Permafrost

Colleagues,

Please review the information available through the following two links:

All About Frozen Ground (U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Center)

Animation: Permafrost – what is it? (13:04)

Please write an original short essay on the topic of:

The Effects of Large Scale Melting of Permafrost

Your essay should be at least 20 sentences long, and no more than 50 sentences long. Your essay must be entirely in your own words: do NOT use direct quotations. You may refer to the information included – or linked to – in this memo, to the documents provided previously, and to your textbook, for all of the information that you require for this task.

Organic Matter in Arctic River Shows Permafrost Thaw (Eos, 07.04.2020)

The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on Earth, and increasing temperatures are thawing permafrost, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, and accelerating warming. These feedbacks concern scientists because roughly 850 gigatons of carbon—representing 25%–50% of all soil organic carbon on Earth—are believed to be stored in the permafrost at present.

Be it continuous, discontinuous, sporadic or isolated, permafrost covers about a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, some 22.8 million square kilometres: 50 per cent each of the land masses of Russia and Canada; 22 per cent of China; and 82 per cent of Alaska (around 15 per cent of total land mass in the continental United States). Furthermore, almost 90 per cent of circumpolar peatlands that formed after the last ice age some 10,000 years ago are currently sequestered in permafrost; of these, the Hudson Bay Lowlands of northern Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec comprise one of the largest such continuous regions. These numbers are relevant to global climate-change scenarios and Canada’s role in them in particular because organic matter trapped in permafrost represents 50 per cent of the global carbon pool below ground, or four times the amount of carbon released from all human activities since 1850. (Canadian Geographic, 02.04.2019)

A thaw slump, a consequence of thawing permafrost, filled the Peel River Plateau with two million cubic metres of sediment. (Photo: Courtesy of Government of Northwest Territories and Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation)

Arsenic and Gold Mining   …   Canada’s taxpayers ante up billions to clean up the mistakes of the past.  Welcome to the Giant Mine, an abandoned gold mine in Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories (see map).  The Canadian government first took charge of it in 1999 after the owner declared bankruptcy and walked away.  It is one of an estimated 10,000 orphaned or abandoned mines in Canada’s north that are now the government’s responsibility.  And it is full of arsenic trioxide, a compound that is produced by heating arsenopyrite ore, a mineral that has traces of gold.  Arsenic trioxide is odourless, tasteless, highly soluble—and lethal.  An amount smaller than a pea is enough to kill.  The Giant Mine has 237,000 tonnes of the stuff.

Site of the mass grave in Brevig Mission, Alaska, where 72 of the small village’s 80 adult inhabitants were buried after succumbing to the deadly 1918 pandemic virus. Photo credit: Angie Busch Alston. (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Permafrost (Alfred-Wegener-Institut)

Artic Meltdown (Bridget Alex, Discover, 02.01.2019)

Arctic Focus (Arctic Research Foundation)

Arctic Permafrost is Starting to Thaw. Here’s Why We Should All Care. (Amy Martin, PRI's The World, 30.10.2018)

Artic Program (NOAA)

Permafrost and the Global Carbon Cycle (T. Schuur, 2019)

A Warming Arctic Turns Topsy Turvy (NASA, 28.04,2020)

Climate policy implications of nonlinear decline of Arctic land permafrost and other cryosphere elements (Nature, 23.04.2019)

Fast response of cold ice-rich permafrost in northeast Siberia to a warming climate (Nature, 04.05.2020)

Global Cryosphere Watch (World Meteorological Organization)

Multi-Language Glossary of Permafrost and Related Ground-Ice Terms (International Permafrost Association, 2005)

How to save the Arctic’s moderating role on global warming (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 01.04.2019)

International Glaciological Society

Monitoring Permafrost (U.S. National Park Service)

Permafrost (GEOSCAN Search Results)

Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release (Nature, 30.04.2019)

Permafrost and Hazard Atlas (Yukon College)

Sea-ice-free Arctic makes permafrost vulnerable to thawing (08.01.2020)

Tunnel Vision: Lessons in the Impermanence of Permafrost (UNDARK, 28.04.2020)

In writing this short essay you are required to use and show the structured essay writing strategy that you have been introduced to, and which is posted on the Writing Resources page of EduNorth.

Evaluate the quality of your work in completing this learning task and assign yourself a per cent score that you believe is fair, considering your total time spent and your honest efforts with these tasks.  (____ %)

Value:  5% of Course Mark.

Due:  Wednesday, May 13, by 16:00.

Send your completed tasks by email to:  boyle.damian@northlandscollege.sk.ca

NOTES1) Please use your Northlands College email account for all correspondence.

If you have not already done so, please send me an email from this account to confirm that you are able to use it. If you require a new password, please reply with a request for a new one and I will forward this to the IT folks.

2) Learning resources for Earth Science 30, including the Project Requirements, are posted on the Geology page of EduNorth. 

3) The Creighton campus is now closed to Learners until further notice.

4) Right now would be a very good time to apply for courses beginning in September at Northlands College.

Wishing you a healthy, safe, and enjoyable day, Folks.

Here’s a song to help you with maintaining your balance in the worst of times:

Send A Message (The Black Seeds)

Be well.

Yours,

Damian

306.222.6185