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Vincent Taillard
Richard Martel
Louis-César Pasquier
Jean-François Blais
Véronique Gilbert
Guy Mercier
Published: Jan. 1, 2023
In remote communities in the Canadian Arctic, petroleum hydrocarbons supply most household energy needs. Their transportation and use frequently incurs small volume spills in populated areas. The remediation method that is currently used when such spills affect the soil under northern villages’ stilted buildings is expensive and not well suited to local conditions. Here, we review local constraints and environmental considerations and select the best remediation technology for this context: in situ chemical oxidation, involving sodium persulfate (SPS) alkali activated with calcium peroxide (CP). Activated SPS presents a good reactivity and amenability to compounds found in diesel. Its high persistence …
Stephen M. Chignell
Adrian Howkins
Poppie Gullett
Andrew G. Fountain
Published: June 4, 2022
Co-authorship networks can provide key insights into the production of scientific knowledge. This is particularly interesting in Antarctica, where most human activity relates to scientific research. Bibliometric studies of Antarctic science have provided a useful understanding of international and interdisciplinary collaboration, yet most research has focused on broad-scale analyses over recent time periods. Here, we take advantage of a ‘Goldilocks’ opportunity in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, an internationally important region of Antarctica and the largest ice-free region on the continent. The McMurdo Dry Valleys have attracted continuous and diverse scientific activity since 1958. It is a geographically confined region with …
Dzmitry A. Lukashanets
Yury H. Hihiniak
Vladislav Y. Miamin
Published: June 20, 2022
To elucidate poorly known aspects of the microscopic metazoan distribution in ice-free parts of the Antarctic, we examined samples of the multicellular terrestrial alga Prasiola crispa, collected over the last decade in different parts of continental East Antarctica and Haswell Island. We found that the micrometazoans inhabiting the algae consist of remarkably abundant bdelloid rotifers (subclass Bdelloidea), followed by tardigrades. We did not find nematodes. The rotifer assemblages were characterized by low diversity (only six species). Nevertheless, rotifer densities were extremely high: mean densities ranged from 75 to 3030 individuals per 100 mg of the dry sample weight and the …
C. Leah Devlin
Published: Dec. 14, 2022
Alfred Edwin Eaton (1844–1929) was amongst numerous Victorian naturalists whose exotic collections disseminated to the natural history museums of Britain laid the groundwork for our understanding of biodiversity. What sets him apart from his contemporaries was his first-hand knowledge of organisms at the polar extremes. This paper describes Eaton’s contributions to polar biology, especially in the field of entomology, from two high-latitude expeditions: the 1873 Benjamin Leigh Smith Expedition to Svalbard in the European Arctic and the 1874 British Transit of Venus Expedition to Kerguelen Island in the southern Indian Ocean. His observations of flightless polar and subpolar insects, in …
Øystein Varpe
Geir W. Gabrielsen
Published: Nov. 9, 2022
Seabirds in cold biomes sometimes aggregate near glacier fronts and at sea-ice edges to forage. In this note, we report on large aggregations of black guillemots (Cepphus grylle) at the edge of sea ice in front of the tidewater glacier Kongsbreen (Kongsfjorden, Svalbard). During several days in the second half of June 2011, we observed 49–155 individuals of black guillemots at this ice edge. They foraged actively, and many of the dives were directed underneath the sea ice. The outflow of glacial meltwater and resulting upwelling generated opportunities for the black guillemots to feed, likely on zooplankton or fish. The …
Chuan Chen
Published: March 17, 2022
With China becoming more active in Greenland, worries abound that China might have hidden intentions. Despite that, the Greenlandic government is showing an increasing interest in deepening its cooperation with China. This article explores Greenland’s motivation behind its positive attitude towards China and examines whether China will be a threat to Greenland’s independence. For Greenland, China is both a deep-pocketed investor and a huge consumer market, especially in the mining, fishing and tourism industries. Greenland, therefore, views China as an important partner in its economic development, which is necessary for its independence from Denmark. Considering China’s relationship with Denmark, its …
Anna M. Gielas
Published: Sept. 12, 2022
Journals dedicated to the polar sciences have been outliers. Within both the history of science and the history of media, they stand out in several ways, including their comparatively late establishment of peer-review. It was not until the second half of the 20th century, that polar sciences journals began to carry predominantly peer-reviewed original research rather than synopses of research published elsewhere. This Perspective piece uses the 40th anniversary of Polar Research as an opportunity to look at the past of polar sciences periodicals—and invites reflection on their future.
Alvaro Soutullo
Ana Laura Machado-Gaye
Eduardo Juri
Published: June 20, 2022
For more than 20 years Antarctic Treaty Parties have been discussing how to appropriately manage cumulative impacts in the continent. Preventing cumulative impacts requires the fluent exchange of information to enable proper and timely assessment of, and response to, the impacts that result from multiple activities, undertaken by multiple stakeholders and supervised by different Parties. This is a particular challenge for the effective management of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs), as a lack of coordination may potentially put at risk the fulfillment of their conservation objectives. Here we suggest that incorporating lessons learnt from protected areas management elsewhere might improve …
Shengni Duan
Zhina Jiang
Min Wen
Published: Jan. 1, 2022
The boreal wintertime atmospheric responses, especially cold events over central Asia, to low sea-ice concentration (SIC) with and without realistic daily variation over the Barents Sea are explored with the Community Atmosphere Model version 4.0 (CAM4.0). The results show that the general atmospheric responses to approximately equal winter-mean Arctic sea-ice loss with a similar pattern but with climatological versus realistic daily variation are different. With the forcing of low SIC with climatological daily variation, Asian cold events become a little longer and stronger than in the control experiment; this mainly results from the enhancement of a 500-hPa Ural anticyclonic anomaly. …
Elisabeth Isaksson
Anka Ryall
Published: Jan. 1, 2023
Louise Boyd (1887–1972) was a female pioneer in Arctic research whose legacy includes the exploration of north-east Greenland. In this Perspective piece, we use a broad interdisciplinary approach to investigate her career as a photographer and expedition leader. When documenting glacial retreat during the 1930s, she was at the forefront of the development of glaciology as a research discipline. Without family obligations and with seemingly inexhaustible financial resources, she used Arctic exploration to create an independent and self-defined life for herself.