The Arctic Region

The Arctic is the region around the North Pole, usually understood as the area within the Arctic Circle. It
includes parts of Russia, Scandinavia, Greenland, Canada, Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.
During winter, the whole area is normally covered by ice and temperature easily reaches -60° C. During
summer, the tundra is the main vegetation and, in the warmest parts of the Arctic, shrubs, willow, and
birch can be found. Animal life is poor in the number of species. There are, for example, polar bears,
arctic foxes and musk oxen.

The Eskimos
Eskimos are the native population of the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Siberia.
There are different groups of Eskimos, such as Inuit, Alutiit, Yupik, and Inupiat, living in different regions
or speaking different dialects.
It is estimated that Eskimos live in the Arctic or sub-Arctic regions for more than 3,000 years. Today the
total population of Eskimos is more than 100,000 people.

Source: http://www.geographicguide.com/arctic.htm

Arctic Plants

In the Arctic, growing conditions for vegetation are very varied. In the southern reaches of the Arctic, plant
communities can be vigorous, with small trees and stands of low growing shrubs. The further north one
travels, the shorter and more sparse the ground cover becomes until in the high arctic, which is a true
desert, the plants are scattered across rocky ground and the most numerous plants are the lichens. Here
the carpets of flowers are only found below bird cliffs or other areas of high fertility.

During the winter months the plants need to rest under the blanket of snow and be ready for a quick
getaway as soon as the temperature gets high enough. Nearly all arctic plants grow their flower buds in
late summer, then they overwinter and are ready for an early start the next spring. In order to survive the
low temperatures and cold winds the plants grow close to the ground and many of then have small
leaves to stop evaporation. I was fascinated to see, on a summer visit to Franz Josef Land, how plants
that I was familiar with further south, that had flowers on longish stems like the Alpine saxifrage, Saxifraga
nivalis, in the very marginal conditions on Franz Josef Land the flower was nestled within the rosette of
the leaves, there is safety in keeping your head down! By growing in clumps the plants are protected from
the wind and the dark green foliage of some of the plants, warm up quickly and then the air within the
canopy of the plant warms up, sometimes it is as much as 20C above the ambient air temperature, giving
that plant an advantage.

Different plants have different coping strategies, Moss campion has a deep taproot and colonises ground,
giving cover to less robust plants. The Arctic Willow in its many forms is found all over the Arctic, its
stems, although not thick could be hundreds of years old. A forest less than 6 cm high. The bowl shaped
flowers of the Arctic Avens and the Arctic Poppy follow the sun around the sky to optimize the warmth
from it. They are a popular resting place for pollinating insects because of the warmth focused into the
centre of the flower. Arctic bell heather thrives in hollows where a covering of snow protect it from sharp
driving snow in winter, the price it pays for this blanket of snow is a shorter growing season, while it waits
for the snow to melt. Mountain Sorrel can survive under snow patches for several years, during summers
when some of the snow doesn’t melt.
Grasses and rushes do well in the boggy tundra soils with cotton grass flowering conspicuously in the
damp land close to streams and lakes, but a closer look will reveal that there are often sedges and Poa
grasses growing alongside it

Plants in Thermal Underwear

The Wooly Lousewort and the Hairy Lousewort both protect their precious flowers with a lot of silvery
hairs giving the impression of wearing thermal underwear but the plant with the most impressive thermal
underwear is a large groundsel found in the subarctic. The Mastadon Flower, Senecio congestus grows
to about 1m in height and is covered in long white fur.

Mosses and Lichens

Conditions do appear to favour the mosses and lichens and there are frequently areas with no sign of any
vascular plants but with a wide variety of lichens and mosses. But these are slow growing and any
damage to them takes many decades to regrow. Sometimes in the very far north the ground is covered in
a coating of black lichen. The delicate Reindeer Moss, which is actually a lichen, grows best in the low
arctic where it can cover the whole ground with its spongy light coloured threads. There are often bright
orange sheets of lichen close to bird activity where generations of bird poo has fertilized the rock face.
This is Elegant Orange, Xanthoria elegans. Another common lichen in the Arctic is Map
Lichen, Rhizocarpon geographicum which has bright greenish yellow plates surrounded by a black line of
spores. Map lichen is used by climatologists to determine the age of a rock deposit, by knowing the rate
of growth, they can judge the age of the largest piece of lichen on a rock and assume that the rock was in
place when the lichen started to grow.

Source: http://www.arcticphoto.com/plants.asp

Polar Bears

he big white bear of the Arctic is the joint largest member of the bear family, with the Kodiak Bear, and the
world’s largest land based carnivore. Polar Bears lead a semi marine existence, spending much time on
the sea ice hunting for seals and they are streamlined for swimming and have been documented as
swimming long distances when they need to. 60miles (100km) has been recorded.

Males are much larger than the females at 8ft6ins (2.6m) long to the female 6ft11ins (2.1m). Males can
weigh 1,800 lbs (800kg) and stand up to 11 ft tall on their hind legs.

Polar Bears are mostly solitary, they hunt alone, coming together to mate, but there are many instances
recorded that when they do come together, the bears appear to be friendly to each other often play
fighting for long periods of time and laying up in day beds in snow banks together.

Breeding

A female has one to three cubs which are born blind and nearly hairless in dens under the snow in
December, she produces a milk rich in fat for them until they emerge from the den in March. She will stay
around the den for nearly two weeks while the cubs get stronger and more active and then she needs to
feed because it could be 8 months since she last ate. The family unit will stay together for around two
years, when their mother chases them away the cubs will sometimes stay together for a time, sharing
food.

A Polar Bear’s fur is translucent rather than white and carries the light down to its black skin. The
combination of fur and subcutaneous fat is so effective that when scientists tried counting bears by taking
infrared, heat sensing, pictures from planes, they could only see the bears that were breathing out. The
rest of the bear was invisible. In 2003 a bioengineering student discovered that Polar Bear fur has the
same radiative properties as snow, and had the Polar Bear Biologist been using UV film they would have
seen every bear.

The Polar Bear is genetically very close to the Brown bear and there had been speculation for a while that
with Climate Change allowing Brown bears to forage further north, there was the chance of a hybrid
occurring. In 2006 DNA testing confirmed that this had happened, a coffee coloured Polar bear was shot
by a sports hunter at Sachs Harbour on Banks Island. Culturally the bear was a Polar bear, and so we
can assume that his mother probably was also. It is believed that there have always been the occasional
cross between the two, including perhaps the huge MacFarlane’s Bear, acquired by MacFarlane from the
Inuit in 1864. But in the absence of DNA testing at the time, no one could be sure.

Polar Bears and Man

The Inuit, Yupik and Chukchi have shared the Arctic with Polar Bears for thousands of years. Polar Bear
remains have been found at hunting sites that date back 2,500 to 3,000 years. Polar Bears supply skin for
clothing and boots, meat for both men and dogs to eat and the claws were used as talismans. Care was
always taken to dispose of the liver, preferably back into the sea as it is very high in vitimin A and is
poisonous to man and dogs. The polar bear features in the folklore of the peoples of the coastal arctic.
Indigenous hunting of Polar Bears is closely controlled throughout the Arctic and totally banned in Russia
although it is believed that a substantial amount of poaching of Polar Bears is done there.

To feed in the winter, Polar Bears use the 'Ring of Life' an area of tide cracks and polynyas that stretches
around the Arctic Ocean, seals need to breathe air and the ring of life is where they can do this easiest.
Any siting of Oil or gas development in this region or close to the denning areas could have dire
consequences for the Polar Bears.

Being at the top of the Arctic Food Chain, Polar Bears are the Arctic's most contaminated mammal. They
already accumulate the toxins, mostly PCB's, from the animals they have eaten into their own body fat,
but although levels of these continued to rise after the substances were banned, it now seems that levels
in Polar Bears are starting to fall again.

Status

In 2008 the United States department of the interior listed the Polar Bear as a threatened species under
the Endangered Species Act. Biologists estimate that there is a world population of 20-25,000 polar
Bears.

The main threat to polar bears from climate change is that of starvation from habitat loss, as the sea ice
area in the arctic declines, the bears have less sea ice from which to hunt seals and are more at risk from
drowning as this ice thaws under them too far from land. Although the IUCN ACIA and US Geological
Survey express concerns about the impact of Global Warming on Polar Bears, there isn’t a total
consensus and one leading Bear Biologist has gone on record, saying that many of the Canadian
populations are stable or increasing

Source: http://www.arcticphoto.com/pbear.asp

Arctic Birds

Because the Arctic Winters are so cold, very few birds overwinter at high latitudes, The few that do are
the Raven, Rock and Willow Ptarmigan, Ross’s and Ivory Gull, Redpoll, Gyrfalcon, Snowy Owl and
the Brunnich’s Guillemot, Little Auk and Black Guillemot, but in years where food is scarce these will
sometimes move a good way south. In recent years there have been Snow Buntings overwintering
in Qaanaaq North Greenland but they shelter in the utilidors. Ptarmigan and Redpolls dive into snow
banks and sit out the coldest weather using the snow as insulation. Snowy owls and ptarmigan
grow feathers on their legs and feet to keep them warm in winter.

When the summer arrives that all changes, and the migrants arrive, these are the birds that cannot find
food during the Arctic winter but travel north to exploit the summer food resources of insects, fresh
underwater greens, insect larvae. Because the birds need to be in the Arctic and with their eggs ready to
hatch when the food bonanza starts, they lay on reserves of fat to see them through the lean times when
snow is still on the ground but they are nesting. There are around 100 migrant species that breed in the
Arctic and some make long journeys to be there, the longest journey being made by the Arctic Tern which
breeds in the Arctic and overwinters in Antarctica. A large proportion of the migrants are wetland
birds, swans, ducks and geese, waders and shorebirds. The southern arctic has more marshes than the
high arctic and so fewer species are found in the very far north.

Nesting

The Swans and the snowy owl are big white birds and are conspicuous on their nests but by choosing to
nest in the open they also have a good view of approaching predators. With the exception of the cliff
nesting seabirds and main predators birds, most birds nest on the ground, where both the birds or
their eggs are often well camouflaged. It can be easy to nearly step on a nesting eider or some of the
small waders. A brightly coloured parent, like a male eider duck will not play much part in the incubating.
The female phalarope is the one with the bright colours and she leaves the incubating to her
inconspicuous mate. I was very surprised to see a feeding female phalarope a considerable distance from
the coast feeding in an open pool in the pack ice off Spitsbergen. The phalarope is a very incongruous
little bird, a swimming wader who leaves her mate to incubate and raise the chicks.

The Bird Stars of the Arctic

The call of the long tailed duck (oldsquaw) is the sound of the arctic in summer as the flocks call to each
other. The gentle cooing of the eiders is also a characteristic sound when you are near the coast. Mostly
these are common or King Eider, but in the Russian Far East and the far west of Alaska the Spectacled
Eider, although a very rare bird can be locally abundant.

The Jaegers are a striking group of seabirds found nesting in the North, strong fliers and spectacular as
they resort to piracy on incoming seabirds, forcing them to regurgitate the food destined for chicks on the
bird cliffs.

The Gyrfalcon feeds mostly on ptarmigans, flying low and fast across the tundra to surprise its prey
before it can take cover. They nest early in the season so have to feed their chicks on adult ptarmigan but
this means that their chicks can feed on the easier to catch ptarmigan chicks and fledglings.

The Alcids, Brunnich’s Guillemots (Thick billed murres), Little Auks (Dovekies) and the Black Guillemots
feed at sea, diving for their food and flying underwater to catch their prey. The Brunnich’s Guillemots nest
on sea cliffs in large numbers, the Little Auks also nest in large colonies in the crannies under boulder
scree slopes, the Black Guillemot is a bird of the sea ice and they overwinter in polynyas in the far north.
They nest in smaller groups in the far north but are locally fairly plentiful where conditions suit
them. Puffins also nest in some areas of the Arctic

The small and delicate Sabine's Gull is a popular bird with birdwatchers but it is elusive and rare, best
seen when coming to shallow water to wash

Souce: http://www.arcticphoto.com/arcbirds.asp