Published: March 29, 2019

Dissolved organic carbon, from marine biota excretions and decomposing detritus, is one of the main components of the carbon cycle in the ocean. In this study, an attempt was made to construct maps of the distribution and fluxes of DOC in the Arctic Ocean and the exchanges with the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Because of the limited data available a multiple linear regression technique was performed to identify significant relationships between DOC (2200 samples) and hydrologic parameters (temperature and salinity), as well as depth, horizon, latitude and offshore distance. Mapping of the DOC distribution and its fluxes was carried out …

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Published: Aug. 6, 2019

Brünnich’s guillemot (Uria lomvia), or thick-billed murre, is an abundant pan-Arctic seabird, but several Atlantic breeding populations are declining. The species is subject to traditional harvest in the important wintering areas off west Greenland and Newfoundland, and has been subject to chronic oil pollution on the east coast of Canada. Until recently, knowledge of winter distribution has been insufficient to assess the impact of these mortality sources on specific breeding populations. We collate existing information on mortality from bag statistics in Greenland and Canada and studies of oiling off Newfoundland, as well as new data on age distribution in the …

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Published: June 5, 2019

Rabies is a major issue for human and animal health in the Arctic, yet little is known about its epidemiology. In particular, there is an ongoing debate regarding how Arctic rabies persists in its primary reservoir host, the Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), which exists in the ecosystem at very low population densities. To shed light on the mechanisms of rabies persistence in the Arctic, we built a susceptible–exposed–infectious–recovered (SEIR) epidemiological model of rabies virus transmission in an Arctic fox population interacting with red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), a rabies host that is increasingly present in the Arctic. The model suggests that …

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Published: May 7, 2019

A decrease in biodiversity and density of terrestrial organisms with increasing altitude and latitude is a well-known ecogeographical pattern. However, studies of these trends are often taxonomically-biased toward well-known organisms and especially those with relatively large bodies, and environmental variability at the local scale may perturb these general effects. Here, we focus on understudied organisms—soil invertebrates—in Antarctic deserts, which are among the driest and coldest places on Earth. We sampled two remote Antarctic sites in the Darwin Glacier area and established an altitudinal gradient running from 210 to 836 m a.s.l. We measured soil geochemistry and organic matter content and …

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Published: March 6, 2019

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has proven to be an efficient method for studying vocally active marine mammals in areas that are difficult to access on a year-round basis. In this study, a PAM recorder was deployed on an oceanographic mooring in western Fram Strait (78°50'N, 5°W) to record the acoustic presence of narwhals (Monodon monoceros) over a 3-yr period. Acoustic data were recorded for 14–17 min at the start of each hour from 25 September 2010 to 26 August 2011, from 2 September 2012 to 11 April 2013 and from 8 September 2013 to 27 April 2014. Pulsed and tonal …

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Published: June 6, 2019

In the cold regions, warm mud is usually used to drill deep wells. This mud causes formation thawing around wells, and as a rule is an uncertain parameter. For frozen soils, ice serves as a cementing material, so the strength of frozen soils is significantly reduced at the ice–water transition. If the thawing soil cannot withstand the load of overlying layers, consolidation will take place, and the corresponding settlement can cause significant surface shifts. Therefore, for long-term drilling or oil/gas production, the radius of thawing should be estimated to predict platform stability and the integrity of the well. It is …

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Published: March 21, 2019

Global climate change is significantly affecting marine life off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, but little is known about microbial ecology in this area. The main goal of this study was to investigate the bacterioplankton community structure in surface waters using pyrosequencing and to determine factors influencing this community. Pelagibacterales and Rhodobacterales (Alphaproteobacteria), Oceanospirillales and Alteromonadales (Gammaproteobacteria), and Flavobacteriales (Bacteroidetes) were the core taxa in our samples, and the five most relatively abundant genera were Pelagibacter, Polaribacter, Octadecabacter, group HTCC2207 and Sulfitobacter. Although nutrients and chlorophyll a (chl a) contributed more to bacterioplankton community structure than water masses …

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Published: Nov. 6, 2020

In August 2005, marine debris was counted on two Arctic beaches in the Russian Far East. On the north coast of the Chukchi Peninsula east of Kolyuchin Bay, a beach stretch of ca. 2.4 km held a total of 736 items, 0.024 items m‑2, while no more than 0.0011 items m‑2, 12 items in total, were found on a beach stretch of ca. 1.2 km on southern Wrangel Island. The likely explanation for this difference is that the area around the mainland beach is ice-free for a longer period each year, but a contributing factor may be that late spring …

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Published: Nov. 26, 2020

This paper examines the temporal and spatial change in the characteristics of sea-ice motion in the Arctic. Ice motion is generally expressed by a motion at a constant ratio (wind factor) of wind speed, with a certain angle (turning angle) from the wind direction, and ocean currents. This study aimed to reveal the recent changes of the wind factor and turning angle using satellite observation data. We first prepared a daily ice-velocity data set from data for 2003–2017 collected by the satellite microwave sensor Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) and its successor, AMSR2. Monthly values …

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Published: Aug. 27, 2020

Chemical signatures in the calcite of shells of polar and subpolar planktonic foraminifera have been frequently used to trace and quantify past meltwater discharge events. This approach assumes that the foraminifera can tolerate low salinity under extended periods. To obtain a first experimental constraint on salinity tolerance of Subarctic foraminifera, we carried out a culturing experiment with specimens of the subpolar species Neogloboquadrina incompta collected in the northern Norwegian Sea off Tromsø in October 2018. The foraminifera were exposed to a gradient of salinities between 35 and 25 PSU. Survival was monitored over 26 days by measuring the extent of …

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