tagged w/ Greenland
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“Arctic Story,” a full-length documentary by photographer Jenny E. Ross, documents the changing lifestyle and environment of the Inuit people of Siorapaluk, the northernmost settlement on Earth. “The sea remains unfrozen along the coast in late fall, at a time of year when it should be covered with ice,” Ross writes on the film’s Vimeo page. “Glaciers are melting, and shedding huge quantities of ice and meltwater into the ocean. The animals inhabiting the land and water are threatened by rising temperatures and loss of sea ice. Greenlanders who have survived for generations by hunting are now losing their prey and their traditional way of life."
You can also view this in the comments below if it will not play here.“Arctic Story,” a full-length documentary by photographer Jenny E. Ross,... more
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In the past, the bright surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet reflected well over half of the sunlight that fell on it. This reflectiveness helped keep the ice sheet stable, as less absorbed sunlight meant less heating and melting. In the past decade, however, satellites have observed a decrease in Greenland’s reflectiveness. This darker surface now absorbs more sunlight, which accelerates melting.
The map above shows the difference between the amount of sunlight Greenland reflected in the summer of 2011 versus the average percent it reflected between 2000 to 2006. Virtually the entire ice sheet shows some change, with some areas reflecting close to 20 percent less light than a decade ago. The map is based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. It was produced as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card.
Climate scientists have long expected that Earth’s polar regions will become less reflective as global temperatures rise. Rising temperatures melt snow and ice, and the uncovered terrain—water, vegetation, bare ground—is darker and absorbs more sunlight. The loss of reflectiveness then amplifies the initial warming.
Most of the patterns on the map fit expectations. Warmer, lower-elevation areas of the ice sheet have darkened more than the colder, higher-altitude interior. Each summer, winter snow retreats from the edge of the ice sheet. Dark pools of melt water form on the surface of the ice, and windblown dust and other particles also collect near the surface, making it even less reflective.
But the darkening in the interior is just as remarkable as the changes at the margins, according to Jason Box of Ohio State University, who analyzed the reflectiveness data. The interior is the high point of the ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level, and there is no visible melting in the summer. So why is the area becoming darker?
The darkening, says Box, is due to changes in the shape and size of the ice crystals in the snowpack. As temperatures rise, snow grains clump together and reflect less light than the many-faceted, smaller crystals (see lower image from a scanning electron microscope). Additional heat rounds the sharp edges of the crystals, and round particles absorb more sunlight than jagged ones.
More at the linkIn the past, the bright surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet reflected well over half of... more
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From site: "Since we have such an active community of armchair oceanographers and spreadsheet Glaciologists here, I thought it would be useful to speak to the real thing, the people who actually spend time on the ocean, on the ice sheets, do the measurements, and come back to share that knowledge with us. I had just that opportunity at the American Geophysical conference in December.
I spoke to Josh Willis, Oceanographer with NASA at the Jet Propulsion Lab – Josh is one of best known young ocean scientists on the planet. He pointed me to the recent Kemp et al study of tidal marshes on the US East coast, which has produced a long record of sea level over the last 2000 years, complete with a very Hockey-stickish uptick during the last 200 or so.
Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Center at Ohio State was there, presenting evidence of acceleration in Greenland ice loss over the last 200 years. His bottom line – “If we talk 10 years from now, my expectation is that Greenland will be losing roughly double what it is now.”
I round out the video with takes from old pros lead NASA scientist Jim Hansen and Admiral David Titley, the US Navy’s Chief Oceanographer.
More at the link
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And you can time it to the second how long it will take for the usual suspects who follow me to appear...They actually think they are converting people to believing their denier "religion" over actual scientists who are measuring the oceans and glaciers and what is right in front of our eyes. Laughable.From site: "Since we have such an active community of armchair oceanographers and... more
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The Greenland ice sheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures don’t hit record highs, according to a new analysis by Dr. Marco Tedesco, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York. His findings suggest that glaciers could undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming that would be difficult to halt.
“We are finding that even if you don’t have record-breaking highs, as long as warm temperatures persist you can get record-breaking melting because of positive feedback mechanisms,” said Professor Tedesco, who directs CCNY’s Cryospheric Processes Laboratory…. melting in 2011 was the third most extensive since 1979, lagging behind only 2010 and 2007. The “mass balance”, or amount of snow gained minus the snow and ice that melted away, ended up tying last year’s record values.
The photo [top] is “Marco Tedesco standing on the edge of one of four moulins (drainage holes) he and his team found at the bottom of a supraglacial lake during the expedition to Greenland in the summer, 2011.”
It’s not news that there are amplifying feedbacks at work on the great ice sheets. Just this March, the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory published its analysis that Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050. That study found:
“The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study — the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass — suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth’s mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.”
But the new CCNY study, based on in situ observations “during a four-week expedition to the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier in western Greenland,” lays out for the first time a very specific amplifying feedback occurring way up north:
“Combining data gathered on the ground with microwave satellite recordings and the output from a model of the ice sheet, he and graduate student Patrick Alexander found a near-record loss of snow and ice this year. The extensive melting continued even without last year’s record highs.”
The team recorded data on air temperatures, wind speed, exposed ice and its movement, the emergence of streams and lakes of melt water on the surface, and the water’s eventual draining away beneath the glacier. This lost melt water can accelerate the ice sheet’s slide toward the sea where it calves new icebergs.
Eventually, melt water reaches the ocean, contributing to the rising sea levels associated with long-term climate change….
Temperatures and an albedo feedback mechanism accounted for the record losses, Professor Tedesco explained. “Albedo” describes the amount of solar energy absorbed by the surface (e.g. snow, slush, or patches of exposed ice). A white blanket of snow reflects much of the sun’s energy and thus has a high albedo.
Bare ice – being darker and absorbing more light and energy – has a lower albedo.
But absorbing more energy from the sun also means that darker patches warm up faster, just like the blacktop of a road in the summer. The more they warm, the faster they melt.
And a year that follows one with record high temperatures can have more dark ice just below the surface, ready to warm and melt as soon as temperatures begin to rise. This also explains why more ice sheet melting can occur even though temperatures did not break records.
Tedesco has a good analogy — and he explains that this effect is widespread:
Professor Tedesco likens the melting process to a speeding steam locomotive. Higher temperatures act like coal shoveled into the boiler, increasing the pace of melting. In this scenario, “lower albedo is a downhill slope,” he says. The darker surfaces collect more heat. In this situation, even without more coal shoveled into the boiler, as a train heads downhill, it gains speed. In other words, melting accelerates.
Only new falling snow puts the brakes on the process, covering the darker ice in a reflective blanket, Professor Tedesco says. The model showed that this year’s snowfall couldn’t compensate for melting in previous years. “The process never slowed down as much as it had in the past,” he explained. “The brakes engaged only every now and again.”
The team’s observations indicate that the process was not limited to the glacier they visited; it is a large-scale effect. “It’s a sign that not only do albedo and other variables play a role in acceleration of melting, but that this acceleration is happening in many places all over Greenland,” he cautioned.
“We are currently trying to understand if this is a trend or will become one. This will help us to improve models projecting future melting scenarios and predict how they might evolve.”
More at linkThe Greenland ice sheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures... more
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New photographs taken of a vast glacier in northern Greenland have revealed the astonishing rate of its breakup, with one scientist saying he was rendered "speechless."
In August 2010, part of the Petermann Glacier about four times the size of Manhattan island broke off , prompting a hearing in Congress.
Researcher Alun Hubbard, of the Centre for Glaciology at Aberystwyth University, U.K., told msnbc.com by phone that another section, about twice the size of Manhattan, appeared close to breaking off.
In 2009, scientists installed GPS masts on the glacier to track its movement.
Taken nearly two years after the picture above, this photo shows the extent of the ice loss. The channel is about ten miles wide.
But when they returned in July this year, they found the ice had been melting so quickly — at an unexpected 16-and-a-half feet in two years — that some of the masts stuck into the glacier were no longer in position.
Hubbard, who has been working with Jason Box, of Ohio State University, and others, said in a statement issued by the Byrd Polar Research Center that scientists were still trying to work out how fast the glacier was moving and the effect on the ice sheet feeding the glacier.
'Really weird'
But he said he was taken aback by the difference between 2009 and 2011 when he visited the glacier in late July.
"Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the break-up, which rendered me speechless," he said in the statement.
"I'm very familiar with the glacier. It's very hard to sort of envisage something so big not being there ... to come back and basically see an ice shelf has disappeared, which is 20 kilometers across (about 12 miles) ... I was speechless and started laughing because I couldn't sort of believe it," Hubbard added, speaking to msnbc.com.
"It was really weird when the helicopter first came over," he added.
Hubbard told msnbc.com that he had gone to the glacier to recover instruments used to monitor the glacier and time-lapse photographs.
.."What I saw there is this ice shelf is riddled with rifts and cracks. You can see another big rift another 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) back into" the glacier, he said.
Hubbard said the large rift, which the researchers have dubbed "The Big Kahuna," was getting bigger. He was cautious about predicting when it would create a new vast ice island, but said it could happen "maybe next year, something like that."
'Abnormally warm'
He said while sea glacier's "calving" of ice bergs was a natural process, they were witnessing something out of the ordinary.
"The break-off last year is bigger than anything seen for at least 150 years," Hubbard said.
"This region (northern Greenland) is experiencing temperatures which are abnormally warm ... I think the far northwest of Greenland is seeing a kind of new regime of climate," he added.
The Humbolt Glacier, the widest in the northern hemisphere, is also retreating, Hubbard said. He said he was not a climate scientist, but said the pattern of ice melting in the area was "a definite consequence of climate change and global warming."
More at the linkNew photographs taken of a vast glacier in northern Greenland have revealed the... more
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Every so often the earth chooses to remind us that we really aren't in control of this planet. Greenland's massive runoff causing desalination of North Atlantic Shutdown of thermohaline circulation.Every so often the earth chooses to remind us that we really aren't in control of... more
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Greenland's ice sheet melted the most it has in over a half century last year, US government scientists said Tuesday in one of a series of "unmistakable" signs of climate change.
"The world continues to warm," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a briefing paper for reporters.
"Multiple indicators, same bottom-line conclusion: consistent and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans."
An annual climate survey, which includes work by scientists from 45 countries, said that ice sheet in Greenland melted at its highest rate since at least 1958, when similar data first became available.
Arctic sea ice shrank to its third smallest area on record, while the world's alpine glaciers shrank for the 20th straight year, the study said.
In line with previous studies, the survey said that 2010 was also one of the hottest years on record.
Last year was either tied for the hottest or the second hottest on record, depending on methodology. But all methodologies used showed the temperature to be at least 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 Celsius) above the average recorded in the three decades through 1990.
The survey noted that 2010 was exceptional for its extreme events, including a deadly heat wave in Russia, floods in Pakistan that displaced more than 20 million people and record snowfall in several US cities.
A series of studies have voiced alarm at the rapid pace of melting in the Arctic Ocean, which could lead to a rise in sea levels that threatens low-lying coastal areas and islands.
The Oslo-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program said in May that warming in the Arctic was on track to lift sea levels by up to 5.3 feet (1.6 meters) by 2100, a far steeper jump than predicted a few years ago.
More at the linkGreenland's ice sheet melted the most it has in over a half century last year, US... more
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The ice of Greenland and the rest of the Arctic is melting faster than expected and could help raise global sea levels by as much as 5 feet this century, dramatically higher than earlier projections, an authoritative international assessment says.
The findings "emphasize the need for greater urgency" in combating global warming, says the report of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), the scientific arm of the eight-nation Arctic Council.
The warning of much higher seas comes as the world's nations remain bogged down in their two-decade-long talks on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
Rising sea levels are expected to cause some of global warming's worst damage — from inundated small islands to possible flooding of New York City's subways. Oceans will not rise uniformly worldwide, because of currents, winds and other factors, but such low-lying areas as Bangladesh and Florida will likely be hard-hit.
The new report, whose executive summary was obtained by The Associated Press, is to be delivered to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and foreign ministers of the other seven member nations at an Arctic Council meeting next week in Greenland. It first will be discussed by some 400 international scientists at a conference this week in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Drawing on improved research techniques and recent scientific papers, the AMAP report updates forecasts made by the U.N.'s expert panel on climate change in its last major assessment in 2007.
The melting of Arctic glaciers and ice caps, including Greenland's massive ice sheet, is projected to help raise global sea levels by 35 to 63 inches (90 to 160 centimeters) by 2100, AMAP said, although it noted that estimate was highly uncertain.
That's up from the 2007 projection of 7 to 23 inches (19 to 59 centimeters) by the U.N. panel. The U.N. group had left out the possible acceleration of melting in Greenland and Antarctica, saying research on that hadn't advanced sufficiently by the mid-2000s. The U.N. estimate was based largely on the expansion of ocean waters from warming and the runoff from melting land glaciers elsewhere in the world.
Now the AMAP assessment finds that Greenland was losing ice in the 2004-2009 period four times faster than in 1995-2000.
In addition, the cover of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean is shrinking faster than projected by the U.N. panel, threatening the long-term survival of polar bears and other ice-dependent species. Summer ice coverage has been at or near record lows every year since 2001, said AMAP, predicting the ocean will be almost ice-free in the summer in 30 to 40 years.
Arctic temperatures in the past six years were the highest since measurements began in 1880, and "feedback" mechanisms are believed to be speeding up warming in the far north.
One such mechanism involves the ocean absorbing more heat when it's not covered by ice, because ice reflects the sun's energy. That effect has been anticipated by scientists "but clear evidence for it has only been observed in the Arctic in the past five years," AMAP said.
cont.The ice of Greenland and the rest of the Arctic is melting faster than expected and... more
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Xcorps Music and Girlie Action NYC Presents Nive Nielsen and The Deer Children
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMDF8Iv720o
Xcorps Music Presents Nive Nielsen and The Deer Children - This video is a compilation of video clips shot soon after sunrise 4-26-2011 near the Malibu Pier in Southern California. This is a nature film capturing the scenic beauty of the Malibu coastal zone featuring the prehistoric looking California Brown Pelican. The music track on this film is from a talented yet relatively unknown Eskimo girl from Greenland named Nive Nielsen performing with her band The Deer Children the song 'Room'.
Nive Nielsen and The Deer Children --
Nive Nielsen and The Deer Children are from Nuuk Greenland a country of 56,000 total inhabitants where their album has sold a massive 4500 copies, which is very good!
So far their recordings including the album 'Nive Sings' have only been released in Greenland though word of her talents and smooth tunes have circled the global web.
Greenland's Nive Nielsen and The Deer Children, featuring band members Jan De Vroede, Tom Pintens, Tim Van Den Bergh, Filip Wauters, Lisa Gamble and Dagobert Sondervan.
See The Action Hear The Music Join The Xcorps!
Stay Tuned!
4/2011 J.S.Edmondson
©2011TheXcorps
http://www.xcorpstv.com/
Girlie Action - http://www.girlieaction.com/
NIVE: http://www.myspace.com/nivenielsenXcorps Music and Girlie Action NYC Presents Nive Nielsen and The Deer Children... more
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With only 55,000 inhabitants, Greenland offers space and a challenge for hikers. For anglers. For kayak. For mountain climbers and mountain bikersWith only 55,000 inhabitants, Greenland offers space and a challenge for hikers. For... more
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New research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades.....read moreNew research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice... more
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Imagine the ocean as a giant swimming pool - devoid of topographical features like seamounts and trenches and with smooth walls instead of jutting continental shelves or jagged coastlines.
If you're in the community of oceanographers who model the large-scale circulation of the oceans, that's pretty much how you have to imagine them.Their size and complexity have presented a stiff challenge to those who would dare to try to mimic on computers how water moves and understand ocean dynamics. The challenge is to write computer code sophisticated enough to capture the myriad variables that move a unit of water from one place to another. What ocean modelers have traditionally ended up with is something that looks like a rudimentary computer game like Pong when what they desire is the resolution of an Xbox.
But in a new age of supercomputing, ocean circulation modelers are making first steps in seeing their subject as it really is. Christopher Wolfe and Paola Cessi, physical oceanographers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, have come up with an explanation for the way water moves in layers between the poles. The researchers are taking advantage of a new ability to simulate ocean dynamics at a scale of a few kilometers.
Though that may still sound like a pixilated picture, its improved realism in portraying intermediate-sized phenomena such as large swirls known as eddies is allowing the researchers to revise long-standing theories of large-scale circulation, which in turn could help the world understand what keeps warm places warm and cold places cold. Some would say the epiphany is happening not a moment too soon. There is increasing evidence of rapid melt-off of ice sheets in the world’s two biggest repositories, Antarctica in the south and Greenland to the north, spurring climate modelers to devise a number of what-if scenarios. The evidence has triggered a variety of doomsday theories that a freshwater dump would disrupt the climate patterns we’ve grown accustomed to, plunging temperate areas of the world, especially Europe, into frigidity.
Now Wolfe and Cessi have made enough progress to be able to advance theories of what two big puddles of fresh water at either end of the ocean would do to ocean circulation. In most of the scenarios they come up with, the effects on global climate would be significant.
“At this point, based on global climate predictions, circulation could either speed up or slow down or do nothing,” said Wolfe, a postdoctoral researcher. “That’s something we’d really like to know and that’s the question we’re trying to answer.”
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If winds and differences in the buoyancy of water are what set oceans in motion to begin with, eddies are like the flywheels that keep the motion going. Without a realistic understanding of eddies, oceanographers can’t really simulate the oceans at the speeds at which water really moves. So Wolfe and Cessi elected to try to produce a computer simulation, using supercomputers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif, Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They obtained 20,000,000 CPU-hours and used a model that is highly faithful to the movement of eddies in real life. They also decided, however, to leave their computerized ocean in more or less the shape of a rectangular swimming pool and shrink its scale to about half its real size, creating what Cessi dubs a “hobbit ocean.” The computational power needed to simulate eddy activity and include a geographically-correct basin would require a devotion of resources still not available among the world’s supercomputers.
But Cessi and Wolfe say the high-resolution view of eddies produces a significantly more realistic view of how oceans move than anyone has been able to replicate so far. Already the two believe that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that large-scale circulation patterns adjust over decades or centuries rather than over thousands of years, which implies that changes in circulation are something that we could conceivably witness within a few generations rather than at some point in the distant future. Cessi notes with pride that the pair’s modeling approach has sped up the oceans from a molasses pace to something a little runnier, not real water yet but maybe more like maple syrup.
"Our contribution was to resolve scales as small as five kilometers," said Cessi. "I don't think anyone has done a calculation with such high resolution and for an extended period of time."
The Scripps scientists chose this course after noticing that many oceanographers have in recent decades explored what would happen if Northern Hemisphere ice sheets were to suddenly melt and dump loads of freshwater into surrounding oceans. Doing so, they have concluded that an infusion of fresh water slows circulation in the Atlantic.
But for unknown reasons, few have considered the equally plausible scenario that a warming world would create a similar melt-off in Antarctica as well. The two discovered that if Antarctic melt produced a larger amount of freshwater, the circulation would speed up.
Recent observations suggest that these are not hypothetical scenarios. The opposing ice masses are melting at an accelerating rate. A 2009 analysis showed that in Greenland, the rate of annual mass loss increased from 137 gigatons per year in 2002-03 to 286 gigatons per year between 2007 and 2009. In Antarctica, the mass loss increased from 104 gigatons per year between 2002 and 2006 to 246 gigatons per year between 2006 and 2009.
cont.Imagine the ocean as a giant swimming pool - devoid of topographical features like... more
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Musk Oxen Live to Tell a Survivors’ Tale - The New York Times
Photo: A holdover from the Pleistocene era, the musk ox has managed to hang on while most of its brethren disappeared at the end of the last ice age.
December 13, 2010
Musk Oxen Live to Tell a Survivors’ Tale
By NATALIE ANGIER
Among the various large, charismatic and visibly winterized mammals that one might choose as a mascot for life in the Arctic belt, polar bears are, let’s face it, too hackneyed, reindeer too Rudolph, caribou too Sarah Palin’s target practice, and woolly mammoths too extinct.
There’s a better choice, though few may have heard of it. According to Arctic biologists, the quintessential example of megafaunal fortitude in the face of really bad weather is the musk ox, or Ovibos moschatus, a blocky, short-legged, highly social ungulate with distinctively curved horns and long hair that looks like shag carpeting circa 1975.
Ovibos’s common name is only partly justified. The males do emit a musky cologne during mating season, but the animal is not an ox. Nor, despite its back-of-the-nickel silhouette, is it a type of buffalo either. Its closest living relations are thought to be goats and sheep, but taxonomically and metaphorically, the musk ox is in an icy cubicle of its own. Once abundant throughout the northern latitudes worldwide, today they are found only in Arctic North America, Greenland and pockets of Siberia and Scandinavia. The musk ox is a holdover from the Pleistocene, the age of the giant mammals memorialized in natural history murals everywhere — the mammoths and mastodons, the saber-toothed cats, the giant ground sloths, the 400-pound beavers. Yet while a vast majority of the frost-fitted bigfoots disappeared at the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, Ovibos hung on, as stubbornly as the ox it is not.
Scientists are now seeking to understand how, exactly, the animal has managed to persist through repeated climate shifts and habitat upheavals. Researchers see in the musk ox’s story clues to help guide efforts to conserve other large land mammals now at risk of extinction. They also hope to raise the profile of a species they consider magnificent, at once stalwart and supple, a page of living prehistory whose social and behavioral complexities they have just begun to decode.
“There’s evidence that they have an elephantlike social structure, and even some form of culture,” said Joel Berger, a researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society and a professor at the University of Montana. So why is everybody flying to Africa to see elephants when we’ve got this marvelous species living in our own backyard?
In a presentation last week at the Bronx Zoo, where the wildlife society is based, Dr. Berger described preliminary results from field studies of the musk ox that he has performed with Layne Adams of the U.S. Geological Survey and other collaborators. He talked about the challenges of catching animals to weigh and measure them, check their teeth, take their blood and furnish them with G.P.S. collars. One group of musk ox in Cape Krusenstern National Monument in Alaska had such bad, broken teeth you’d think they were subsisting on a diet of Pepsi and Snickers bars, said Dr. Berger, and the researchers worried that the population was unhealthy and on its way out.
Yet after suffering several seasons of declining numbers, the brown-toothers rebounded this year to match in fecundity and offspring survival a group living in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve that had exemplary teeth. The cause of their rotten dentition remains a mystery, but the Krusenstern clan clearly was not biting the dust.
For all their storied past as co-prancers with mastodons, musk oxen are not huge animals. Adult males stand about four feet high and weigh around 600 to 700 pounds, less than half the weight of the average draft horse. Yet they look hulky as a result of their spectacular double-layered fur coat. The long, shaggy outer layer they keep year round, not only to help shield them against the brutal cold of an Arctic winter, when temperatures can plunge 40 degrees or more below zero, but also to deter the insect pests of an Arctic summer.
“You’ll see caribou in summertime trotting across the countryside trying to get away from all the mosquitoes and biting flies,” said Jim Lawler, a biologist with the National Park Service’s Arctic Network in Fairbanks. “But the musk ox just stand there with clouds of mosquitoes hovering above them. It’s hard to penetrate that fur.” For added insulation, musk oxen grow a second fur layer each winter, an undercoat called qiviut that is said to be many times warmer than wool and softer than cashmere — and how obliging of the animals to shed that qiviut in spring for use in scarves.
With their stubby legs, musk oxen are not migratory like caribou or great dashers like reindeer. Their basic approach to winter management is: Don’t just do something — stand there. “You’ll see them in a big storm, drifted over, covered with snow,” said Dr. Lawler. “They’re almost part of the scenery.” They lapse into a state of what might be called hibernation al fresco, as their oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production drop and their metabolic rate slows by about a third. “They’re basically shutting down some of their machinery so they can survive on less food,” said Dr. Lawler, who has studied musk ox energetics.
Whatever their occasional resemblance to the scenery, musk oxen are by no means as dumb as a post. “They live in loosely knit family-bonded societies,” said Dr. Berger, and they keep track of who’s who. The group is, after all, essential to their survival. When confronted with predators like wolves, a herd of musk oxen will famously circle the wagons, the adults forming a wall of horns facing outward, the vulnerable young safely shielded behind them. They also seem to have a keen memory for where the best foraging grounds may be found in the spring, the optimal mix of grasses and willow twigs to maximize the performance of the microbes at work in their ruminant gut. Musk oxen turn out to be very efficient at extracting calories to put on the fat they need to survive the long winter fast.
Historical records and genetic evidence alike suggest that the musk ox is a Rasputin, “the comeback kid of the Quaternary,” said Ross MacPhee, curator of vertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. “They undergo periods where they really bolster their numbers for a few years, then they go down to an almost complete collapse, then later they come back like gangbusters.”
As a result of passing through repeated population bottlenecks, in which only a handful of individuals survived to spawn subsequent generations, today’s 100,000 musk oxen are thought to be notably homogenous, lacking in the sort of genetic diversity once thought critical to a species’ long-term prospects. “It would be hard to argue that musk ox are on their way out the door,” said Dr. MacPhee. “They are not weak sisters.”
Just ask that saber-toothed cat fossilized under the floor.
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/14/science/14ANGI1/14ANGI1-articleLarge.jpgMusk Oxen Live to Tell a Survivors’ Tale - The New York Times
Photo: A... more
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Vanguard correspondent Adam Yamaguchi talks about his travels to Greenland, one of the most remote and difficult destinations on the globe.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.Vanguard correspondent Adam Yamaguchi talks about his travels to Greenland, one of the... more
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In this scene from Vanguard's "I Heart Global Warming," correspondent Adam Yamaguchi investigates how Greeland's natural resources -- oil, natural gas, and minerals -- may be increasingly accessible as glaciers recede.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.In this scene from Vanguard's "I Heart Global Warming," correspondent... more
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Written by Hardy Jones from BlueVoice.org
I was headed for Nuuk, Greenland, to attend the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). As the doors closed on my IcelandAir flight from JFK, my iPhone told me the International Whaling Commission (IWC), with U.S. assent, had voted to allow Greenland to kill 27 humpback whales for aboriginal subsistence.
An hour out of Keflavik, I realized the humpbacks that have now become targets of the hunt were swimming a mere vertical mile below me. I had come to know this stock of whales in the Caribbean at Samana Bay and out on the Silver Banks. They were extraordinarily friendly toward me as I filmed them underwater. We looked at each other eye-to-eye, each knowing the other was aware of the other. The idea of their being harpooned is appalling to me.
The quota granted by the IWC specified the hunt could not begin until mid-October. But Greenland has announced the hunt will begin immediately, in flagrant violation of the permit. After landing in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, I would find other violations.
Along most of their migratory route off the eastern seaboard of the United States, the humpbacks are protected. In response to protection, they've become increasingly friendly and curious toward the whale watchers who now are part of a multimillion dollar business for charter boat owners, hotels, restaurants and transport companies. They approach boats and eyeball passengers with astonishing trust. That trust will now be rewarded by a harpoon.
Aboriginal hunts of marine mammals are a highly complex ethical issue. It is true that the Inuit and their cousins have traditionally thrived on what they call natural food -- caribou, seal, beluga, whales, and other marine mammals. They do not have much money with which to draw food from the cash economy, and they do not fare well on the kind of food eaten by Europeans and Americans.
But it turns out that Greenland's hunt for whales is as much about profits as it is about aboriginal rights.
I discovered in Nuuk that Greenlanders are not observing the terms of the IWC quota that permits the hunt be conducted solely for aboriginal subsistence purposes.
I checked out markets and restaurants and immediately and easily found whale meat for sale in commercial channels. To document my finds, I used my iPhone to snap stills and record video. In the supermarket I found packaged whale meat. In a Thai restaurant I found whale sushi and whale and Rangoon Whiskey soup. In a greasy spoon burger/pizza joint I found whale steak.
The Inuit of Greenland complain that they do not have enough whale to sustain themselves. They may be having a hard time getting whale meat because the big money guys are sucking it all up for the more lucrative commercial trade.
My final discovery came on the last day of the ICC. A young Inuit from eastern Greenland told me pleadingly that his village needed to take whales outside the IWC quota. "We steal them," he told me.
"What species of whale are you taking?" I asked.
"Any kind that the elders tell us," came his reply.
Humpbacks have been missing from Greenlandic waters for sixty years -- hunted out by whalers. Their population has now recovered to the extent that explorer whales have made their way back to ancient feeding grounds. This should be cause for joyous celebration -- not a dreadful slaughter.Written by Hardy Jones from BlueVoice.org
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