"Take a shovel anywhere in two-thirds of Russia's vast expanses, dig more than a meter into the ground, and you're likely to hit something rock-like.
But it isn't stone. It is permafrost — technically defined as any ground that is continuously frozen for at least two years, but in some areas it is hundreds of meters deep and tens of thousands of years old. And it is melting — putting roads, railways and buildings across the country at risk of sinking.
"In the next 25 to 30 years, the permafrost zone in Russia could shrink by 10 to 18 percent. By mid-century that could rise to 15 to 30 percent," Vladislav Bolov, head of the Emergency Situations Ministry's Center for Forecasting and Monitoring, told RIA-Novosti at the end of the summer.
The effects, he warned, would be devastating, especially on roads and railways built across the zone of permanently frozen earth"................READ MORE
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