Studies of ice jam flooding in the United States

Ice jams and other ice accumulations cause estimated average annual damages on the order of $120M (USD) in the United States. These damages include the potential for loss of life and property due to flooding, structural damage, bed and bank erosion and scour, riprap failure, increased flood fighting and assistance costs, and environmental damage. Ice jams also prompt local, state, and federal emergency operations and can affect operation of hydropower and flood control projects. Many ice jams in the United States occur along small, steep rivers where dynamic effects are very important. While many communities across the nation are affected each winter, damages at each location are often insufficient to justify conventional flood-control measures such as dams and levees and require the use of innovative, low-cost ice control methods. Also, since smaller rivers in the United States tend to be relatively undeveloped, solutions must have low environmental impacts to be acceptable. The local ice regime must be well understood to address these issues. As a result, the US Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) began collecting ice data a number of years ago, and now has an Ice Jam Database from which relevant information can be extracted. This paper summarizes ice jam occurrence and severity in the United States based on data from nearly 15,000 entries in the Ice Jam Database, and presents information on riverine ice research and development at CRREL.