Permafrost: a guide to frozen ground in transition

study or geocryology as a science is a relatively new branch of scientific discipline. It was started at the beginning to middle of the 20th century in Russia (Yershov, 1998), probably in the late 1940s in North America as marked by the work of Muller (1945), in the early 1960s in China (Zhou et al., 2000), and even later in Europe. Although quite a few books have been published in the past decades in English, they almost exclusively target geocryologists and engineers, or the scientific community as a whole. Knowledge of permafrost science is rarely available to general public in English. book Permafrost: A Guide to Frozen Ground in Transition by Professor Neil Davis from the University of Alaska Fairbanks bridges the gap of knowledge between the permafrost specialists and engineers, and the science-minded laymen and motivated students. actual text consists of 351 pages with six chapters, color plates, three appendices, glossary, references, and index. Style and notation are generally presented in a consistent manner with dimensions in both metric (SI) and British systems. About half of the book consists of figures, color plates, and tables with detailed descriptive captions, making the book very readable and intuitive. In Chapter 1, the author provides a brief introduction of permafrost and seasonally frozen ground. It starts with concepts of freeze, froze, frozen of water, and a definition of permafrost. map by Pewe (1975) was used to demonstrate permafrost distribution in the Northern Hemisphere (Fig. 1.1, p. 4). author illustrates the consequences of permafrost and seasonally frozen ground with figures and photos. This clearly demonstrates the importance of frozen ground studies for cold regions development and environmental protection. chapter concludes with a brief discussion of ground ice. Chapter 2, entitled The Whys and Wherefores of Permafrost, focuses on the fundamental physics of water in vivid detail. It describes properties of water molecules and water's hydrogen bonds, electrical, physical, and thermal properties. With this background, Chapter 3 further explores the ground freezing and thawing processes, especially physical processes such as movement of water in thawed, freezing, and frozen ground, formation of segregation ice and other forms of ground ice, and frost heave. author discusses in great detail the mechanisms of segregation ice formation in a very simple and straightforward way. Chapter 4 follows logically with Land Forms Created by Cryogenic Action. This chapter and additional 24 color plates, occupies approximately one-third of the entire book. It covers all major periglacial geomorphologic phenomena in cold regions. author describes the formation of these land forms from repeated ground freezing and thawing, using numerous figures, photos, and plates to illustrate the processes. Many are from the author's own collection. section on Earthquake Effects in Areas is unique and has not been discussed in other geocryological books. author uses examples from a series of earthquakes in northwest Alaska in 1958 to illustrate their impact on related periglacial land forms in permafrost regions. Chapter 5 describes how to cope with seasonally frozen ground and permafrost. It covers from early northem inhabitants to industrial constructions and operations such as mining, building, poles, water supply, roads and railroads, airports, and pipelines in permafrost regions. authors clearly summarizes that during the recent decades, northem developers from various agencies either fail because of a lack of permafrost knowledge or reasonably success but construction and maintenance costs have been very high. In Chapter 6, Permafrost in Transition, the author starts with evidence and causes of climate change and ends with a potential response of the active layer and permafrost to climate change. Under a climatic warming scenario, the author states that this response becomes evident with a thicker active layer, less widespread and weaker permafrost, and decreased ability to bear up under load. Greenhouse gases trapped in frozen ground long ago may be released, providing a positive feedback to climate change or causing environmental problems. Three appendices provide further information for higher level readers. Appendix A has additional background and fundamentals on general physics of water. Appendix B summarizes classification schemes for soils, and Appendix C provides information on where typical permafrost-related landforms can be seen. author also includes a Glossary section of permafrostrelated terms and some basic physical terms. glossary surely benefits readers who like to explore literature for further knowledge. book concludes with a reference list and an index. It is not surprising that Dr. Davis, a professor of physics at the University of Alaska, focuses heavily on basic physics in this book. Chapter 2 and Appendix A, approximately 20% of the text, provide a foundation to develop and explain concepts and processes of permafrost science. It is not an easy task to describe very complicated phenomena and processes in an interdisciplinary science such as geocryology in a plain and simple language; however, Professor Davis accomplished it successfully in his book. book brings permafrost science one step closer to the general public and broad audience outside of the permafrost and scientific community at large. Motivated readers should find the text informative as well as entertaining. Potential readers for cold regions studies will appreciate the author's excellent summary of water's basic properties; this serves as background knowledge not only for permafrost, but also for ice (river ice, lake ice, sea ice, and ice-sheet ice) and snow studies. author's Universal System Happiness Rule (p. 37) explains the Second Law of Thermodynamics in a simple and intuitive way. Numerous photos and plates in the text bring the readers to the relatively less disturbed northern regions and show the consequences that northem inhabitants and developers have experienced. appendices provide additional knowledge for advanced readers. or seasonally frozen ground is a product of heat exchange between the atmosphere and the land surface. is solely defined on the basis of soil thermal status, i.e., soil temperature. Unfortunately, there is very little discussion on the thermal regime or thermodynamics of soils and permafrost in the text. author extensively discusses how to cope with permafrost and seasonally frozen ground in terms of resources development and industrial operations, but environmentalists will probably be disappointed with this volume since there is very little discussion about the impact of human activities on permafrost or cold regions environments, especially considering the proposed further exploration of oil fields on the North Slope of Alaska and other areas in the Arctic and Subarctic. Those who are motivated enough to travel to high mountains and highlatitude regions would benefit from a brief introduction on methodology used by scientists and engineers to investigate the active layer and permafrost. Some of the information and statistics in this volume are relatively outdated. For example, the newly published International Association (IPA) Circum-Arctic Map of and Ground Ice Conditions (Brown et al.,