Habitats arctic: Polar habitats | TheSchoolRun
Posted onPolar Habitat
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The narwhal’s tusk can grow to nine feet (three meters) long.
The narwhal’s tusk can grow to nine feet (three meters) long.
Photograph by Paul Nicklen, Nat Geo Image Collection
Above and Below
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Photograph by Vladimir Seliverstov, Dreamstime
Polar habitats cover the top and bottom of planet Earth at the North and South Poles. The North Pole is surrounded by the Arctic Ocean. There isn’t any land here, just a group of continually shifting ice sheets. Parts of Canada and Greenland are near the North Pole. The South Pole is located on Antarctica. This area has land, but it’s completely covered with a layer of ice that’s almost three miles thick in some places.
Brrrr
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Photograph by Brian J. Skerry
It’s cold at the poles. In the Arctic, the average winter temperature is about around minus 22°F. At the South Pole, it is even colder. The lowest temperature ever recorded—minus 129°F—was in Antarctica.
Even though it’s chilly in polar regions, they do have seasons—well, two seasons: summer and winter. In the summer, the sun shines 24 hours a day, but it never gets high enough above the horizon to warm things up, so even summers are pretty cold. It’s dark all winter at the poles, because the sun doesn’t rise during those months of the year. Fierce continuous winds make it feel even colder.
You’ll see plenty of snow at the poles, but little rain. Antarctica and parts of the Arctic are actually considered deserts because of the lack of rainfall.
Growing Season
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Photograph by TOM LINSTER, SHUTTERSTOCK
It’s much too cold and dry for trees to grow in most areas of the Arctic, and there is no room for their roots, because just under the surface of the ground there is always a layer of ice, called permafrost. But in some places called tundras a thin layer of soil on the top of the permafrost thaws just a little in summer, and grasses and mosses grow above the ice for a few months. In summer Arctic poppies bloom, making the tundra bright yellow.
You won’t find trees in Antarctica, but some types of small shrubs, lichens, mosses, and algae are able to grow in the harsh climate.
Animals
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Photograph by Andreanita, Dreamstime
Polar bears and arctic foxes are adapted to the extreme weather of the Arctic region. Walruses and humpback whales live in the Arctic ocean. Several kinds of penguins, including the emperor penguin, live in Antarctica, and so do walruses and narwhals.
The poles of the planet are places of extremes. They’re extremely cold, extremely dry, and have extremely long days and nights. And if you visit, be sure to wear extremely warm clothing!
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Arctic | Places | WWF
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Species
People & Communities
Threats
Climate Change
The release of greenhouse gasses from the burning of fossil fuels and other sources is causing temperatures in the Arctic to warm at twice the rate of the rest of the world, resulting in lower levels of sea ice, melting permafrost and rising sea levels all over the world.
The decrease in volume and extent of Arctic sea ice has serious implications for marine mammals that depend on the ice for their survival, such as ringed seals and polar bears. The burning of fossil fuels is also making Arctic waters more acidic, harming zooplankton species like pterapods—the very base of the Arctic’s rich food chain—as well as corals and shellfish.
Drilling for Oil and Gas
Much of the world’s untapped oil reserves lie offshore, beneath the Arctic’s biologically productive waters. Exploring and developing these resources in the remote and unforgiving Arctic comes with extreme risks. Oil spills can kill birds, fish and marine mammals, as well as the smaller organisms that provide food for these larger species. There is no proven technology that allows for the complete containment of oil spilled in the marine environment. These challenges are even greater in the extreme conditions of the Arctic, where storms are frequent, ice is still present for much of the year, daylight nonexistent during the winter, and response infrastructure is more than 1,000 miles away.
Oil development can also generate life-threatening levels of ocean noise pollution for marine mammals.
Mining
Some Arctic regions contain valuable minerals, including copper, gold, and coal. One such area lies at the headwaters of two of the most productive rivers that feed into Bristol Bay. If permitted and constructed, the proposed Pebble Mine would be the largest open-pit copper and gold mine in North America. Based on current projections, the mine would permanently destroy miles of important salmon habitat and generate up to 10 billion tons of toxic waste. Release of this toxic waste would devastate freshwater ecosystems and impact the region’s unmatched salmon runs as well as the communities, commercial fishing industry, and wildlife which depend on them.
Shipping Traffic
Climate change has brought on longer open water seasons, which coupled with the growing pressures of globalization, means more of the Arctic’s waterways are opening for travel and commercial transportation.
Ship traffic in the Bering Strait alone, the narrow waterway between Alaska and Russia, is likely to increase in the coming years. More ships means a greater risk of wrecks, spills, noise, pollution, and the introduction of non-native species. Still, much of the Arctic Ocean has not been adequately surveyed and there a lot of work to be done to establish new routing and regulations. Learn more about what the US and Russia should do to protect the wildlife of the Bering Strait.
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Arctic.
General cleaning | Russian Geographical Society
The Arctic is one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet. According to preliminary estimates of experts, at least 12 million barrels of fuel brought here in the middle of the last century have accumulated in the coastal zone of the Arctic Ocean alone. Tanks with oil rust and, getting into the water, pollute the environment, which can have irreversible consequences for the region. It is impossible to solve this problem without the participation of our country: Russia accounts for 58% of the Arctic coast.
For more than 10 years, the Russian Geographical Society has been supporting environmental projects to clean up the Arctic. Since 2022, they have been held under a single brand «Arctic. General cleaning». Ecological expedition includes cleaning and exploration of polar territories. Based on the results of the «general cleaning», it is planned to create an up-to-date electronic ecological map of the Arctic, which will be updated with new data on this strategically important zone for Russia.
In the course of the project, scientists from the Russian Geographical Society, servicemen of the ecological platoon of the Northern Fleet and volunteers clean up the territory of the Russian Arctic from industrial pollution. In the summer of the 2022 season, the islands of Kildin (Murmansk region) and Wrangel (Chukotka) were cleared, more than 300 tons of scrap metal were collected in total. Plans for 2023 include cleaning up areas near the village of Khatanga (Krasnoyarsk Territory).
The next step after cleaning up is environmental monitoring of the Arctic territories. The experts of the Russian Geographical Society explore the unique flora and fauna, study the biodiversity of the harvested locations and collect materials for the future electronic ecological map of the Arctic.
The Arctic is a fragile and still little-studied ecosystem of the planet. That is why the Russian Geographical Society traditionally pays great attention to the Arctic agenda. We conduct comprehensive scientific research in the archipelagos, from collecting plankton samples to surveying Pomor camps.
We study and take care of the inhabitants of the Arctic: polar bears, beluga whales, walruses. We actively participate in cleaning up the coast and islands from industrial pollution. Next year, we plan to continue the ecological expedition to the Kildin and Wrangel Islands, as well as in the area of the village of Khatanga in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Servicemen of the environmental platoon of the Ministry of Defense are collecting man-made waste. Photo: press service of the Russian Geographical Society / Anna Yurgenson
Specialists of the Russian Geographical Society and servicemen of the Environmental Platoon of the Northern Fleet went to Wrangel Island. On August 5, the second stage of the «Arctic. General Cleaning» project began, within which participants will clean up the territory from waste fuels and lubricants and abandoned faulty equipment that destroys the island’s ecosystem.
Specialists set off from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Wrangel Island on the ship KIL-168.
Photo courtesy of Expedition
members
Photo courtesy of Expedition The Arctic is polluted in different ways, so the cleaning scenario is specified for each location. For example, on Wrangel Island, the main objects of potential harm to nature are barrels of fuel and lubricants left at the former airfield near the village of Zvezdny on the southern coast. Kildin is much smaller than Wrangel Island, there are few barrels here — fuel and lubricants were delivered here by tankers. After disbanding at 1990s military units and the departure from the island on Kildin left rusty cars, barrels, pipes, wire and a metal airfield coating. All this «historical heritage» is concentrated around former military installations and the once lively villages of Upper, Lower and East Kildin.
Environmental platoons of the Ministry of Defense have been carrying out work to eliminate the accumulated damage simultaneously in several regions of the Russian Arctic since 2015. Photo: press service of the Russian Geographical Society/Anna Yurgenson
On June 15, an ecological expedition started on Kildin Island in the Barents Sea to clean up the Arctic zone from technogenic pollution.
