Mountains are global biodiversity hotspots where cold environments and their associated ecological communities are threatened by climate warming. Considerable research attention has been devoted to ...understanding the ecological effects of alpine glacier and snowfield recession. However, much less attention has been given to identifying climate refugia in mountain ecosystems where present‐day environmental conditions will be maintained, at least in the near‐term, as other habitats change. Around the world, montane communities of microbes, animals, and plants live on, adjacent to, and downstream of rock glaciers and related cold rocky landforms (CRL). These geomorphological features have been overlooked in the ecological literature despite being extremely common in mountain ranges worldwide with a propensity to support cold and stable habitats for aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. CRLs are less responsive to atmospheric warming than alpine glaciers and snowfields due to the insulating nature and thermal inertia of their debris cover paired with their internal ventilation patterns. Thus, CRLs are likely to remain on the landscape after adjacent glaciers and snowfields have melted, thereby providing longer‐term cold habitat for biodiversity living on and downstream of them. Here, we show that CRLs will likely act as key climate refugia for terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity in mountain ecosystems, offer guidelines for incorporating CRLs into conservation practices, and identify areas for future research.
(a) The ecology of cold rocky landforms (CRLs) has been studied in mountain ranges worldwide, with a concentration in western North America and Europe. Pie chart area reflects the total number of studies for each montane region and purple shading indicates mountainous areas. However, CRLs have been overlooked relative to studies focused on glaciers and snowfields (inset bar chart). The number of CRLs investigated for a variety of habitats and taxonomic groups are provided in (b) and (c), respectively.
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The spatial characteristics for all glaciers in the North Cascades National Park Complex, USA, were estimated in 1958 and again in 1998. The total glacier area in 1958 was 117.3 ± 1.1 km2; by 1998 ...the glacier area had decreased to 109.1 ± 1.1 km2, a reduction of 8.2 ± 0.1 km2 (7%). Estimated volume loss during the 40 year period was 0.8 ± 0.1 km3 of ice. This volume loss contributes up to 6% of the August–September stream-flow and equals 16% of the August–September precipitation. No significant correlations were found between magnitude of glacier shrinkage and topographic characteristics of elevation, aspect or slope. However, the smaller glaciers lost proportionally more area than the larger glaciers and had a greater variability in fractional change than larger glaciers. Most of the well-studied alpine glaciers are much larger than the population median, so global estimates of glacier shrinkage, based on these well-studied glaciers, probably underestimate the true magnitude of regional glacier change.
The Pluto system was recently explored by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, making closest approach on 14 July 2015. Pluto's surface displays diverse landforms, terrain ages, albedos, colors, and ...composition gradients. Evidence is found for a water-ice crust, geologically young surface units, surface ice convection, wind streaks, volatile transport, and glacial flow. Pluto's atmosphere is highly extended, with trace hydrocarbons, a global haze layer, and a surface pressure near 10 microbars. Pluto's diverse surface geology and long-term activity raise fundamental questions about how small planets remain active many billions of years after formation. Pluto's large moon Charon displays tectonics and evidence for a heterogeneous crustal composition; its north pole displays puzzling dark terrain. Small satellites Hydra and Nix have higher albedos than expected.
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As in many parts of the world, the management of environmental science research in Antarctica relies on cost-benefit analysis of negative environmental impact versus positive scientific gain. Several ...studies have examined the environmental impact of Antarctic field camps, but very little work looks at how the placement of these camps influences scientific research. In this study, we integrate bibliometrics, geospatial analysis, and historical research to understand the relationship between field camp placement and scientific production in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of East Antarctica. Our analysis of the scientific corpus from 1907-2016 shows that, on average, research sites have become less dispersed and closer to field camps over time. Scientific output does not necessarily correspond to the number of field camps, and constructing a field camp does not always lead to a subsequent increase in research in the local area. Our results underscore the need to consider the complex historical and spatial relationships between field camps and research sites in environmental management decision-making in Antarctica and other protected areas.
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Snow in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica Fountain, Andrew G.; Nylen, Thomas H.; Monaghan, Andrew ...
International journal of climatology,
April 2010, Volume:
30, Issue:
5
Journal Article
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6.
The atmosphere of Pluto as observed by New Horizons Gladstone, G. Randall; Stern, S. Alan; Ennico, Kimberly ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
03/2016, Volume:
351, Issue:
6279
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Observations made during the New Horizons flyby provide a detailed snapshot of the current state of Pluto's atmosphere. Whereas the lower atmosphere (at altitudes of less than 200 kilometers) is ...consistent with ground-based stellar occultations, the upper atmosphere is much colder and more compact than indicated by pre-encounter models. Molecular nitrogen (N2) dominates the atmosphere (at altitudes of less than 1800 kilometers or so), whereas methane (CH4), acetylene (C2H2), ethylene (C2H4), and ethane (C2H6) are abundant minor species and likely feed the production of an extensive haze that encompasses Pluto. The cold upper atmosphere shuts off the anticipated enhanced-Jeans, hydrodynamic-like escape of Pluto's atmosphere to space. It is unclear whether the current state of Pluto's atmosphere is representative of its average state--over seasonal or geologic time scales.
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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has revealed the complex geology of Pluto and Charon. Pluto's encounter hemisphere shows ongoing surface geological activity centered on a vast basin containing a thick ...layer of volatile ices that appears to be involved in convection and advection, with a crater retention age no greater than ~10 million years. Surrounding terrains show active glacial flow, apparent transport and rotation of large buoyant water-ice crustal blocks, and pitting, the latter likely caused by sublimation erosion and/or collapse. More enigmatic features include tall mounds with central depressions that are conceivably cryovolcanic and ridges with complex bladed textures. Pluto also has ancient cratered terrains up to ~4 billion years old that are extensionally faulted and extensively mantled and perhaps eroded by glacial or other processes. Charon does not appear to be currently active, but experienced major extensional tectonism and resurfacing (probably cryovolcanic) nearly 4 billion years ago. Impact crater populations on Pluto and Charon are not consistent with the steepest impactor size-frequency distributions proposed for the Kuiper belt.
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Mountain glaciers integrate climate processes to provide an unmatched signal of regional climate forcing. However, extracting the climate signal via intercomparison of regional glacier mass-balance ...records can be problematic when methods for extrapolating and calibrating direct glaciological measurements are mixed or inconsistent. To address this problem, we reanalyzed and compared long-term mass-balance records from the US Geological Survey Benchmark Glaciers. These five glaciers span maritime and continental climate regimes of the western United States and Alaska. Each glacier exhibits cumulative mass loss since the mid-20th century, with average rates ranging from −0.58 to −0.30 m w.e. a−1. We produced a set of solutions using different extrapolation and calibration methods to inform uncertainty estimates, which range from 0.22 to 0.44 m w.e. a−1. Mass losses are primarily driven by increasing summer warming. Continentality exerts a stronger control on mass loss than latitude. Similar to elevation, topographic shading, snow redistribution and glacier surface features often exert important mass-balance controls. The reanalysis underscores the value of geodetic calibration to resolve mass-balance magnitude, as well as the irreplaceable value of direct measurements in contributing to the process-based understanding of glacier mass balance.
The cryosphere—the portion of the Earth's surface where water is in solid form for at least one month of the year—has been shrinking in response to climate warming. The extents of sea ice, snow, and ...glaciers, for example, have been decreasing. In response, the ecosystems within the cryosphere and those that depend on the cryosphere have been changing. We identify two principal aspects of ecosystem-level responses to cryosphere loss: (1) trophodynamic alterations resulting from the loss of habitat and species loss or replacement and (2) changes in the rates and mechanisms of biogeochemical storage and cycling of carbon and nutrients, caused by changes in physical forcings or ecological community functioning. These changes affect biota in positive or negative ways, depending on how they interact with the cryosphere. The important outcome, however, is the change and the response the human social system (infrastructure, food, water, recreation) will have to that change.
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This report summarizes an updated inventory of glaciers and perennial snowfields of the conterminous United States. The inventory is based
on interpretation of mostly aerial imagery provided by the ...National Agricultural I
magery Program, US Department of Agriculture, with some
satellite imagery in places where aerial imagery was not suitable. The inventory includes all perennial snow and ice features
≥ 0.01 km2. Due to aerial survey schedules and seasonal snow cover, imageries acquired over a number of years were
required. The earliest date is 2013 and the latest is 2020, but more than 73 % of the outlines were acquired from 2015 imagery. The
inventory is compiled as shapefiles within a geographic information system that includes feature classification, area, and location. The
inventory identified 1331 (366.52 ± 14.34 km2) glaciers, 1176 (31.01 ± 9.30 km2) perennial snowfields,
and 35 (3.57 km2 ± no uncertainty) buried-ice features. The data including both the shapefiles and tabulated results are
publicly available at https://doi.org/10.15760/geology-data.03 (Fountain and Glenn, 2022).
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