatures increase some of these chambers might flood, potentially creating underground pools.

Rolf Stange. Inside Svea Mine. Image. December 2019. https://www.spitsbergen-svalbard.com/ photos-panoramas-videos-and-webcams/spitsbergen-panoramas/sveagruva-area/svea-nord.html

Svea Mine Remediation

by Various (LPO, Store Norsk, Svalbard Government...)

resource type: project example field of study: landscape architecture

“ Shortly thereafter, it was decided [the mine] would be shut down for good; the place and the landscape would be returned to nature. Only four buildings will remain in the former Svea community, three of which will be used as a research base for the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS).”1

Within the remediation plan of the Svea mine, the goal was to return the site to a version of what it might have looked like prior to mining activities. This required plans for the removal of anything on the surface which might draw attention to the fact that humans were here2. However nothing was completed to remediate or address the interior of the mountains.

I have included this project less for its approach or location but because of a question raised by Anatolijs Venovcevs (a contemporary archaeologist) to the LPO team during the 2022 Return to Nature? symposium; “what happened to the inside of the mine?”3 As it stands today, the exterior of the mountain appears completely untouched but the 4 million metric tones of coal which were extracted have left the mountains carved out like an ant hill. This interiority of the underground and questions regarding the future of these underground spaces has haunted me throughout this term and was a primary motivation in my decision to develop a design for the after-life of mine #7 through this expanded understanding of permafrost.

What would the after life of a mine look like if its interior cavities were considered? What openings, infrastructure, vegetation, incisions might be done to allow for permafrost to reclaim this landscape? How might the walls collapse, hold back, let in... as the ground thaws around and new species return to this place? How might these conditions engage the underground to be more present to human spectators?

1. Ingvild Sæbu Vatn and Lilli Wickström. “Svea Post Mine.” Arctica Svalbard. Last modified August 18, 2022, https:// www.articasvalbard.no/artica-writings-2022/svea-post-mine 2. “Returning Svalbard to its Natural State.” AF Gruppen. Last accessed October 31, 2022. https://afgruppen.com/projects/miljo/rydder-opp-pa-svalbard/. 3. LPO Presentation. “Artica Listens 2022: Return to Nature? The Transformation of a Post-Coal Mining Landscape.” Arctica Svalbard (Tromsø: UiT Kunstakademiet, 2022)

Engagement with underground continuous permafrost across the Arctic

Continuous permafrost layer in black hatch + Points of engagement with the underground across the arctic (mining + boreholes) Permafrost Boreholes Mine Sites Coal Mining Production Coal Mining Development Coal Mining Exploration

Reference Projects: Spatial

Building on my literature and reference projects relating to my approach, I decided to map out where humans were engaging directly with underground permafrost. This largely came down to mapping out different underground mine sites and permafrost monitoring boreholes as two direct methods of interacting with underground permafrost in the Arctic.

To further understand the temporal-material conditions of these underground dynamics, I selected three projects: Fox Tunnel in Alaska, Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories, and the permafrost craters in Siberia. Through photographs, drawings, and texts, I was able to unpack some of their spatial qualities and reflect on the way humans and more-thanhumans are relating to underground permafrost within these landscapes.

In compiling information on each of these projects I was able to develop the initial categories I would then apply to my analysis of permafrost conditions in Svalbard. These categories include: depth, time spans, events, materials, users/uses, relevance, and activities taking place. Additionally, the spatial analysis of these underground permafrost conditions began to generate different ways of thinking about the design for sub-surface permafrost, as different methods begin to hide, reveal, preserve, fill, or penetrate the underground.

(top image) The Fox tunnel entrance situates itself below a thick area of active permafrost. Initially constructed for engineering and military purposes it now hosts a vast amount of research and educational activities. As noted within the Smithsonian Magazine article, the permafrost in Alaska is expected to thaw completely in 80 years following climate change models. Consequentially, the activities taking place are very important in understanding and documenting these underground realities.

Whitney McLaren, Entrance to Fox Tunnel, photograph, Smithsonian Magazine, May 4, 2020, https:// www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tunnelbeneath-alaska-180974804/.

(bottom image) While not as deep as many of the permafrost conditions in Svalbard, the underground conditions of the tunnel capture the permanently frozen qualities of permafrost without the seasonal thaw occurrences.

Mikhail Kanevski et al. Sectional drawing of Fox Tunnel, 2008. In Mikhail Kanevski et al, Late-Pleistocene Syngenetic Permafrost in the Crrel Permafrost Tunnel, (Ninth International Conference on Permafrost: Fairbanks, 2008).

1. Madeline Ostrander, “In a tunnel beaneath Alaska, scientists race to understand disappearing permafrost,” Smithsonian Magazine, last modified May 4, 2020, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tunnelbeneath-alaska-180974804/.

(references) Margaret Cysewski, Kevin Bjella, and Matthew Sturm, The History and Future of the Permafrost Tunnel near Fox, Alaksa, (GEO2010: Calgary, 2010)

Mikhail Kanevski, Y.L Shur, H.M French, Late-Pleistocene Syngenetic Permafrost in the Crrel Permafrost Tunnel, (Ninth International Conference on Permafrost: Fairbanks, 2008).

U.S Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center, “Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility,” USACE, last modified November 19, 2012.

Fox Tunnel; Permafrost Research Facility

Fox, Alaska

“There is this sense that the underground is not stable.”1

Depth: 15m below the surface

Timespan of infrastructure: 1968 - present Timespan of ground: 45,000 years ago, permafrost in Alaska expected to dethaw completely in 80 years1 .

Geological Strata: 0-17m below surface = silt layers, top layer dates from 3,500 to 10,000 years, lower layer dates from 10,000 to 30,000 years. 17m below surface = gold bearing fox gravels 22m below surface = bedrock of weathered schist

Relevance: one of only two research facilities in the world allowing for the study of permafrost below ground.

Materials found: organic material, bacteria, bones (mammoth, bisons, horses), peat, ice wedges, ice lenses, metal boardwalk, fluorescent lights, wires, artifical cooling units (maintain temperatrure at -4 degrees Celsius), leaves, seeds, beetles,butterflies, moths, snail shells, human researchers, iron structural components...

Activities taking place: Mars rover test runs, bioprospecting, paleontological work with fossils, engineering tests on the mechanical properties and soil sensitivity, military shelter or storage, learning facility...

Events: 1993 - flooding resulting in tunnel collapse 2014 - flooding from outside creating frozen puddles 2016 - flooding which almost collapsed entire tunnel as a “house-sized piece of ice wedge” was eroded by the water. Routinly: sublimation (transformation of ice to dust) requires regular maintenance of walls to allow for studying Future: additional expansion proposed

Users/uses: Humans, research

Within this landscape, one is able to engage with the underground in a safe environment. However, much of its purpose centers on the artificial preservation of permafrost as they have introduced A.C units to maintain the below 0 temperature. If research is conducted on permafrost it might be interesting to let one of the tunnels “dethaw” to track the impact of climate change on this underground landscape.

The exposed wall set to be excavated, presents a herringbone-like pattern of ice crystals. Were these conditions existing or did the machinery used to excavate the tunnel leave behind these traces? None the less they show the beauty within ice underground.

Permafrost mining face in Fox Tunnel, photograph, US Army Corps of Engineers, April 17, 2020, https://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Stories/ Article/2154246/discovering-the-mural-in-permafrost/.

Main tunnel shaft within the permafrost. One could imagine the echoes of footsteps on the metal walkway as your breath appears in front of you. The soft light creates a cosy environment, while the proportions of the tunnel avoid being too narrow and claustrophobic.

U.S Army Corps of Engineers, The Tunnel, photograph, Atlas Obscura, 2016, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/permafrost-tunnel

(top image) Arsenic has been buried below the surface since operations began. Connsequentially the water, soil, and groundwater have been contaminated in areas surrounding the mine. This has severly impacted the traditional land of the Dene First Nations.

SRK Consulting, Chambers of Arsenic Trioxide Management, Entire Landscapes, last accessed October 18, 2022, https://entirelandscapes.space/ Giant-Mine-Yellowknife.

(bottom image) 3D VR method of visualizing and engaging with the underground chamber infrastrucutre

No Author, BGC Engineering Community engaging with Giant Mine, Canadian Mining Magazine, November 7, 2018, http://canadianminingmagazine.com/bgc-engineering-fosters-community-engagement-at-giant-mine-with-ada/.

1. Ootes, Luke, et al. “The Timing of Yellowknife Gold Mineralization: A temporal relationship with crustal anatexis?” Economic Geology 106, no. 4 (2011).

(references) “Freeze Remediation: plain language summary,” Government of Canada, lastmodified July 23, 2019, https:// www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1563905 637880/1618400628948.

Giant Mine Remediation Project: Underground Design Plan, (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affaris Canada: Yellowknife, 2021).

Jimmy Thomson, “This is Giant Mine,” The Narwhal, last modified June 9, 2018, https://thenarwhal.ca/this-is-giant-mine/.

“The Remediation Project’s Frozen Block Method,” Government of Canada, last modified April 13th, 2018, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/ 1100100027422/1617999507283.

Giant Mine Gold Mine: Underground Remediation

Yellowknife, North West Territories, Canada

Depth: up to 350m below surface

Timespan of infrastructure: 1948 - 2004, restoration from 2018 - present Timespan of ground: 2700 million years ago the bedrock which shaped the gold deposits in Yellowknife was formed1 .

Geological Strata: Yellowknife greenstone belt

Relevance: mine remediation within permafrost with a focus on the underground through the sealing of arsenic within the mines chambers.

Materials found: arsenic trioxide, slag cement, thermosyphons (metal tubes), CO2, pipes,

Activities taking place: “remediation,” filling, abandonment, forgetting

Events: Arsenic trioxide dust produced through the heating of arsenopyrite rock to separate the gold. Underground chambers were made to store the dust inside, these were sealed once full, preventing leaching into surface or ground water. Decision made in remediation to artifically freeze arsenic chambers. Climate change warming taken into account to ensure freezing continues.

Users/Uses: post-human

One component of this mine remediation is the sealing of mine tailings containing arsenic into the underground tunnels buried in the permafrost. As permafrost in this area will likely experience deeper and longer thaw periods an artificial system of maintaining the temperature has been created as well (p.49).

I have included this project as an effort to come to terms with the extent and scale of mine remediation within permafrost. In this work they are literally creating anthropogenic strata of geological material as the concrete filling will be forever sealed underground. As this ground will be consistently frozen for more than 2 years they are by definition creating a permafrost filled with arsenic mine tailings, concrete from materials likely brought in to Yellowknife, and intensive thermosyphons. In this way we relate to the underground.

Pipes drilled down to the chambers removed the risk of people entering the chambers filled with Arsenic Tioxide. The aggregate used to fill the chambers was a mixtured of gold tailings and sand, which fully stabilized in 28 days, filling the chambres and sealing the arsenic.

LafargeHolcim, Pipe in Underground, digital drawing, Slag Cement Association, April 14, 2020, https://www.slagcement.org/casestudies/id/87/ giant-mine-underground-stabilization.aspx#prettyPhoto.

Thermosyphons pipes filled with CO2, draw cold area underground to maintain the permafrost conditions. If all infrastrucutre were to be removed they would stand as the sole markers of what once was, actively maintaining the permafrost conditions even if the surrounding ground thaws completely. Do they then serve as markers of “ongoing social obligation and care” (p.55) to the ground as presented by Kearnes and Rickards?

Thermosyphon pipes, photograph, Government of Canada, July 23, 2019, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1563905637880/1618400628948.

(top image) Whereas the first two case studies are artificially constructed this example demonstrates the shear force of permafrost’s processes themselves through the creation of this massive tunnel into the underground. Researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences Oil and Gas Research Institute completed 3D scans of the crater in Yamal. It is only through imagery of this nature or the cliff edge itself that one can engage with the underground.

Vasily Bogoyavlensky, 3D model of exploded permafrost heaving mound, The Siberian Times, February 25, 2021, https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/drone-flies-inside-giant-yamal-permafrost-crater-for-firsttime-dipping-15-metres-below-the-surface/.

(bottom image) Humans are circled in pink for scale.

Evgeny Chuvilin, Yamal Crater from above, photograph, BBC, December 1, 2020, https:// www.bbc.com/future/article/20201130-climate-change-the-mystery-of-siberias-explosive-craters.

1. Heiner Kubny, “Oldest permafrost in Siberia discovered,” Polar Journal, last modified June 18, 2021, https://polarjournal.ch/en/2021/06/18/oldest-permafrost-in-siberia-discovered/.

(references) Richard Gray, “The mystery of Siberia’s exploding craters,” BBC, last modified December 1, 2020, https://www.bbc. com/future/article/20201130-climatechange-the-mystery-of-siberias-explosive-craters.

Anna Liesowska, “Drone flies inside giant Yamal permafrost crater for the first time, dipping 15 metres below the surface,” The Siberian Times, last modified February 25, 2021, https:// siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/ drone-flies-inside-giant-yamal-permafrost-crater-for-first-time-dipping-15metres-below-the-surface/.

Permafrost Craters: More-than-human agency

Siberia, Russia

Depth: -10m to +/-300m (varies)

Temperature: -4 in summer, -10 in winter

Timespan of infrastructure: N/A Timespan of ground: nearby region home to permafrost 650,000 years old1

Geological Strata: tabular ice, deep oil and gas deposits, methane, CO2

Relevance: large scale geological modification occuring as permafrost thaws, exposing the underground.

Materials found: methane, earth, ice, water

Activities taking place: geological process, water flows, vegetation growth, research, methane release

Events: Surface air temperature increases Rapid swelling of ground Gas pressure build up below surface Instant uplift Crater left behind Fill with water creating a deep pond

Users/uses: more-than-humans, human researchers

These craters are formed as methane and CO2 build up in de-thawed permafrost pockets underneath the ground. This gas pushes against the surface until it explodes, creating massive craters in the Siberian landscape.

As the only case not specifically created by humans, these craters reflect the shear power of permafrost to alter landscape conditions. Through these craters one can look into the underground from above. In some of these craters, rain and snow melt has created deep wells of water, creating ponds across Siberia. Over time, as the surrounding permafrost thaws one can imagine the sides potentially softening or caving in, leading to the establishment of shoreline species.

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