Alaska - Number Of Ponds In Barrow Peninsula Study Area Down 17% Since 1948; Avg. Size Down 1/3
Last edited Sun Mar 15, 2015, 04:48 PM - Edit history (1)
New research has revealed that the Arctic is losing its ponds, with the important habitats shrinking more every day. This may seem like a strange revelation for some, as past research has revealed that the Arctic continues to melt in the wake of climate change. Wouldn't more melt water mean more ponds? Now, a pair of researchers explain what's really going on. "Plants are taking over shallow ponds because they're becoming warm and nutrient-rich," Christian Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at El Paso, said in a recent statement. "Before you know it, boom, the pond is gone."
Anderson, with the help of colleague and biological science expert Vanessa Lougheed, recently passed more than 2,800 Arctic tundra pounds in the northern region of Alaska's Barrow Peninsula. Using historical photos and satellite imagery dating back all the way to 1948, the pair determined that the number of ponds in the region has decreased by about 17 percent. And the average size of each individual pond dropped by about a third. The results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.
Anderson added that this is "a very conservative estimate because we didn't consider ponds that had divided, or split into two ponds. Some ponds are elongated and as they shrink over time, they can be divided into two or more smaller ponds," he explained.
And as was mentioned, encroaching vegetation is likely the cause of all this shrinking and splitting, finally finding a foothold in parts of the Arctic that have long been locked up in permafrost. With warming global temperatures, this permafrost is melting, freeing soil and the key nutrients within it.
EDIT
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/13444/20150314/arctics-ponds-disappearing-even-region-melts.htm
