NWT - Scientists, Tribal Elders Meet To Discuss Speeding Arctic Changes

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Conference sponsor Coastal Zone Canada Association has held similar gatherings focusing on every coastline in the country. As climate change and oil and gas drilling bear down on the fragile northern ocean and tundra, it's high time the Arctic got similar treatment, said conference organizer Jack Mathias. "This is the first (conference) to take a broad look at the coastal zone," said Mathias, a senior planner with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. "This will be the first time that we look across all these sectors in the presence of the people mostly affected."

Those effects are real. "Energy development is just starting up," said Gruben. "You see a lot of seismic lines out there." You also see a lot of landslides, where permafrost has melted beneath the hills, and animals straying from their normal ranges due to subtle disruptions they already detect.

Henry dissects the changing North from a scientist's perspective. He's helped run a 12-year experiment attempting to find out what happens when tundra warms up. The increasing number of shrubs now growing in his greenhouses corresponds almost exactly with what's actually happening on the land. "It's definitely due to warming and it's happening already," he said. "In every case, every report shows increased cover of shrubs. It really has increased quite dramatically." Other scientists will discuss how Atlantic cod could be headed north on an "oceanic heat wave" drifting in from Russia or how more shipping through increasingly ice-free northern waters will affect Arctic communities.

The problems of drilling for oil and gas in Arctic waters that are routinely scoured by ice are also on the agenda, as are potential threats to navigation caused by submerged artificial islands built and sunk during the 1970s exploration boom. Others will explain how the coastline itself is being recarved as climate change defrosts the frozen gravel that comprises Canada's northern land. By the end of the century, the number of severe open-water storms that wash away the bluffs and beaches is expected to increase by 60 per cent. Floods that now come only every 25 years are expected to arrive annually.

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http://www.news1130.com/news/national/article.jsp?content=n081523A