In view of the increasing importance to the U.S. economy of petroleum and other natural resources that may originate beneath ice-infested waters in the Arctic, considerable industrial interest has been recently generated for establishing a University/Industry Cooperative Center for Ice Research to be located at Dartmouth College. This high degree of interest has been generated primarily because petroleum and its by-products are essential to our economy and because approximately 60 percent of the total undiscovered domestic oil and approximately 50 percent of the undiscovered gas may lie beneath ice-infested waters off the coast of Alaska. As Arctic engineering thus begins to play an increasingly important role in our economic development, the need for a thorough documentation and understanding of the properties of ice, particularly of saline ice, as well as trained scientific and engineering personnel to provide such information will increase. Thus, the operational phase of the Industry/University Center for Cold Regions Science and Engineering at Dartmouth College is initiated.
