The China-Russia Crude Oil Pipeline (CRCOP) route traverses across permafrost regions from Mohe to Wuerqi, 441 km in length, where permafrost, forest and swamp are interedependency and influence each other, constituting a permafrost environment. Pipelines are long-distant and linear structures, therefore, their construction and maintenance would have appreciable influence on the permafrost environment. In this research, the disturbance degrees to the ground surface and land situation, the engineering properties, the features of various permafrost types, the mean annual ground temperature, periglacial phenomena, and their correlations and interactive mechanisms were analyzed. A ground surface stability method for assessing permafrost environments along the CRCOP route was proposed. According to the method, the ground surfaces could be classified into four types: very stable one, stable one, unstable one and very unstable one, corresponding to good quality, fair quality, poor quality and very poor quality of permafrost environment, respectively. This assessing method is simple and characterized by appropriate, objective, comprehensively and high accuracy.

Download Here