Palo Alto scientist explores formation of earth splits

Dr. Arthur Lachenbruch, geophysicist from Palo Alto, has recently returned from a mission to Axel Heiberg Island, where he analyzed the frozen soil of the arctic and related conditions.

Dr. Lachenbruch is an authority on permafrost and is also a world leader in determining why and how the earth splits. He is attached to the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, but was borrowed from the Survey by Jacobsen McGill University’s scientific expedition to Axel Heiberg Island. The land is 2,000 miles north of Winnipeg, Canada.

IN AXEL HEIBERG, as in many parts of the north, the earth’s surface is covered with a network of cracks made by the unrelenting cold. The ground tightens and splits into a polygonal pattern.

Cracks 40 feet or more deep fill with water melted at the surface, and water freezes as it reaches the permafrost. This begins an ice wedge, which splits and expands.

"What is significant to the engineer is not so much the soil polygon but the ice wedges in them," Dr. Lachenbruch said.

He said the ice wedges can cause a road to turn into a canyon 15 feet deep. The removal of natural insulation such as vegetation, ground or snow can cause roads and construction sites to be demolished by great canyons.

DR. LACHENBRUCH believes he has established that polygons around a lake, or what was once a lake bed, depend on the temperature gradient. A lake stores heat and the ground near it is warmer than the ground farther away.

The cracks will form along lines of equal temperature roughly parallel to the lakeshore, and further cracks will appear at right angles, Dr. Lachenbruch believes.

He is a specialist in ground heat-flow.

Dr. Lachenbruch was in Axel Heiberg Island last month. He lives at 332 Caroline Lane, Palo Alto with his wife and three children.

His parents, Mr. And Mrs. Milton Lachenbruch live at 348 Waverly St., Menlo Park.

Palo Alto Times
November 9, 1960

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