Objectives and Methods of Mining and Construction in Snow and Ice

Although mining and construction in snow and ice appear exotic, they are significantly common practices in producing snow and ice as sources of freshwater and construction material; accessing subglacial ore; constructing winter roads and polar runways; investigating and sampling near-surface layers; recovering snow-buried objects; constructing subsurface shelters for living, working, and military facilities; observing and investigating glacier beds; constructing sightseeing ice tunnels; and draining ice-dammed proglacial lakes. Mining in snow and ice would become a powerful method of glacier geoengineering work in the future if these were accepted. The main content of this chapter is devoted to setting targets, or objectives, before mining and construction in snow and ice and to the challenges in polar and high-mountain regions that affect excavation technologies and planning. This chapter also includes a brief description of snow and ice distribution on Earth and summarizes a classification of excavation methods.