Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
13.1.2
Land Degradation
The main land degradation concerns in Antarctica include landscape modifi cation
as a result of construction activities, geotechnical studies, and road construction;
disturbance to soil communities; local pollution from hydrocarbon spills; waste
disposal; and the introduction of alien species (O'Neill et al.
2014
).
13.2
Arctic
13.2.1
Land Use
The Arctic has a more agreeable climate than Antarctica and has sustained peoples
for at least 13,000 year. Before the twentieth century, the primary activity in the
Arctic was subsistence living by about 40 different ethnic groups that included fi sh-
ing, reindeer herding, whaling, sealing and related activities. From an economic
standpoint, the fi rst major activity in the Arctic was gold mining. Gold mining
began in Siberia and the Russian Far East in the 1830s. The gold output in Russia
peaked in 1855 and declined steadily until World War I. After the war gold and sil-
ver mining were renewed during the tragic gulags. The Klondike Gold Rush in the
Yukon Territory of Canada occurred between 1896 and 1899 and brought an esti-
mated 100,000 prospectors to this permafrost region.
Petroleum and gas extraction became the major activities in the Arctic beginning
in the 1920s in Canada's Northwest Territories and in the 1960s on Alaska's North
Slope, the Yalmalo-Nenets region of Russia, and the Mackenzie Delta of Canada.
More recent discoveries have been made in Greenland (2001) and northern Norway
(2012). Although most of these operations are offshore on the continental shelves,
pipelines have been constructed across land to carry the petroleum products to deep-
water ports.
There is a long history of agriculture in the Fennoscandian and Russian
Arctic. Agriculture is a relatively small industry in the Arctic and is composed
mainly of cool-season forages, cool-season vegetables, and small grains and
raising traditional livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, poultry, and horses)
(ACIA
2013
). Key agricultural areas include the southern NWT; the Matanuska
Valley, Alaska; Rovaniemi, Finland; Novosibirsk, Yakutsk, Vorkuta, and
Magadan, Russia; the three northern counties of Norway; coastal Iceland and
Greenland. Figure
13.1
shows agriculture on permafrost near Bethel, western
Alaska.
Although the Arctic has attracted tourists since the early 1800s, it has become
an important industry in the past 15 years. Many of the larger tour operators
adhere to a Code of Conduct in order to protect the environment and cultures of
the Arctic.
