scholarly journals The Role of Magnetometry in Managing Arctic Archaeological Sites in the Face of Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Hodgetts ◽  
Edward J. H. Eastaugh

ABSTRACTClimate change is impacting archaeological sites around the globe, and Arctic sites are among the most vulnerable because the region is experiencing particularly rapid change. In the face of this threat, archaeologists, heritage managers, and northern communities need to develop strategies for documenting and monitoring Arctic sites and prioritizing them for further investigation. Using three case studies from Banks Island in the western Canadian Arctic, we demonstrate how magnetometer survey could assist in this process, despite the region's poorly developed soils, widespread glacial tills, and periglacial geomorphology, which pose challenges for the technique. The case studies illustrate the utility of magnetometry in mapping both archaeological and permafrost features in the Arctic, allowing it to rapidly investigate site structure and assess the level of threat due to climate change.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (0) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Joëlle Klein ◽  
Kamrul Hossain

The following article revisits existing scholarship on human-centric approaches to security in cyberspace and argues that a holistic understanding of cyber security in the Arctic must include discussion of the use of cyber technology in the everyday lives of individuals and communities, addressing both the ways such tools enable and undermine human security. Simultaneously, the article contextualises the Arctic as a region undergoing rapid change as a result of climate change and increased digitalisation and seeks to understand the consequent implications for human security. In light of these considerations, the article analyses the existing constraints and possibilities that cyber security and digitalisation pose for human security and revisits them from a humancentric perspective of cyber security. It also seeks to contextualise such security influences in relation to the role of climate change and its influence on the region. Finally, several examples are discussed to underline the interdependent implications of digitalisation and climate change from a human-centric perspective of cyber security in the Arctic.


This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer Empire capital at Angkor, and ranging from the Near East to South America. Previous enquiries have stressed the possible multiple and internal causes of collapse, such overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, warfare, and poor leadership and decision-making. In contrast, Megadrought and Collapse presents case studies of nine major episodes of societal collapse in which megadrought was the major and independent cause of societal collapse. In each case the most recent paleoclimatic evidence for megadroughts, multiple decades to multiple centuries in duration, is presented alongside the archaeological records for synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from paleoclimate proxy sources (lake, marine, and glacial cores; speleothems, or cave stalagmites; and tree-rings) and are explained by researchers directly engaged in their analysis. Researchers directly responsible for them discuss the relevant current archaeological records. Two arguments are developed through these case studies. The first is that societal collapse in different time periods and regions and at levels of social complexity ranging from simple foragers to complex empires would not have occurred without megadrought. The second is that similar responses to megadrought extend across these historical episodes: societal collapse in the face of insurmountable climate change, abandonment of settlements and regions, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural landscapes. As we confront megadrought today, and in the likely future, Megadrought and Collapse brings together the latest contributions to our understanding of past societal responses to the crisis on an equally global and diverse scale.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. E. Popova ◽  
A. Yool ◽  
Y. Aksenov ◽  
A. C. Coward ◽  
T. R. Anderson

Abstract. The Arctic Ocean is a region that is particularly vulnerable to the impact of ocean acidification driven by rising atmospheric CO2, with potentially negative consequences for calcifying organisms such as coccolithophorids and foraminiferans. In this study, we use an ocean-only general circulation model, with embedded biogeochemistry and a comprehensive description of the ocean carbon cycle, to study the response of pH and saturation states of calcite and aragonite to rising atmospheric pCO2 and changing climate in the Arctic Ocean. Particular attention is paid to the strong regional variability within the Arctic, and, for comparison, simulation results are contrasted with those for the global ocean. Simulations were run to year 2099 using the RCP8.5 (an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) scenario with the highest concentrations of atmospheric CO2). The separate impacts of the direct increase in atmospheric CO2 and indirect effects via impact of climate change (changing temperature, stratification, primary production and freshwater fluxes) were examined by undertaking two simulations, one with the full system and the other in which atmospheric CO2 was prevented from increasing beyond its preindustrial level (year 1860). Results indicate that the impact of climate change, and spatial heterogeneity thereof, plays a strong role in the declines in pH and carbonate saturation (Ω) seen in the Arctic. The central Arctic, Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Baffin Bay show greatest rates of acidification and Ω decline as a result of melting sea ice. In contrast, areas affected by Atlantic inflow including the Greenland Sea and outer shelves of the Barents, Kara and Laptev seas, had minimal decreases in pH and Ω because diminishing ice cover led to greater vertical mixing and primary production. As a consequence, the projected onset of undersaturation in respect to aragonite is highly variable regionally within the Arctic, occurring during the decade of 2000–2010 in the Siberian shelves and Canadian Arctic Archipelago, but as late as the 2080s in the Barents and Norwegian seas. We conclude that, for future projections of acidification and carbonate saturation state in the Arctic, regional variability is significant and needs to be adequately resolved, with particular emphasis on reliable projections of the rates of retreat of the sea ice, which are a major source of uncertainty.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manos Tsakiris ◽  
Neza Vehar ◽  
Stephen M Fleming ◽  
Sophie De Beukelaer ◽  
Max Rollwage

Updating one’s beliefs about the causes and effects of climate change is crucial for altering attitudes and behaviours. Importantly, metacognitive abilities - insight into the (in)correctness of one’s beliefs- play a key role in the formation of polarized beliefs. We investigated the role of domain-general and domain-specific metacognition in updating prior beliefs about climate change across the spectrum of climate change scepticism. We also considered the role of how climate science is communicated in the form of textual or visuo-textual presentations. We show that climate change scepticism is associated with differences in domain-general as well as domain-specific metacognitive abilities. Moreover, domain-general metacognitive sensitivity influenced belief updating in an asymmetric way : lower domain-general metacognition decreased the updating of prior beliefs, especially in the face of negative evidence. Our findings highlight the role of metacognitive failures in revising erroneous beliefs about climate change and point to their adverse social effects.


1983 ◽  
Vol 2 (S1) ◽  
pp. 53-55
Author(s):  
Otto Schaefer

Physical health and psycho-social impacts are very much related. There are indications that not only the psychological and social well-being of native peoples but also the physical health and nutritional status has deteriorated in the face of resource development activities in the Arctic. Examples are provided of nutritional anemia, infection of the gastro-intestinal and respiratory tracts in children, obesity, arteriosclerosis and metabolic problems in adults, as well as family break-down, alcohol abuse, venereal disease, and deaths due to violence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 4497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oran R. Young

Conditions in the Arctic today differ from those prevailing during the 1990s in ways that have far-reaching implications for the architecture of Arctic governance. What was once a peripheral region regarded as a zone of peace has turned into ground zero for climate change on a global scale and a scene of geopolitical maneuvering in which Russia is flexing its muscles as a resurgent great power, China is launching economic initiatives, and the United States is reacting defensively as an embattled but still potent hegemon. This article explores the consequences of these developments for Arctic governance and specifically for the role of the Arctic Council. The article canvasses options for adjusting the council’s membership and its substantive remit. It pays particular attention to opportunities for the council to play a role in managing the increasingly complex Arctic regime complex.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Vicinus

How and when did society first recognize women's homoerotic bonds? Were these romantic friendships fully accepted, or were they seen as problematic? Did the women involved see themselves as lesbians? These and other questions have been raised over the past twenty years by historians of lesbian sexuality. When Lillian Faderman in her pioneering survey of European and American lesbians declared the nineteenth century as the golden age of unproblematic romantic friendships, historians quickly responded with evidence to the contrary. Much of this debate has been focused on whether or not women could be considered “lesbian” before they claimed (or had forced on them) a publicly acknowledged identity. But the modern lesbian did not appear one day fully formed in the case studies of the fin-de-siècle sexologists; rather she was already a recognizable, if shadowy, subject for gossip among the sophisticated by at least the 1840s and 1850s. By examining closely a single divorce trial, I hope to show that literary and legal elites acknowledged lesbian sexuality in a variety of complex ways. Their uneasy disapproval encompassed both a self-conscious silence in the face of evidence and a desire to control information, lest it corrupt the innocent. Yet who can define the line between the ignorant and the informed? The very public discussion of the Codrington divorce, and most especially the role of the feminist, Emily Faithfull, in alienating Helen Codrington's affections from her husband, demonstrate the recognition of female homosexual behavior.


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