This paper examines the location, intensity, and frequency of zodiac landings by passengers on tourist ships in the Antarctic Peninsula region during 10 seasons, 1989/90 through 1998/99. In this period, the number of passengers increased 307%, from 2460 to 10,013. Zodiac landings have occurred at 165 Peninsula region sites, concentrating in the South Shetland Islands and the northwestern part of the Peninsula. From 1989/90 to 1998/99, the number of zodiac landings in the Peninsula region increased 423%, from 164 to 858. The most visited sites are identified, as are sites experiencing increases in the second half of this 10-year period. The 10 and 20 sites experiencing the most zodiac landings each season consistently account for approximately 55% and 75% of that season's landings, respectively. Based on 1998/99 data, sites with high or medium species diversity or with high or moderate sensitivity to potential environmental disturbance account for a significant percentage of landings. Recommendations are presented for improving the assessment of potential environmental impacts at zodiac landing sites, and for improved methods of reporting site visits by the tour operators involved.

During every austral summer since the International Geophysical Year 1957–58 several thousand scientists and support staff have worked in Antarctica. A more recent development is the annual advent of 4000–5000 tourists, who now probably outnumber expedition members in the area covered by the Antarctic Treaty System. Most tourists come by ship, visiting coastal areas of the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Orkney and South Shetland islands that arc readily accessible beween November and March: smaller numbers visit the Ross Dependency and Adelie Land sectors. This article reviews Antarctic Treaty and International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) attitudes to tourism, and outlines a preliminary study of shipborne tourism between late December 1991 and March 1992 on Half Moon Island, South Shetland Islands. Within one month (January) a survey team from the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, recorded 14 visits by six tour ships, bringing more than 2000 tourists. In addition, attitudes and expectations of visitors were studied on five ships. Arising from this study, a programme of visitor monitoring is planned as a joint project between British, Chilean, and Argentine scientific institutions during the next five years. Objectives are to find ways of minimizing both short-term and long-term impacts of tourists and other visitors on breeding birds and other ecological communities, and to provide a factual basis for regulation under the Antarctic Treaty System.

Studies of Antarctic fauna have led to tentative identification of a range of potential pathogens for both animals and humans. The rapid increase in visitors on tourist ships to the continent, now exceeding 10,000 per year, raises the concern that humans might transmit pathogens into and between wildlife colonies. The authors investigated the feasibility and efficacy of chemical disinfection of the microbial contamination on visitors' boots. During three voyages to penguin colonies in the Ross Sea, swabs were collected from the boots of visitors prior to landing, immediately on return to the ship, after a water wash, and after a chemical disinfectant wash using Virkon S. For the first two visits, abundant growth of bacteria was identified on boots at all three stages prior to disinfection. Following disinfection, the growth of bacteria was virtually eliminated. On the third visit, previously disinfected boots grew virtually no bacteria. After this landing the bacterial growth was substantially reduced by disinfection. These results indicate that consideration should be given to including disinfection in cleaning the boots of visitors to wildlife sites in the Antarctic to reduce the risk of translocation of microbial pathogens.

Antarctic tourism is evolving at an ever-increasing pace. More than 7000 tourists, a record number, visited the Antarctic aboard cruise ships, yachts, and aircraft during the 1992/1993 season. As annual tourist, tour operator, cruise, and cruise ship totals increase, so do the number of landing sites used for tour visits. Although the Antarctic tourism industry was once characterized by small expedition-sized vessels, 50% of Antarctic cruise passengers travelled aboard ships with a capacity of 250 or more during the 1992/1993 season. These developments present challenges to Antarctic policy makers. There is growing awareness that environmental issues arising from Antarctic tourist activity are increasingly important, but, to date, comprehensive data on Antarctic tourism are not available from a central source. This study compiles data from numerous sources in order to develop a clearer picture of the nature and scale of Antarctic tourist activity. In an effort to present an overview of Antarctic tourism, data from the 1992/1993 season are considered along with important issues in the tourism debate, including significant trends and recent developments in the tourism industry, Antarctic tourism research, tourist landings in Antarctica, industrial self-regulation, emerging issues, Antarctic Treaty negotiations on tourism, and national initiatives to improve dialogue between the industry and Antarctic policy makers. Research is underway to understand better the nature of tourist visits and the effect they have on the Antarctic environment and related ecosystems. The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) plays an important role in disseminating information to tour operators planning visits to the Antarctic, but more could be done by this organization and non-members of IAATO to comply with Treaty provisions. Improved compliance with Treaty provisions and tour operator and visitor guidelines is needed, at least until the environmental effects of tour visits are better understood and the more comprehensive regulation set out in the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is implemented.

Mountain birch forests in the northern areas of Sápmi, the Saami homeland, serve as pastures for semi-domesticated reindeer. Recent reindeer management of the area has, to date, proceeded with little involvement of reindeer herders or their knowledge. To get more in-depth understanding of recent changes, we present together herders’ knowledge and scientific knowledge concerning the impacts of herbivory and climate change on mountain birch forests in three Saami communities in Norway and in Finland. Most of the herders interviewed reported changes in weather during the preceding decades. Herders agreed that the canopy and understorey of mountain birch forests have changed. The observed transformations in the quality of pastures have increased the financial costs of reindeer husbandry. Our study demonstrates that herders have practical knowledge of the present state and recent changes of birch forests, and of the responses of reindeer caused by these. This knowledge generally coincides with scientific knowledge. We call for better integration of knowledge systems and a better protocol for co-production of knowledge as it relates to more adaptive future reindeer management regimes. Such integration will facilitate understanding of cultural adaptation within rapidly changing social-ecological systems in which sustainable reindeer husbandry continues to be an important livelihood.

The cash revenues and imputed incomes from country food harvests were calculated from interviews with eight full-time hunting and ten wage-earning Inuit for 1984 at Holman, Northwest Territories. Using a substitution value of Can$10.56/kg ($4.79/lb) for country food harvests, the combined income (cash + imputed food value) of the two groups was very similar. Full-time hunters produced country food at $1.01/kg ($0.46/lb). while wage earners spent $5.7 I/kg ($2.59/lb) on their harvest. Full-time hunters harvested surpluses of food which would feed another fourpeople outside their immediate family. Wage earners ended the year with almost twice the cash balance of full-time hunters, whose main monetary revenuecomes from guiding trophy hunters. The precarious cash economy of the full-time hunters who provide a significant part of the food for the village should be a subject of concern and attention when considering the future well-being of the northern economy.

A case of polar bear infanticide and cannibalism is reported from Phippsøya, Svalbard. In this instance, a cub of some 7 months was killed by an adult male bear, which was in poor condition, in the close proximity of the mother, which was also in poor condition. It seems probable that the attack was made for nutritional gain.

Oriented assemblages of parallel ridges and elongated lakes are widespread on the coastal lowlands of northeast Eurasia and Arctic North America, in particular, in Alaska, Arctic Canada, and northeast Siberia. So far, only the oriented lakes have been of much scientific interest. They are believed to be formed by thermokarst in perennially frozen ice-rich sediments, while their orientation is accounted for either by impact of modern winds blowing at right angles to long axes of the lakes (when it concerns individual lakes), or by the influence of underlying bedrock structures (in the case of longitudinal and transverse alignment of lake clusters).

En masse examination of space images suggests that oriented lake-and-ridge assemblages, not the oriented lakes alone, occur in the Arctic. Hence any theory about their formation should account for the origin and orientation of the assemblages as a whole. The existing hypotheses appear inadequate for this end, so this paper proposes that the assemblages were initially created by glacial activity, that is, by ice sheets that drumlinized and tectonized their beds, as well as by sub- and proglacial meltwater, and then they were modified by thermokarst, solifluction, and aeolian processes. This assumption opens up an avenue by which all known features of oriented landforms in the Arctic can be explained. The paper suggests that the oriented landforms in Siberia and Alaska are largely signatures of a marine Arctic ice sheet that transgressed from the north, while the Baffin Island and Mackenzie Delta forms were created by the respective sectors of the Laurentide ice sheet. The oriented features discussed belong to the last Late Glacial through the Early Holocene.

The European Union's (EU's) intention of becoming a permanent observer in the Arctic Council and the reluctance of Arctic actors to grant it that status have made the union's aspirations in the Arctic the subject of a continuing debate. The discussion appears to be dominated by geographical considerations and the EU's gradually emerging Arctic policy. This article puts forward a different view of the EU's presence in the region, one drawing on an analysis of relevant EU competences. As a complex international actor, the EU has acquired a broad array of decision-making powers from its member states, powers that partly extend to Iceland and Norway via the EEA Agreement. Moreover, the EU has in many cases become a relevant actor in international negotiations and treaty making processes the outcomes of which are of crucial importance for the governance of the Arctic. Our argument in the third and concluding section is that only by including the EU in Arctic governance can the international community provide better prospects for the union to sensitise its policies and discourses to the Arctic realities and for other Arctic actors to understand how the union functions. This argument is supported by an analysis of the EU's restrictions on the import of seal products and the ensuing litigation.

It has been suggested to me that I should take this opportunity to initiate discussion about the Antarctic Treaty: in particular to review how far the Treaty is meeting our present practical needs. During the forty years or more during which I have been associated with Antarctic affairs, I have seen some degree of international order evolved out of chaos; harmony has replaced discord; many apparently insoluble problems have been resolved one after another. I have seen that good co-operation and compromise can be and have been achieved repeatedly without any significant sacrifice of national autonomy and to the common advantage of all concerned.

A previously unpublished four-page pamphlet by Dr. George Murray Levick R.N. (1876–1956) on the ‘Sexual habits of the Adélie penguin’ was recently rediscovered at the Natural History Museum (NHM) at Tring. It was printed in 1915 but declined for publication with the official expedition reports. The account, based upon Levick's detailed field observations at Cape Adare (71°18′S, 170°09′E) during the course of the British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910, commented on frequency of sexual activity, autoerotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex and homosexual behaviour. His observations were however accurate, valid and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving of publication. Here we publish the pamphlet in its entirety, reinterpret selected observations and comment on its significance as a forgotten work by the pioneer of research on Adélie penguin Pygoscelis adeliae (Hombron and Jacquinot 1841) biology.

This paper summarises the first 25 years of data on hydrological work carried out each summer on the Onyx River, Wright Valley, by summer teams of field hydrologists of the New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme. The assignment expanded from the single water-level recording weir site near Lake Vanda to a second site near the Wright Lower Glacier together with a number of tributary stream measurements that were installed as the programme progressed. This work was carried out together with Dry Valleys lake level and glacial measurements and is as of much historical as of scientific interest as it contains much inaugural Antarctic hydrology work.

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.

Distribution, size composition and behaviour of Euphausia superba were investigated in the northwestern Weddell Sea (59–63°S, 45–52°W) in October-November 1988 using RMT trawling, SCUBA diving and visual examination of the ice undersurface using a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV). Amounts of krill washed onto the ice during ice-breaking along transects were noted. Juvenile and sub-adult krill were found, often in high numbers, in association with seasonal pack-ice, from the outer marginal ice zone to at least 200 nautical miles [3 50 km] into the closed pack-ice zone. Krill caught with the RMT or observed within or close to the ice usually had full guts. They were frequently seen feeding on ice algae, and seemed to concentrate in pressure zones, melting ice and infiltration layers, ie where ice provided both confining crevices and rich algal growth. During twilight numbers of krill increased in open water close to the ice, though ROV observations at night revealed even greater numbers remaining in ice cavities. Direct observations from deck, by divers and by ROV, confirmed that most of the krill population in the uppermost water layer was confined to ice habitats, though in three out of 20 RMT catches krill reached densities of 0.1 nr3 ie normal summer values. ‘Miniswarms’ forming in early November may indicate seasonal transition of at least part of the krill population from winter ice habitat and grazing on ice-algae, to summer pelagic life and filter-feeding on phytoplankton.

Carbon flux measurements made at an elevated point are associated with an effective upwind area or ‘footprint.’ Since Arctic tundra landscapes can exhibit substantial heterogeneity within the footprint of an eddy correlation tower, it may be necessary to determine the relative point source contributions to the observed flux if landscape properties are to be related to the flux. This study evaluates the potential importance of representing footprint source contributions in relationships that are developed between tower observations of net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide (NEE) and a remotely sensed spectral vegetation index. Satellite data collected over the foothills region of the North Slope of Alaska are used to determine spatial patterns of a spectral vegetation index in the calculated footprints of 30 randomly selected tower locations. A previously developed relationship between NEE and the vegetation index is used to calculate NEE at each tower location using two techniques, one that explicitly considers the footprint pattern of relative contributions to tower fluxes and another that ignores these patterns. The results indicate that if carbon fluxes measured at a tower are to be related to remotely sensed spectral vegetation indices, then it is necessary to consider the relative flux contributions from within the tower footprints for sites on the North Slope of Alaska.