(H. Hedenas, et al., 2011. Changes in tree growth..., Ambio 40: 672-82, via CO2Science, 9 May 2012) -- The authors write that "during the last 15 years, there has been an increasing focus on how climate change has and will affect the distribution and extent of ecosystems around the globe including alpine and Arctic areas (e.g., Callaghan et al., 2005)," and in this regard they report that "field studies and remote sensing have revealed a recent increase in altitude of the tree line (e.g., Kullman, 2002)," as well as "an extension and increased cover of mountain birch forest (Tommervik et al., 2009; Rundqvist et al., 2011)."

More specifically, they say that Tommervik et al. have determined that "tree biomass has doubled over a 43-year period, within an area of Finnmarksvidda, and Rundqvist et al., have observed an increased density and cover of mountain birch in the treeline over the last three decades, within an area near Abisko village."

Tagged: News, Polar research: Reports and findings

(University of Pittsburgh press release via e! Science News, 8 May 2012) -- Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have joined an international group of scientists to study past climate changes in the Arctic. Comprising geologists from Pitt's Department of Geology and Planetary Science, the team has analyzed sedimentary and geochemical records of water-level changes in Rantin Lake, located in the boreal forest of Canada's southeastern Yukon Territory.

The results were published online in the April issue of Journal of Paleolimnology as one of 18 articles dedicated to reconstructing Arctic lake sediments climate and environmental changes during the Holocene (about 12,000 years before present day). "During the last 10,000 years, there have been certain times in which rapid climate change events occurred," said David Pompeani, lead author and a Pitt PhD geology student. "By analyzing Rantin Lake, we've contributed a piece of the puzzle toward mapping the timing and magnitude of these prehistoric events throughout the Arctic."

Rantin Lake is part of a watershed containing a series of small lakes hydrologically connected through groundwater flow. The regional climate is subarctic and characterized by warm, wet summers and dry, cold winters. The lake is located at 60 degrees north in the Canadian Arctic, only 30 degrees away from the North Pole, where climate change is expected to be amplified.

Tagged: News, Research

(Jane George/Nunatsiaq News, 7 May 2012) -- At a time when many northerners say they’re tired of being researched by people from the South, a program has worked on developing home-grown northern researchers and policy-makers. Over the past two years, the Jane Glassco Arctic Fellowship Program, has helped about a dozen young northerners, aged 25 to 35, undertake and complete their own research projects.

“The program shows we have our own people in our own communities who can do research,” said the Jane Glassco Arctic Fellowship Program director (and former Nunavut MP) Nancy Karetak-Lindell, in a recent interview. The program, offered through the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation with support from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, provided 14 northerners with two-year fellowships of $25,000. Fellowship applicants, who were not required to be university students or graduates, suggested their own projects.

“We didn’t want to tell them the areas that they wanted to work in,” Karetak-Lindell said. “I wanted to be surprised. I wanted them to tell us what they wanted to work on.”

The legacy of the fellowships will be the fellows’ ability “to create positive changes together for our people.” At the end of the IPY conference, Karetak-Lindell, in her closing remarks, also issued a challenge to the indigenous community: “to define priority areas we want to research, recruit our own people to conduct research, support our young people to pursue further education to become scientists, record our knowledge and use it to make our own people healthier, more self-sufficient and be recognized again as the rightful stewards of our land, animals and the environment.” The Jane Glassco fellows are a step in that direction, she said, so that “we, the people, have to matter. We want to be more important to researchers, our country and the world than the polar bear and the seal.” But to do that, “the onus is on us to be the future, to study the Arctic, and more sure this takes place,” Karetak-Lindell said in an interview.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research