The papers published in this issue of Polar Record were first given at the Polar Worlds International Conference: Environmental and Social Sciences which took place in Paris in January 2011 and was organised by the GDR Mutations polaires (GDR 3062). A research group hosted by the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the GDR brings together social and environmental scientists. It has been promoting on-site data collection and interdisciplinary projects in Arctic studies for 30 years.

Agriculture in southern Greenland has a two-phase history: with the Norse, who first settled and farmed the region between 985ad and circa 1450ad, and with the recent reintroduction of sheep farming (1920ad to the present). The agricultural sector in Greenland is expected to grow over the next century as anticipated climate warming extends the length of the growing season and increases productivity. This article presents a synthesis of results from a well-dated 1500-year lake sediment record from Lake Igaliku, south Greenland (61°00′N, 45°26′W, 15m asl) that demonstrates the relative impacts of modern and Norse agricultural activities. Pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs), sediment mass accumulation rates, diatoms and stable isotopes of nitrogen provide a comprehensive history of both phases of agriculture and their associated impacts on the landscape and adjacent lake. The initial colonisation of southern Greenland is marked by a loss of tree birch pollen, a rise in weed taxa, and an increase in coprophilous fungi and sediment accumulation rate consistent with land-use changes. The biological and chemical proxies within the lake, however, show only slight changes in diatom taxa, and a rise in δ15N. After the Norse demise and during the Little Ice Age, most of the markers return to pre-settlement conditions. However, the continuation of non-indigenous plant taxa suggests that the landscape did not completely return to a pre-disturbance state. After 1988, the character of the lake changed markedly: mesotrophic diatoms and N isotopes all reveal major shifts consistent with a trophic shift, together with a sharp rise in sediment accumulation rate. The post-1988 lake environment, affected by modern farming development, is unprecedented within the context of the last 1500 years. These results demonstrate the potential of lake sediment studies paired with archaeological investigations to reveal the relationship between climate, environment and human societies.

The article describes investigations that highlight snow-avalanche events that have not been reported in historical records. While historical sources are most often the basis for all natural hazard and risk research, alternative methods based on geomorphic investigations are often neglected. Here, we emphasise the use of geomorphic evidence to improve our knowledge of the maximum runout distance reached by snow avalanches as well as the frequency of the events. Investigations were carried out in remote, avalanche-prone areas, where the geomorphic evidence has not been disturbed or removed. Dendrogeomorphic investigations supply annual resolved records of avalanche winters up to the age of the investigated tree stand: over 120 years in northern Iceland. The study of snow-avalanche transported debris may be used to map the extent of the potential snow-avalanche deposition zone, and offer relative dating on a secular scale; stratigraphic profiles do provide results on long timescales, but only provide relative dating. The article discusses the relevance of each method, and concludes that the combination of the three methods can improve the common risk-mitigation approach based on historical records.

On 27 January 2011, the Fort Severn Cree nation presented its perspectives on the management of wabusk (Cree term for polar bear meaning the great wandering one) or polar bear (Ursus maritimus) to the international community. The following article provides an overview of the events that have transpired since the Conférence internationale mondes polaires held in Paris, France, on 26–28 January 2011. It begins by discussing the current state of the southern Hudson Bay polar bear sub-population and describing Cree interactions with polar bears before highlighting how the Fort Severn Cree nation is developing a co-management strategy through the indigenous stewardship model for polar bear management in its traditional territory in northern Ontario, Canada.

Landscape and culture are among the topics that make a place attractive for tourists. Protected areas, used also for leisure purposes, represent good development opportunities for the neighbouring communities. The National Park of Greenland has adopted new regulations and leisure activities will be allowed in its area. This will represent an opportunity of increasing the tourism business in Ittoqqortoormiit, the adjacent community to the park, which is suffering from a difficult economic situation. This new use of the resources in the protected area may well serve as engine for growth and revitalization of the local economy that has a chronic lack of jobs and an important outmigration. In this article are presented some of the results of interviews done in 2009 with the Inuit of Ittoqqortoormiit regarding tourism. The goal of the project ‘Community-based tourism as an option for concrete, viable development in peripheral, remote places’ was to investigate how a small Inuit community, peripheral and remote, which has traditional subsistence activities, but low incomes and high unemployment rate, could seek economic alternatives in tourism.

Wildlife plays a significant role in the development of tourism in Nunavut. A certain amount of tourism in the Canadian Arctic depends on the wealth and uniqueness of the wildlife in the polar region. Two different forms of tourism based on Arctic wildlife can be distinguished: wildlife viewing and sport hunting. Both of these forms of tourism question the link between the different uses of the resource and the perceptions of wildlife. Based on an analysis of multiple information sources (literature review, newspaper analysis and semi-structured interviews), this article examines the emergence of wildlife as a tourism resource for Inuit communities and questions the issues linked to the emergence of this resource use. Using the example of polar bears, the article focuses on tourism dynamics. The article concludes that the polar bear sport hunting resource has evolved along with the changing environment. This tourism resource could be reinvented, with investments targeting other forms of tourism, such as wildlife viewing, which seems to better fit Westerners’ expectations, but is not necessarily a more environmentally friendly type of tourism.

The methodology of socially-oriented observations (SOO) started to be developed within the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008 PPS Arctic project. The main objective of SOO is to increase knowledge and observation of changes in quality of life conditions and to reveal trends in human capital and capacities. SOO are needed also to assess and monitor trends in resilience and sustainability of coupled socio-ecological systems and to predict changes. Moreover they should help to identify and monitor the implementation of local plans and adaptation strategies that will stimulate human capital improvement and act not only as the agent of economic modernisation, but as important directions for building resilient socio-ecological systems. The first experiments to implement SOO methodology were carried out in the municipal regions of the Russian north in different biomes (from coastal tundra to southern taiga zone) of Murmansk, Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Republic of Komi. SOO approaches, based both on local people's perceptions and statistics, help to identify the main issues and targets for life quality, human capital and environment improvement and thus to distinguish the most important changes and trends for further monitoring. Key issues were identified in the state of human capital and quality of life conditions: depopulation, increasing unemployment, aging, declining physical and mental health, quality of education, loss of traditional knowledge, marginalisation etc. Human induced disturbances such as uncontrolled forests cuttings and poaching are increasing while observed changes in climate and biota have become additional factors influencing land use and overall sustainability. The main aim of this paper is to show how the methodology of SOO may help to delineate main thresholds arising within socio-ecological systems for their resilience assessment.

This article is dedicated to the aggravation of negative natural and anthropogenous changes in Central Siberia in the Yenisei River geo-system. These changes are probably the result of global warming and climate destabilisation combined with intensified destructive processes in the region.

The last decades were characterised by the following:

1. 1. Growth of mean annual temperatures and change of annual climate structure resulting in extreme weather and hydrologic situations;

2. 2. Large-scale degradation of insular permafrost with corresponding decrease of their water-cut;

3. 3. Dry thunderstorms, fires, forest disease outbreaks became more frequent and abundant in the large areas;

4. 4. Forage resources failures and game animals’ depletion in numbers became more frequent;

5. 5. Overgrowing of the Angara and the Yenisei Rivers. Significant drop of spawning sites’ reproductive functions;

6. 6. Northern borders of some wild populations’ habitats started moving further north;

7. 7. Aggravation of boat traffic conditions and traditional use of natural resources;

8. 8. Taiga lost its fire-suppression and chemical-protection functions almost completely;

9. 9. Some issues have emerged regarding protection of people and domestic animals against natural-endemic diseases as well as predators;

Living in close relationship with the Siberian environment, for several decades the Tungus (Evenk and Even peoples) have been noticing numerous changes in climate, flora and fauna. Based on fieldwork among reindeer herders, hunters and fishermen in Yakutia, the Amur region and Kamchatka, this paper explores how climate change is perceived, and how it causes economic, social and ritual changes. It questions the modifications of the economic and religious human-environment relationships through various aspects. It analyses the indigenous perception of a link between the environment and identity and the indigenous notion of adaptation and vulnerability. It also compares their adaptive strategies that either use old techniques, or trigger mutations. In this context, the notion of reciprocity seems to be disappearing and a new notion of time-space in managing the environment is appearing. This paper analyses the religious changes, such as the creation of new rituals and millenarian narratives or the rebirth of shamanistic legends.

Changes of the lipid composition (mainly of membrane lipids) in gills in response to various seawater salinities were studied in two groups of mussels Mytilus edulis L. from the White Sea, living under different environmental conditions (intertidal zone and artificial substrates used in aquaculture). Modifications in the lipid composition involved the basic indices characteristic of the physical state of biological membranes, and minor components of the lipid bilayer, which perform regulatory functions, indicating that the lipid metabolism of the bivalves has undergone acclimation transformations in response to salinity. It is demonstrated that the response to critical salinity (5 ppt) in membrane lipids was similar in the two investigated groups of mussels, whereas with salinities of 15, 35, and 45 ppt the pattern of fluctuations in the lipid composition depended on the initial habitat (intertidal zone or aquaculture).

Antarctic tourism has experienced a boom period over the last thirty years. Beginning in the 1980s, the number of tourists who visited the continent annually began to rise sharply, and within the space of twenty years the numbers had increased by more than six hundred percent. Despite a global recession and downturn in visitor numbers over the last two austral seasons, the expectation is that Antarctic tourist numbers will trend upward again as the world tourism market recovers and the demand for Antarctic visits increases. In a continent renowned both as the last great global wilderness and as a place dedicated to scientific research in the interests of humankind, tourism on this scale presents a formidable range of issues for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) to contend with. This article suggests that the rapid growth in Antarctic tourism, and the impacts of that tourism coupled with the lack of a comprehensive regulatory and management framework for tourism now pose a considerable challenge to both the Consultative Parties and to the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) itself. The obligations and duties of the ATCPs under the Antarctic Treaty and other ATS instruments require a robust, strategic response by them to the issues and concerns generated by the growth of tourism. What is needed, it is argued, is for the parties to initiate a more interventionist pro-active policy approach to create a holistic, binding tourism framework so that they may fulfill more effectively their stewardship and governance roles in Antarctica, prevent degradation of Antarctica's environment, and reduce risks to tourists themselves.

This study examines the change in visitor pattern since 1968 at the Ukrainian Vernadsky station (formerly the British Faraday station), one of the most popular Antarctic research stations that support non-governmental visits. The station became one of the major tourist destinations as a result of the revision of tourism policy following the transfer of the station from the UK to Ukraine in 1996. Since then a considerable increase in the number of both cruise ships and yacht visits have been observed. The longest time series of data on non-governmental activity at a research station in Antarctica has been collected from 1968 to 2010. This study examines site-specific guidelines at the station and indicates policies for better visitor management within the Antarctic Treaty System.

Radiocarbon age determinations on shells of the common mussel (Mytilus edulis) show that this species was present in central East Greenland from approximately 9500 to 5400 cal. years BP. It probably arrived first at the outer coast, at a time when the inner parts of the fjords were still occupied by glaciers. After perhaps a millennium it spread to the central fjord region where it lived for at least three millennia. The former occurrence of Mytilus edulis indicates higher sea surface temperatures than at present and more extensive fjord water, which may have been a consequence of higher summer insolation, perhaps amplified by changes in atmospheric circulation, bringing more warm air masses to the north. The timing of the Holocene thermal maximum in the lowlands of East Greenland was later than recorded in the Renland ice core. This delay was probably related to the continuing recession of the margin of the Greenland ice sheet in the early Holocene. The lingering decaying ice meant that large lowland areas were still ice covered, and other areas were cooled by the ice.

Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–1914) has been portrayed in various narratives, usually with a focus on the Far-Eastern Sledging Journey from which Mawson made the epic trek back to the main base at Cape Denison alone, after the deaths of his companions, Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis. His is the sole eyewitness account of that sledging journey in 1912–1913, except for two handwritten pages of Mertz's diary, reproduced in Mawson's The home of the blizzard; two typed, imperfect copies of the diary, transcribed before it disappeared; and another transcript of the two pages published in the German edition of Mawson's book. This article traces the early journey of that missing diary and, drawing also on the available transcripts, re-interprets the content of those two pages. The content is compared with corresponding passages in associated documents and the subjectivity and limitations of these documents, when consulted for research purposes, are discussed.

Sightings of killer whales (Orcinus orca) are increasing in the eastern Canadian Arctic, but trends in the western Arctic have not been thoroughly examined. We summarise killer whale observations from the Canadian Beaufort Sea, primarily from traditional ecological knowledge interviews and group workshops conducted in 1993 and 2006–2007. After correcting for duplicative reports, we documented 31 observations occurring from the 1940s to 2000s (18 of the 31 observations could be attributed to a particular decade whereas others could not). Killer whales are rare in the Canadian Beaufort Sea, with only 1–5 reported sightings per decade since the 1940s (median = 3). In 1993 only 15% of Inuvialuit hunters in three communities had observed them, including some sightings in Alaska. Recent mapping workshops (2006–2007) collected only eight sightings from 128 participants in all six regional communities. Local observations indicate no apparent increase in killer whale presence in the western Canadian Arctic. Sightings were widely distributed across the region, although concentrated in the Mackenzie Delta area with few to the east. Killer whales are annually observed as far north as Barrow, Alaska, but do not appear to make regular eastward movements and are rare in Canadian waters.

Sir Raymond Priestley served with Shackleton (1907–1909) and Scott (1910–1913), then after the First World War had a distinguished career in university administration. During retirement he spent three years in charge of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (later the British Antarctic Survey). This note seeks to remove an unsubstantiated blemish from that otherwise exemplary record.

This note discusses aspects of Norwegian polar research in the twentieth century. There has always been a close connection between science and politics in the polar regions. This pertains not only to the research sponsored by individual nation-states, but also to international research cooperation in this area. Research in the polar regions has been linked to national interests, but also implemented through international cooperation. Norwegian activity and research are even today, as is the case with other polar nations, controlled by national interests. But today these interests are balanced by international legal regimes and international research cooperation.

The World has become the largest passenger ship to transit the northwest passage, from Nome, Alaska, to Nuuk, Greenland, 17 August to 12 September 2012. 183 vessels have transited the passage to date, following that of the first transit by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906. The itinerary included most of the usual stops and routes of previous transits of other vessels, with a major exception. There was no ice in the western part of the itinerary to Cambridge Bay, and open pack after that for the remainder of the route in Canada. Approaching Ilulissat, Greenland, ice in the form of bergs, bergy bits and growlers was encountered, a common feature of ice exiting the adjacent fjord. A few polar bears were sighted in Canada, and very few whales.