Sea ice surface roughness is a geophysical property which can be defined and quantified on a variety scales, and consequently affects processes across various scales. The sea ice surface roughness influences various mass, gas, and energy fluxes across the ocean-sea ice-atmosphere interface. Utilizing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to understand and map sea ice roughness is an active area of research. This thesis provides new techniques for the estimation of sea ice surface roughness in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago using synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Estimating and isolating sea ice surface properties from SAR imagery is complicated as there are a number of sea ice and sensor properties that influence the backscattered energy. There is increased difficulty in the melting season due to the presence of melt ponds on the surface, which can often inhibit interactions from the sensor to the sea ice surface as shorter microwaves cannot penetrate through the melt water. An object-based image analysis is here used to quantitatively link the winter first-year sea ice surface roughness to C-band RADARSAT-2 and L-band ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 SAR backscatter measured at two periods: winter (pre-melt) and advanced melt. Since the sea ice in our study area, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, is landfast, the same ice can be imaged using SAR after the surface roughness measurements are established. Strong correlations between winter measured surface roughness, and C- and L-band SAR backscatter acquired during both the winter and advanced melt periods are observed. Results for winter indicate: (1) C-band HH-polarization backscatter is correlated with roughness (r=0.86) at a shallow incidence angle; and (2) L-band HH- and VV-polarization backscatter is correlated with roughness (r=0.82) at a moderate incidence angle. Results for advanced melt indicate: (1) C-band HV/HH polarization ratio is correlated with roughness (r=-0.83) at shallow incidence angle; (2) C-band HH-polarization backscatter is correlated with roughness (r=0.84) at shallow incidence angle for deformed first-year ice only; and (3) L-band HH-polarization backscatter is correlated with roughness (r=0.79) at moderate incidence angle. Retrieval models for surface roughness are developed and applied to the imagery to demonstrate the utility of SAR for mapping roughness, also as a proxy for deformation state, with a best case RMSE of 5 mm in the winter, and 8 mm during the advanced melt. / Graduate

The ice melting and lateral cavity formation caused by in situ burning (ISB) of liquid fuels in ice-infested waters was studied in order to improve predictions on the removal efficiency of this oil spill mitigation method. For this purpose, several experimental studies were conducted to increase the fundamental understanding of the mechanisms that lead to ice melting and lateral cavity formation. The findings of the experimental studies provided the required knowledge to mathematically formulate the ice melting problem. Mathematical scaling analysis of ice melting during burning of oils in the vicinity of ice was performed to create a tool to estimate the extent of melting that occurs during ISB in ice-infested waters. A series of lab-scale experiments were designed to systematically investigate the ice melting problem. The first set of experiments were conducted in cylindrical shaped ice cavities with a 5.7 cm diameter. Burning of n-octane from ignition to natural extinction and the subsequent geometry change of the ice, fuel thickness, and fuel temperature were measured. The preliminary experimental observations showed that the melting of the ice walls was higher in areas where the fuel layer was in contact with ice compared with places of flame exposure. Based on these observations, a hypothesis that suggested the convective flows in the liquid fuel (driven mainly by surface tension and buoyancy) were contributing in melting of the ice was proposed to explain the origins of the lateral cavity. To evaluate this hypothesis, two dimensionless numbers (Marangoni and Rayleigh) were calculated as the indicators of the mechanisms of convection in the fuel layer. The comparison between the melting speed and these dimensionless numbers indicated surface tension driven flow was dominant while the role of buoyancy was negligible. In another set of experiments, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used to study the flow structure within the liquid-phase of n-octane pool fire bound on one side by an ice wall. Experiments were conducted in a square glass tray (9.6 cm × 9.6 cm × 5 cm) with a 3 cm thick ice wall placed on one side of the tray. Burning rate, flame height, and melting front velocity were measured to analyze the effect of heat feedback on melting of the ice. The melting rate of the ice increased from 0.6 cm/min for the first 50 seconds after ignition to 1 cm/min for the rest of burning period. Meanwhile, the measurement of the burning rates and flame heights showed two distinctive behaviors; a growth period from self-sustained ignition to the peak mass loss rate (first 50 seconds after ignition) followed by a steady phase from the peak of mass loss rate until the manual extinguishment. Similarly, the flow field measurements by a 2-dimensional PIV system indicated the existence of two different flow regimes. In the moments before ignition of the fuel, coupling of surface tension and buoyancy forces led to a combined one roll structure in the fuel. This was when a single large vortex was observed in the flow field. After ignition the flow field began transitioning toward an unstable flow regime (separated) with an increase in number of vortices around the ice wall. As the burning rate/flame height increased the velocity and evolving flow patterns enhanced the melting rate of the ice wall. Experimentally determined temperature contours showed that a hot zone with thickness of approximately 3 mm was present below the free surface, corresponding to the multi-roll location. The change in the flow field behavior was found to relate to the melting front velocity of ice. To further study the lateral cavity phenomena, a parametric experimental study on melting of ice adjacent to liquids exposed from above to various heat fluxes was conducted in order to understand the role of liquid properties in formation of cavities in ice. Multiple liquids with wide variety and range of thermophysical properties were used in order to identify the key influential properties on melting. The melting rate of the ice and penetration speed of the liquid in a transparent glass tray (70 mm × 70 mm × 45 mm) with a 20 mm thick ice wall (70 mm × 50 mm × 20 mm) was measured. The melting front velocities obtained from experiments were then compared to surface flow velocities of liquids obtained through a scaling analysis of the surface flow to elucidate the influence of the various thermophysical properties of the liquids on ice melting. The surface velocity of the liquids correlated well to the melting front velocities of the ice which showed a clear relationship between the flow velocity and melting front velocity. As the final step of this work, to extend the findings of the experimental studies conducted herein to larger sizes comparable to realistic situations in the Arctic, an order of magnitude scaling analysis was performed to obtain the extent of ice melting. The scaling considered the heat feedback from the flame to fuel surface, the convective heat transfers toward the ice, and the melting energy continuity of ice. The existing experimental data on the size of lateral cavity were also collected and were correlated to the results of the scaling analysis using a nonlinear regression fitting technique. The mathematical correlation that was obtained by the scaling analysis can be used to predict the size of the lateral cavity for a given fuel, pool fire diameter, and burning time. This correlation will provide a predictive tool to estimate the size of a potential lateral cavity formed during ISB of a given spill scenario. In general, the ability to predict the ice melting caused by burning of spilled oil in ice-infested waters is of great practical importance for assessment of the response outcome. This would assist with quantifying the geometry change of the burning medium which in turn will define oil burning rate and extinction condition. Knowledge of burning behavior and extinction condition indicate the burned volume which can directly be used to define the removal effectiveness of ISB. Nevertheless, this analysis was conducted on a generic interaction of oil and ice and the specific details that are observed in actual application of ISB in ice-infested waters were neglected for simplicity. Extending the outcome of this study to more specific (scenario-based) oil-in-ice situation and improving the predictability of the melting correlation with large-scale experiments are the next steps to develop this work.

Thesis advisor: Jeremy D. Shakun / Arctic permafrost contains a substantial stock of carbon that could be released to the atmosphere as CH4 and CO2 upon thawing, making it a potentially powerful amplifier of future warming. The sensitivity of permafrost to climate change is uncertain, however, and occurs on time scales longer than those captured by the instrumental record. Speleothems – cave precipitates deposited from flowing or dripping water – in currently frozen regions record past episodes of thaw, which can be used to assess the response of permafrost to long-term warmth. Here, we present 90 uranium-thorium ages on speleothems from across the North American Arctic, sub-Arctic and northern alpine regions to reconstruct a 600-kyr permafrost history. Widespread speleothem growth supports an episode of extensive permafrost thaw during the Marine Isotope Stage 11 interglacial about 400 ka, when global temperature was only slightly warmer than pre-industrial conditions. Additional growth is evident during MIS 13, curiously, a smaller magnitude interglacial. Ice-core records of atmospheric greenhouse gases do not show elevated concentrations at these times, perhaps suggesting that the permafrost carbon pool was smaller than today or released gradually enough to be buffered by other reservoirs. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Arctic ecosystems are amongst the most vulnerable on Earth to ongoing climate change. While the responses to these changes are well studied on land, less is known about how aquatic communities may respond to a warmer arctic. For stream invertebrate communities, predicting such responses requires basic understanding of how and why different taxonomic groups fluctuate throughout the year. However, few studies have assessed the community dynamics of stream macroinvertebrates across seasons in the Arctic. In this project, I asked how macroinvertebrate community structure changes between months and across seasons in a small Arctic stream in northern Sweden. I expected that community change over time would reflect changes in the supply of organic matter (e.g., leaf litter and algae) to dominant consumers. A total of five transects were sampled for macroinvertebrates each month from July to April using Surber sampling. I used descriptive and multivariate analyses to evaluate changes in community structure between months and seasons. Marked differences in community composition were found between the seasons with detritivores (shredders) dominating the autumn months possibly reflecting input of birch litter and high abundances of grazers during and post winter, possibly reflecting primary production early in spring. Expected climate change effects in the Arctic include warmer temperatures and increases in the terrestrial plant productivity. My results suggest that these shifts could cause changes in stream community composition, driven by increases in deciduous litter inputs that promote shredders and/or by increases in primary production during spring that favour grazers and collector-gatherers, which feed on algae.

No description available.

Thesis (Ocean E)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Ocean Engineering, 1979. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 178-180. / Ocean E

This thesis explores the development of missionary infrastructure in the Canadian north between approximately 1850 and 1915 and its impact on the evangelization of northern indigenous people by missionary organizations. Focussing on two groups of missionaries - the Catholic Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Anglican Church Missionary Society - this thesis demonstrates how missionaries used buildings to develop a programme for evangelization based on the convert and civilize model prevalent in nineteenth-century global missions. It argues that the intent was to convert indigenous people to Christianity and to enact significant changes on their traditional way of life, including their economy and social structure. Within this programme, architectural spaces, specifically the mission station, were used as a frontier location where indigenous people and missionaries interacted, providing a location for missionary teaching, a didactic place to demonstrate how Christians lived, and a method of transforming what was viewed as a non-Christian wilderness into a Christian 'garden' through construction of buildings and control of the natural world. While these ideas were applied to diverse locations throughout the global mission field in the early modern period of missionary activity, the Canadian north presents a unique area of study for this topic because of the relative lack of pre-existing non-indigenous development in the region, the difficulties in building resulting from its environment, and the romantic approach that missionaries took to it as the frontier of European and Christian activity - in biblical terms, the 'uttermost ends of the earth'. Within this context, the use of architecture as part of a missionary programme of conversion and civilization became extremely important as a tool for the transformation of the land and its people to a Christian ideal rooted in European precedent. This proved problematic because of the inherent difficulties in evangelization in this geographic region. As a result, this thesis demonstrates how missionaries applied architecture within the mission station as a tool for evangelization in this region, taking into consideration both the way in which they perceived the territory and the realities they faced on the ground. It reveals how these missionaries created a unique set of architectures that responded to how missionaries understood building function within the missionary environment, as well as what was actually achievable in the northern mission field.

Since the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century, anthropogenic changes in the environment have shifted from the local to the global scale. Even remote environments such as the high Arctic are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Similarly, anthropogenic mercury (Hg) has had a global reach because of atmospheric transport and deposition far from emission point sources. Whereas some effects of climate change are visible through melting permafrost, or toxic effects of Hg at higher trophic levels, the often-invisible changes in microbial community structures and functions have received much less attention. With recent and drastic warming-related changes in Arctic watersheds, previously uncharacterized phylogenetic and functional diversity in the sediment communities might be lost forever. The main objectives of my thesis were to uncover how microbial community structure, functional potential and the evolution of mercury specific functions in lake sediments in northern latitudes (>54ºN) are affected by increasing temperatures and Hg deposition. To address these questions, I examined environmental DNA from sediment core samples and high-throughput sequencing to reconstruct the community composition, functional potential, and evolutionary responses to historical Hg loading. In my thesis I show that the microbial community in Lake Hazen (NU, Canada) sediments is structured by redox gradients and pH. Furthermore, the microbes in this phylogenetically diverse community contain genomic features which might represent adaptations to the cold and oligotrophic conditions. Finally, historical Hg pollution from anthropogenic sources has likely affected the evolution of microbial Hg resistance and this deposition can be tracked using sediment DNA on the Northern Hemisphere. My thesis underscores the importance of using culture-independent methods to reconstruct the structure, functional potential and evolution of environmental microbial communities.

Inuit constructions of gender in the pre-colonial period were centered around a gendered division of subsistence tasks. It is through this division of labor which gender roles, gendered socialization and spousal roles were formed. However, during the colonial period Inuit subsistence and the role it plays in Inuit society was rapidly and drastically changed. By analyzing the work of three different Arctic ethnographers documenting Inuit subsistence in different time periods and national contexts, this thesis will analyze how political, economic and environmental change in the Arctic has altered Inuit subsistence practices from European contact through the contemporary era. By analyzing how subsistence has changed overtime, this paper will assess the contemporary Inuit food system and the current crisis of food insecurity in Inuit communities. This analysis will be used to understand the social impacts of an evolving Inuit food system and how the emerging mixed wage and subsistence economy has constructed a new gendered division of labor in which Inuit women act as the primary providers of financial capital while men maintain access to natural resources through traditional subsistence pursuits.

Ecosystems are highly variable in space and time. Understanding how spatial and temporal scales influence the patterns and processes occurring across watersheds presents a fundamental challenge to aquatic ecologists. The goal of this research was to elucidate the importance of spatial scale on stream structure and function within the Oksrukuyik Creek, an Arctic watershed located on the North Slope of Alaska (68°36’N, 149°12’W). The studies that comprise this dissertation address issues of scale that affect our ability to assess ecosystem function, such as: methodologies used to scale ecosystem measurements, multiple interacting scales, translation between scales, and scale-dependencies. The first methodological study examined approaches used to evaluate chlorophyll a in ethanol extracts of aquatic biofilms. Quantification of chlorophyll a is essential to the study of aquatic ecosystems, yet differences in methodology may introduce significant errors to its determination that can lead to issues of comparability between studies. A refined analytical procedure for the determination of chlorophyll a was developed under common acidification concentrations at multiple common reaction times. The refined procedure was used to develop a series of predictive equations that could be used to correct and normalize previously evaluated chlorophyll a data. The predictive equations were validated using benthic periphyton samples from northern Alaska and northwestern Vermont, U.S.A. The second study examined interaction and translation between scales by examining how normalization approaches affect measurements of metabolism and nutrient uptake in stream sediment biofilms. The effect of particle size and heterogeneity on rates of biofilm metabolism and nutrient uptake was evaluated in colonized and native sediments normalized using two different scaling approaches. Functional rates were normalized by projected surface area and sediment surface area scaling approaches, which account for the surface area in plan view (looking top-down) and the total surface area of all sediment particles, respectively. Findings from this study indicated that rates of biogeochemical function in heterogeneous habitats were directly related to the total sediment surface area available for biofilm colonization. The significant interactions between sediment surface area and rates of respiration and nutrient uptake suggest that information about the size and distribution of sediment particles could substantially improve our ability to predict and scale measurements of important biogeochemical functions in streams. The final study examined how stream nutrient dynamics are influenced by the presence or absence of lakes across a variety of discharge conditions and how catchment characteristics can be used to predict stream nutrients. Concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and other inorganic nutrients were significantly greater in streams without lakes than in streams in with lakes and DOC, total dissolved nitrogen (TDN), and soluble reactive phosphorus concentrations increased as a function of discharge. Catchment characteristic models explained between 20% and 76% of the variance of the nutrients measured. Organic nutrient models were driven by antecedent precipitation and watershed vegetation cover type while inorganic nutrients were driven by antecedent precipitation, landscape characteristics and reach vegetation cover types. The developed models contribute to existing and future understanding of the changing Arctic and lend new confidence to the prediction of nutrient dynamics in streams where lakes are present.