2011年4月19日星期二

Arctic eroding up to 8 metres a year: study

Arctic coastline is retirement, particularly at the Canada, and their disappearance has a significant impact on the ecosystem and the social and economic life of the North, according to a group of international researchers.

The changes are particularly dramatic in the Beaufort Sea along the coast of the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Alaska and in the seas of Siberia's East, Laptev and along the North coast of the Russia. Some sections have seen erosion rates reach more than eight metres a year as protective sea ice disappears along the coast.

"Each element of the North will be affected, from the side to the Inuit way engineering interact with their environment."-Wayne Pollard, McGill

The study found that on average, the Arctic Coast is back by a half metre per year.

"Each element of the North will be affected, right side engineering how the Inuit to interact with their environment," Wayne Pollard, a Geomorphologist from McGill University who have contributed to the study, told the Canadian Press.

The study of 2010 by a consortium of over 30 researchers from 10 countries, was published Sunday in the journal estuaries and coasts. The consortium includes researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, based in Germany for polar research and Marine.

The project examined more than 100 000 kilometres of coastline, or a quarter of all coasts of the Arctic. This is the first to compare the different rates of erosion as well as to take into account its impact on the people of the North.

While they cannot prove that they have limited the data of the year to work with, scientists suspect that gradual wash-away, and thousands of kilometres of shoreline North is accelerating.

Researchers say rising temperatures in the North because of climate change are originally coastal to disappearing sea ice, leaving the coast without protection against the erosion force waves. The problem is particularly acute in the Arctic because approximately two-thirds of its coast consists of permafrost, which is much softer and therefore more susceptible to erosion than the rock.

Researchers say that since about a third of the coasts of the world are in the permafrost in the Arctic, coastal erosion may affect huge areas in the future.

This is a concern for deltas of Arctic River along the coast, who have high biodiversity and are extremely productive in other parts of the Arctic. Concern for researchers, these productive sectors may vary the coast erodes.

Pollard, who works many among the Inuvialuit of the territories of Northwestern Delta of Mackenzie region, said that the changes affect already traditional practices such as hunting seals, polar bears and beluga whales. People therefore adapted to their local environment they can navigate in fog by currents affecting their boats can no longer rely on old assumptions, he said.

"It is going to be there shoals where it was not before shoals, there will be storms coming from different directions," he said. "" "". "It really is beginning to disrupt traditional knowledge".

Records of the Canadian Press return to the accessibility links

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