National Geographic redesign by Kelsey Paone

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 8 THE GROUND ZERO OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Ped et pratibus ea eaquis etur, omnimod minis es ut ea non comnis aut exces consendae nis eaquo elitatis am eum abor mo que eaquia ne nisciliti reprereribus etur mi, solupidunda ditat volupta epeliquae

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THE GROUND

ZERO OF CLIMATE CHANGE

BY CLIFF HARRIS PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUKA TAMBACA

CAMPING UNDER THE STARS Chunks of ice on earth. You might call this place ground zero in the effort to predict climate change, sea level rise, and the fate of coastal cities around the world. With a volume of more than 700,000 cubic miles and an average thickness of 4,000 feet, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) holds enough water to raise sea levels by 15 to 20 feet— and it is already sweating off 130 billion tons of ice per year. Satellites have helped to monitor the changes in the region, but there are some things you simply have to come here and explore in person. Ice sheets aren’t the static scabs of frost that scientists once imagined, but rather complex structures with many moving parts. In the WAIS, massive conveyor belts of ice (called ice streams) up to 100 miles across and hundreds of miles long ooze toward the ocean.

MOUNTAINS SEPARATING

A profound feeling of isolation sets in as the plane departs. Propellers roar. The twin-engine Basler, vintage 1942, bounces on skis over the wind-pocked ice, bobs into the air, and shrinks to a dot in the sky. Then it’s just the four of us standing here, a pile of boxes and bags, and flat, white horizon in every direction. We’re on our own in Antarctica for the next few weeks, in the middle of a million square miles of empty ice about 380 miles from the South Pole. Aside from a few invisible bacteria, we’re the only living things for hundreds of miles in any direction. We pause to let it sink in; then we grab our tent bags and set to work. It’s a typical summer afternoon on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A wind blows from the south, scouring the ice free of loose snow so it resembles weathered sandstone. 8 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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RECREATION DECLINING

Guiding their movement is an array of unseen forces, including mountains, valleys, and lakes—and maybe even smoldering volcanoes— hidden beneath the ice. We cannot predict how the ice will respond to warming without understanding those forces. Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist from the University of California at Santa Cruz, has come to Antarctica to do just that. The wind whips at his tent as he anchors it to the snow with yard-long bamboo stakes. The rest of his team are also raising tents: myself, Tulaczyk’s Ph.D. student Nadine Quintana Krupinski, and Rickard Pettersson, a glaciologist from Uppsala University in Sweden. In the coming weeks we will venture far from this camp, using ice-penetrating radar to map the landscape half a mile below the surface of the ice. We’ll install seismic stations to eavesdrop on “ice quakes” that rattle the WAIS twice per day like clockwork, and we’ll plant sensors to monitor every slip and lurch of the ice sheet to the nearest half inch. It sounds simple, but in Antarctica nothing is.

CRACKING GLACIERS One afternoon I sit in a cramped office as Tulaczyk and Pettersson browse satellite images of the WAIS. Pettersson hits a key on his Toughbook and pulls up an aerial view of the region we’ll soon visit: the massive Whillans Ice Stream, 3,000 feet thick and 50 miles wide, bounded on either side by slower-moving ice. Pettersson’s picture is actually a patchwork of satellite photos and radar images that he has assembled. He and Tulaczyk have inspected these images for months, tweaking the routes that we’ll travel in order to avoid hazards. “In this area we have lots of crevasses,” Pettersson says as he runs his cursor over a striated patch of ice, several miles across, that our planned route skirts widely. “The crevassing probably continues,” he says, “but we don’t know.” Crevasses in Antarctica have a nasty habit of lurking beneath fragile crusts of snow. One wrong step and you can drop out of sight without a squeak, perhaps crashing 100 feet down and breaking a femur while your colleagues above are wondering where you’ve snuck off to. “These crevasses are like minefields,” Tulaczyk confides. “You would prefer to have them open and visible.” We will use ice-penetrating radar to detect the hidden crevasses in our path when we ride our snowmobiles on the ice sheet.

MELTING ICE CAPS Even in a shrinking modern world of supersonic jets and global FedEx, it has taken Tulaczyk 26 days to reach this spot from California. He was delayed eight days in Christchurch, New Zealand, as summer storms belted the Antarctic coast. Then came nine days of preparation in McMurdo Station, the main U.S. base in Antarctica, and nine more days stranded by weather at a remote airstrip deep inside the WAIS. Today the tiny Basler ferried us 200 miles south to our final destination, 84.45 degrees south of the equator. During our weeks on the ice, we will travel as much as 10 hours a day on snowmobiles. We’ll navigate the featureless white using GPS technology, and we’ll walk in spots where Homo sapiens has never stepped. Our first stop in Antarctica is McMurdo Station, home to 1,000 people during the Austral summer field season, from November to February. McMurdo’s cargo pallets, shipping containers, and metal buildings sprawl across a rocky corner of ice-cloaked Ross Island, 30 miles off the mainland. THE GROUND ZERO OF CLIMATE CHANGE

TUNDRA GOING GREENER EVERYDAY BY DONALD HURLBERT PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL RAY

The most inhospitable land in the entire world, the Arctic Tundra, is now undergoing an amazing transformation. Plants are growing taller, there is less bare ground devoid of vegetation, and even some shrubs are growing. It is far from being an agricultural breadbasket, but is well on its way to becoming a more lively ecosystem.

recent study from biologists at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden documents the dramatic changes that are occurring. Their study analyzed data across the Arctic from 1980 to 2010 collected by the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX). Changes in 158 plant communities from 46 locations were observed and their trends were recorded. They found that vascular species (shrubs and plants) have become more prevalent. The cause of the prevalence was linked directly to locally warmer temperatures. The degree of vegetation change was not uniform throughout the Arctic tundra. Some areas grew more or less depending on factors such as climate zone, soil moisture, and the presence of permafrost. “The response of different plant groups to rising temperatures often varied with summer ambient temperature, soil moisture content and experimental duration, with shrubs expanding with warming only where the ambient temperature was already high, and grasses expanding mostly in the coldest areas studied,” explains Ulf Molau, professor of plant ecology at the University of Gothenburg and for many years a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Northern communities are adapting to their surroundings by taking advantage of the previously barren land. However, new challenges may present themselves like erosion of the newly loosened soil. The land could become so unstable that construction of permanent structures can be made impossible. Plus, melting

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permafrost is a major producer of greenhouse gases, further exacerbating the warming climate. Soils in high latitude regions contain more carbon than the atmosphere. With the planet sustaining increasing temperatures, it is important to remember that the Arctic is also feeling the heat. Investigating the potential effects of global warming on the Arctic tundra, researchers in the United Kingdom have discovered that carbon stored in the tundra could be released into the atmosphere by new trees growing in the warmer region. The result? Increasing climate change. The finding of the study is presented in the journal Nature Climate Change. A warmer climate offers a prime breeding ground for a greener Arctic. Scientists thought that a greener area would mean more carbon dioxide (CO2) would be absorbed from the atmosphere, which in turn would mitigate global warming. But this latest study suggests the opposite is true. If decomposition rates in soils increase, the forest can be expanded into the tundra in arctic Sweden, and in turn trigger the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. With global warming, the fall freeze comes later and more of the permafrost is melting in the southern Arctic. Shrubs and spruce that previously couldn’t take root on the permafrost now dot the landscape, potentially altering the habitat of the native animals. Another major concern is that the melting of the permafrost is contributing to global warming. Estimates suggest that about 14 percent of the Earth’s carbon is tied up in the permafrost. Until recently, the tundra acted as a carbon sink and captured huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as part of photosynthesis. This process helped keep the amount of this greenhouse gas from accumulating in the atmosphere.

The few plants and animals that live in the harsh conditions of the tundra are essentially clinging to life. They are highly vulnerable to environmental stresses like reduced snow cover and warmer temperatures brought on by global warming.

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KUMBH MELA The LARgest gathering of humanity has begun BY MATTHEW URBIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY BORIS KAULIN

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The stars are aligned. The first aiders are on standby. The latrines are dug. And the city of Allahabad is waiting to see how many tens of millions of people will descend on it. One thing is certain: the Kumbh Mela, a giant gathering of Hindu pilgrims that takes place every 12 years in four cities in northern India, and that is celebrated this year in Allahabad, is unique. No other religious gathering comes close to it in terms of scale. And because true pilgrims come here to stay—some for days, some for weeks, some for the 55 days of its duration—it is more than just a site of pilgrimage. It’s a city. Temporarily, it may be the world’s largest. Allahabad is where the sacred River Ganges meets another, the Yamuna, and people come here in the cold months of January and February over which the Kumbh Mela is held to bathe in the holy water and wash away their sins. The timing is astrologically determined, but the Indian monsoon ensures that the huge river plain on which the tent city is constructed is often flooded until the previous August or September. Building can’t get underway until the waters have receded and the new river patterns have revealed themselves, which this time meant last October. So the Mela authorities have three months to build the city and another three to dismantle it. It is usually cleared away by April.

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In 2001 this half-year city welcomed between 30 and 70 million people, depending on who you ask, and this year the authorities are predicting 80 million. But numbers are notoriously hard to obtain, because nobody is counting. There is no official registration. Locals wander in and out. People from further afield find accommodation, usually cramped, with relatives in the town. Of all the four cities that host the Kumbh Mela, Allahabad boasts the largest because it has the most space. Jiwesh Nandan, who was Mela Officer and hence oversaw the last Kumbh Mela in Allahabad in 2001, said that estimates are made on the basis of aerial photographs and the dimensions of the habitable area, but these are very approximate. In the past, when most people arrived by train, ticket sales were a useful indicator. But now people have many more modes of transport at their disposal, notably the car. Allahabad’s District Commissioner, Devesh Chaturvedi, expects up to 10 million to come for the most important bathing day, Mauni Amawasya, on February 10, and he puts the “permanent” population of the temporary city at about a million.

Every 12 years, millions of Hindu pilgrims flock to the city for the Kumbh Mela, a series of religious rituals Mark Twain once called so wonderful that it “can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint”. The influx of pilgrims, up to 200 million over the eight weeks of the Kumbh Mela, means the appearance of a pop-up megacity along the rural eastern bank of the Ganga River, and along with it, temporary infrastructure, civil engineering and governance – which is exactly what one team from the Harvard Business School, want to explore. Tarun Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor and director of the South Asia Institute, will spend weeks studying how the systems put in place at the Kumbh Mela can be applied to other fast-growing cities. After all, he points out, there hasn’t been a major disaster at the festivals for a long time, which is astonishing, considering it draws 30 million people in just a single day. Professor Khanna says it appears there is a “command-and-control” structure to the fes-

tival organisation, more-so than in a typical Indian city. “I suppose this is needed to strike an appropriate balance between safety and allowing free-wheeling interaction, spiritual discourse and entrepreneurship of all sorts,” he told the HES. Lessons of organisation can be applied to many fast-growing cities around the world. Cities in India, China and across Africa have seen an explosion in populations as urbanisation takes hold in the developing world, and birthrates remain high. Punning, in China, is forecast to grow by 130 per cent by 2025; Yamoussoukro, in the Ivory Coast, by 200 per cent. “[We’re] studying what this organised chaos model can tell us about the many new cities that will likely spring up over the next decades as urbanisation continues apace,” Professor Khanna said. “At the Kumbh Mela, instant urbanization – a transformation in weeks from an underwater flood plain to a city of tens of millions, unfolding in a thoughtful and planned way – can potentially be a model for the kinds of things governments, non-government actors, and citizens should consider in the development of hundreds of other new, permanent cities.” But amidst the flow of humanity – the swamis and ash-covered monks, the beggars and businessmen, elephants, pilgrims, tourists and shysters – it’s clear the Kumbh Mela isn’t the same as a permanent, growing city. “The social character that builds up in a city over decades, even longer sometimes, isn’t likely to manifest itself in a reasonably episodic gathering of individuals,” Professor Khanna said. “On the other hand, a lot happens in a short period of time, so we can observe a normally slow-motion process reasonably quickly. “Think about how long Shanghai, Mumbai, Lagos and Istanbul took to get from a million or so to their current populations. The answer is many years, sometimes decades. Here, the Kumbh goes from nothing to tens of millions in a few days.” The team is looking specifically at roads, water sanitation, provision of electricity, and the land allocations that are needed to be decided. The Business School hopes this information can be used to analyse decision points about scarce resources and government funding. The Allahabad Kumbh is the first in the years after mobile-phone usage has skyrocketed in India. Professor Khanna hopes to use data from phone providers to draw a clearer picture of events on the ground. “If we think of each cell phone as a ‘sensor’ of sorts, there is a lot we can learn from the gargantuan amounts of data that are suddenly

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technically feasible to access,” he said. “We can learn how to modulate traffic patterns, how ‘things’ spread (disasters, rumours, etc), and how groups form and disband.” In a few weeks, however, with the Harvard team back in Massachusetts, the pilgrims and swamis and businessmen returning home, the Kumbh Mela site will once again return to simply being a quiet, rural eastern bank of the Ganga River, overlooking fast-growing Allahabad, and waiting out the next twelve years. Embarking on a specially designed chariot, the Dharma Guru started his journey to the Mela area escorted by more than 1,000 sadhus and Dandi swamis holding staffs and spears and carrying the traditional ‘dharma dhwaj’ (religious saffron banner). The procession also comprised chariots carrying photograph of former Dharamacharyas of Juna akhara. The entourage accompanied by the Swami Panchanand Giri, along with more than two dozen musical bands drawn from different states, played religious tunes as the procession made its way to the Mela as bytstanders waved and cheered while the more serious devouts paid obeisance. The procession led by saints recited Vedic shlokas and meandered through the desig18 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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nated route including Chowk, Rambagh, Bairahna, Kydgunj, Jawaharlal Nehru road before entering the Mela area. What caught the attention of onlookers was the presence of female saints joining the procession along with some foreign disciples. In between, locals welcomed the saint who is making a formal entry into the Mela area. Peshwai of Jagatguru, Swami PanchanandGiri of Junaakhara was a much watched event in the Mela area in the presence of sadhus, Mahamandaleshwars, and Dandi swamis clad in saffron and white holding the dharmadhwaj and marching in unison from the abode of JunaAkhara in the city-MaujaGiri ashram in Kydgunj on Thursday. Mahamandaleshwar, who also holds a post in the all India Akhara Parishad, stepped out of his ashram at exactly 11am amidst thunderous applause from disciples and locals who had gathered to welcome him. Kumbh Mela which is held once in twelve years is also the field for innovative marketing techniques. Termed as the largest congregation of humanity, HUL is actively marketing its Lifebuoy through an innovative tie up with 100 dhabas and hotels at the mela to serve rotis stamped with “Lifebuoy se haath dhoye kya?” (Have you washed your hand with Lifebuoy?) Ad agency Ogilvy devised this strategy to take its soap and hand wash to the masses. Special heat stamps make an impression of its message (Have you washed your hand with Lifebuoy?) on rotis and stamped by 100 promoters posted in 100 kitchens across the Kumbh Mela. The campaign started on February 1 and will run for the entire month.. The company plan is to put the hand wash reminder on 2.5 million rotis that expected to be consumed from its sponsored dhabas. Roti is most common and popular food item eaten by all classes of the North Indian population.The mela held in a large, predomi-

nantly small-town with rural population, is ideally a huge medium to push the soap and hand wash. The company hopes to reach out to a massive audience, at a without having to spend fraction of the advertisement budget. The dhabas and hotels were facing a major problem since LPG was available with no subsidy.With pilgrims finding market priced cooking gas (LPG) priced at around Rs 1400 too costly, Oil Ministry has modified that LPG be provided at subsidised rates to all feeding centers during the entire duration of Kumbh Mela. “Oil Minister’s government policy, a LPG connection can only be availed by community kitchen and commercial establishments like are supplied market priced LPG at Rs 481 per 14.2-kg cylinder and 19 kg cylinder at Rs 1000 plus. Twelve years back around 7000 LPG connections were issued for the mela but after the removal of subsidy on commercial purpose the new connections were only 931. In 2001, around 33,000 cylinders were consumed while so far it is 4000. Oil Ministry has also permitted kitchens in Government run hostels and canteens to get LPG at subsidized rates of Rs 481 without any cap. The prospects of Narendra Modi being named Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate gained momentum as the saints attending the Dharma Sansad openly backed his candidature for the top post. The sansad was organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Thursday. Even RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat in an oblique hint, appeared to back Modi as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. However, he said the party will be responsible for the consequences of its decision. Two prominent saints, including Ramanujacharya and Vasudevacharya, demanded Modi to be made BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 polls. Addressing the Dharma Sansad, saint Ramanujacharya said, “Neither UPA, nor NDA, we just want Modi to become the prime minister.” The saints attending the Dharma Sansad feel that Modi’e elevation as the Prime Minister will pave the way for the construction of a grand Ram temple, which was once the main political plank of the BJP. Earlier, senior VHP leader Ashok Singhal had openly backed Modi as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, although his organisation is split over making the Gujarat Chief Minister as its choice for 2014 polls. The growing support for Modi at the ‘Dharma Sansad’ is crucial since it is being attended by top leaders of the RSS, VHP and other religious heads. While Singhal’s support for Modi is being seen as an attempt by the VHP to mend

ties with him given the increasing clamour in his support, other leaders in the VHP, most notably Praveen Togadia, have not yet spoken on the issue. Singhal recently said that Modi is as popular as India’s first Prime Minister JL Nehru; however, Togadia has been categorical that he will not talk about one person or one party. Though Modi has not been invited to the RSS-VHP meet at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the firebrand politician has been at the core of the deliberations, reports said. Despite being a RSS product, the relations between the Gujarat Chief Minister and the VHP have been edgy till recently owing to the perceived cold war between Modi and Togadia over the erosion of once strong base of VHP in Gujarat. Speaking at the VHP ‘dharma sansad’, a gathering of religious leaders, he referred to the clamour for Modi as PM candidate at the meet and also elsewhere. Without referring to the Gujarat Chief Minister by name, Bhagwat said, “People know what is in your heart. The whole country is echoing with the same voice.

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MESO AMAZING

Central America’s Mesoamerican Reef BY KENNETH BROWER PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN SKERRY

In the mangroves off the east coast of Central America, at the edge of the Mesoamerican Reef, the world is divided in two: the above and the below. As we killed the engines and poled the skiff from the hot April sun into the shade of the forest, Will Heyman, my marine biologist companion, and I gazed into the simplicity above. We saw the green crowns of one of the least diverse of all tropical forests, where there is often but a single species of tree, the red mangrove. Salinity, storm waves, and oxygen-poor mud discourage understory growth in the mangroves, so there was little beneath the canopy for us to see. The occasional orchid. Rarely, a vine. A troop of fiddler crabs guarding holes in the mud. A big mangrove crab low on a trunk. Some insects. A tricolored heron perched on the stilt of a mangrove root. I leaned over the gunwale to sample the mud around the roots, scooping up sherds of pottery. The mangroves of the Mesoamerican Reef were once at the fringe of the ancient Maya civilization. I contemplated slipping a souvenir into my pocket—with such a lode here, what possible harm? “Strictly catch-and-release,” Heyman said. With a splashing of jettisoned sherds, we poled to another spot. There, in the still water, we witnessed the miracle of the below. At the waterline the roots in this forest blossom downward, expanding all shaggy-bearded with mats of algae, and slender brittle stars, and boxy starfish, and the little translucent vases of the filter feeders called tunicates—their “tunics” orange or purple or white— and soft corals and oysters and sponges in still more hues. Nothing here goes unadorned.

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Mangroves are crucial nurseries. Schools of small fry shift away through the Moorish architecture of arched roots, each school a pale cloud of translucent fish. The palest clouds are hardly there at all, composed of hatchlings no bigger than the smallest mosquito wigglers. These living motes are too small to name. Are they destined for adulthood in a sea grass bed, or coral reef, or open ocean, or right here in the mangroves? Too soon to tell. And so it goes on Central America’s reef system. Each component of this tripartite world of mangrove, sea grass, and coral reef is itself divided in two: the world above elementally simple, the one below bafflingly complex. The Mesoamerican Reef system stretches more than 600 miles along the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. Its Australian cousin, the Great Barrier Reef, is great indeed at 1,429 miles long—the biggest structure created by living things on this planet. Yet the Mesoamerican Reef, at less than half the length, is in its own way the more remarkable. The contours of the continental shelf here encouraged the development of an underwater reef platform that begins within a few hundred yards of shore in some places and as much as 20 miles offshore in others. This platform supports a variety of reef types and a profusion of corals unique in the Western Hemisphere. If the Mesoamerican Reef has any advantage over its

massive Australian counterpart in the Pacific, it is in this proximity to land and the intimacy of its connection with inshore habitats. Here the provinces of mangrove, sea grass, and coral reef are bound so tightly together by currents, tides, and mutual need that it’s really not possible to tease them apart. Mesoamerican mangroves form multiple lines of defense for the reef system. The first line is the tall mangrove forest along the coast and up the mouths of tidal rivers. The second line, and sometimes a third and fourth, occur offshore, in places where pointy mangrove seedlings have taken root atop a series of shallow marine ridges. Each clump slowly gathers the makings of an islet under itself. These islets grow into islands—mangrove cays—arranged in linear archipelagoes. The clusters of cays work as screens, benefiting the sea grass by moderating wave action and the coral reef by intercepting silt, fertilizers, and toxins in runoff from land. The mangroves, in addition to defense, provide mulch. They can shed tons of leaves per acre every year. Fungi and bacteria break down this leaf litter and consume it, then are consumed by tiny worms and crustaceans, which in turn feed small fish, which feed larger fish and birds and crocodiles. Life wells outward from the mangroves into the sea. At the same time, a living

countercurrent flows back in: the eggs, larvae, and sometimes the gravid females of reef creatures that use the mangroves as a nursery. If any fish is emblematic of this life cycle— kindergarten in the mangroves, graduate school on the reef—it is the rainbow parrotfish. The scientific name for this species is perfect, Scarus guacamaia, from the native Taino huacamayo, “macaw.” The resemblance is eerie: The fish has the parrot beak and the coloration of the blue-and-yellow macaw. The parrotfish starts small in the mangroves, as drab as a sparrow, and ends in full color on the reef, four feet long, the largest herbivorous fish in the Atlantic. Mangroves are not just a convenience for Scarus guacamaia. They are a necessity. When mangroves are carved away, to make room for tourist venues, for example, the species tends to go locally extinct, with repercussions in all directions. Coevolution has brought the coral reef and its parrotfish into balance; when the horny-beaked herbivores are fished out or otherwise eliminated, the reef declines, its corals overgrown by carpets of the algae the parrotfish normally eat. John Muir told us what we can expect when humans with their habits begin to unravel a sound ecosystem. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” MESOAMERICA’S REEF 23

THE COLD, HARSH

ARCTIC TUNDRA

BY BREANNA JAMISON PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL NICKLEN

Tundra ecosystems are treeless regions found in the Arctic and on the tops of mountains, where the climate is cold and windy and rainfall is scant. Tundra lands are snow-covered for much of the year, until summer brings a burst of wildflowers. Mountain goats, sheep, marmots, and birds live in mountain, or alpine, tundra and feed on the low-lying plants and insects. Hardy flora like cushion plants survive on these mountain plains by growing in rock depressions where it is warmer and they are sheltered from the wind. The Arctic tundra, where the average temperature is 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 to -6 degrees Celsius), supports a variety of animal species, including Arctic foxes, polar bears, gray wolves, caribou, snow geese and musk-oxen. The summer growing season is just 50 to 60 days, when the sun shines 24 hours a day. The few plants and animals that live in the harsh conditions of the tundra are essentially clinging to life. They are highly vulnerable to environmental stresses like reduced snow cover and warmer temperatures brought on by global warming. The Arctic tundra is changing dramatically due to global warming. Already, more southern animals like the red fox have moved onto the tundra. The red fox is now competing with the Arctic fox for food and territory, and the longterm impact on the sensitive Arctic fox is unknown. It is the Arctic’s permafrost that is the foundation for much of the region’s unique ecosystem, and it is the permafrost that is deteriorating with the warmer global climate. Permafrost is a layer of frozen soil and dead plants that extends some 1,476 feet (450 meters) under the surface. In much of the Arctic it is frozen year round. In the southern regions of the Arctic, the surface layer above the permafrost melts during the summer and this forms bogs and shallow lakes that invite an explosion of animal life. Insects swarm around the bogs, and millions of migrating birds come to feed on them. With global warming, the fall freeze comes later and more of the permafrost is melting in the southern Arctic. Shrubs and spruce that previously couldn’t take root on the permafrost now dot the landscape, potentially altering the habitat of the native animals.

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THE COLD, HARSH ARCTIC TUNDRA 25

Last year, the researchers encountered unusually thin ice that was three feet thick instead of the usual 12 to 16 feet, Garrott said. Large cracks and active breaks threatened snowmobile travel. As a result, the faculty members and students moved their base camp to a safer spot and set up emergency camps around their study area. When they couldn’t cross the ice on snowmobiles, they flew by helicopter.

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In the course of their work, Rotella said the researchers saw how the Weddell seals faced their own challenges from massive icebergs that broke off and dramatically changed seaice conditions in a number of recent years. Using data from 29 years, the team was able to compare seal numbers, as well as rates of pup production and adult survival, from before, during, and after the iceberg

event, to learn how the seals fared. The number of seals they observed and the number of pups that were born during the peak of the iceberg event were down to unprecedented low numbers, but monitoring showed that, “the seals, in fact, handled the event quite well,” Rotella said. He explained that the seals were able to maintain high survival rates by lowering their breeding efforts during the years of iceberg presence. They tended to avoid breeding colonies when sea-ice conditions were particularly unfavorable. The Emperor penguins, however, continued their normal activities during the worst of the iceberg event. The result was dramatic with dying penguins, as well as breeding failures, Rotella said. He noted that moving ice crushed eggs and even some adults at the peak of the iceberg event. Exhaustion and starvation might also have been an issue for penguins that walked across the ice from open water to their nesting colonies. “These results reveal that, depending on their ecology, different species can suffer different impacts from an extreme environmental disturbance,” said Rotella, the new leader of the Weddell seal study. “The results also reveal the importance of having long-term data to evaluate possible effects,” Rotella continued. “Without the data, we couldn’t have known whether this

extreme environmental event had extreme consequences for the seals or not. Fortunately for the seals, it did not. We learned that the seals were quite capable of riding out the massive changes in ice conditions as long as they didn’t persist too long.” Rotella said the relationship between thinner ice and icebergs is outside of his field of expertise, but he said that ice provides protection from predators like orcas and leopard seals. It also serves as a platform for Weddell seals in the first few weeks of their lives when they have little fat for staying warm in the water and can’t swim well yet. When the ice is thinner, predators have better access to the breeding areas used by penguins and Weddell seals for rearing their young. It is also easier for storms to shatter the ice sheets and for the area to have open water. No one knows what this season will bring for sea-ice conditions, but the MSU researchers said they hope it isn’t a repeat of last year. “That was very challenging,” Garrott said. “We really don’t know what the ice conditions are like this year until we get down there.” This year’s field season will run from about Oct. 10 to mid-December, with Rotella going down for the first half of the season and Garrott for the second half. Mary Lynn Price, a video journalist who has joined the group for the past two seasons, will be there for three weeks in the middle, with her stay overlapping Rotella’s and Garrott’s.

This will be the 45th season for the study that Garrott and Rotella took over around 2001 from Don Siniff at the University of Minnesota. Initiated by Siniff, the study is one of the longer running animal population studies and the longest marine mammal study in the southern hemisphere. It not only focuses on changes in the Weddell seal population, but it yields broader information about the workings of the marine environment. The study incorporates information on sea ice, fish, ecosystem dynamics, climate change, and even the Antarctic toothfish, which is marketed in U.S. restaurants as Chilean sea bass. The MSU study concentrates on pups and adult breeding females that live in the Ross Sea, which is the most pristine ocean left in the world and the only marine system whose top predators – including the Weddell seal – still flourish. The researchers start the season by weighing and tagging every pup when it’s about two days old. Later in the season, they visit every colony in their study, collecting genetic samples and recording

every tag they find. Weddell seals are relatively gentle for being a top predator in the ecosystem, but they can weigh over 1,000 pounds and have a set of teeth like a bear’s, Garrott has said in the past. Svend Funder of the Danish Museum of Natural History in Copenhagen said recently that “Arctic melts like those in recent years have happened before, especially during the 2,500 years in the ‘Holocene Optimum’ period, when Arctic summer temperatures were at least two or four degrees Celsius (four to eight degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today.” I should likewise mention that even 1,000 years ago during the days of Leif Ericsson, the mighty Viking Chieftain, the annual summer ice melt in the Arctic regions was at least a third more than this era’s melt. Despite the record warm temperatures that occurred during the Holocene Optimum period and a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean during the summer and early fall seasons, there is no evidence of a collapse of the polar bear population or other Arctic animals for that matter like Arctic foxes.

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