Nunavut’s High Arctic landscape is changing: new studies

The landscape in Nunavut’s High Arctic is changing quickly, two newly published studies show.

This photo shows several horseshoe-shaped slumps around Eureka Sound, caused by ice melting in the ground. (Photo by Melissa Ward Jones)

Researchers from McGill University say warmer summers have caused ground on Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands, which is frozen to a depth of 500 feet, to slump.

You can’t miss these slumps, which occur when the ice within the ground melts and then land slips down into a horseshoe-shaped hole.

“Our study suggests that the warming climate in the High Arctic, and more specifically the increases in summer air temperatures that we have seen in recent years, are initiating widespread changes in the landscape,” Melissa Ward Jones, the study’s lead author, said in a McGill news release.

The McGill team determined that record summer warmth in 2011 and 2012 doubled the number of active slumps in the region from about 100 in any given year to more than 200.

The summer warmth also appeared to promote the start of slumps in areas that had previously been unaffected.

The McGill-led study, published in Environmental Research Letters, is based on close to 30 years of aerial surveys and extensive ground mapping of the Eureka Sound lowlands area of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands.

Until recently, many thought this area of polar desert, with its frigid below-zero average annual temperatures would escape thawing.

Warmer temperatures are changing the composition of High Arctic wetlands. (Photo courtesy of T.G. Sim/Twitter)

But researchers learned that it doesn’t take much of an increase in temperatures for slumps to form. The slumps then grow progressively larger, depending on where they are located.

In another study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers looked at High Arctic wetlands. They found  many of these have transitioned from organic‐rich wetlands to mossy areas.

The change took place  even before the number of warmer days increased, the study said.

That was possibly due to intensive grazing from Arctic geese.

“Our findings highlight the complex response of Arctic wetlands to warming,” the study said.

These changes could mean wetlands may be less likely to absorb greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide.