ANOMALOUS GROUND WARMING VERSUS SURFACE AIR WARMING IN THE CANADIAN PRAIRIE PROVINCES

Modelling results of precision temperature logs made to depths of up to several hundred meters in numerous wells in the Canadian Prairie provinces (mostly Alberta) show evidence of average warming at the ground surface (GST) of 2.1 K (standard deviation = 0.9 K) mostly in the second half of this century. The GST warming signal for which higher frequency noise is cut off by the earth, which acts as a low-pass filter, correlates with the surface air warming (SAT) measured at screen level. A spatial comparison is made between the SAT warming and the GST warming for the last four decades in this region. A GIS (Geographic Information System) area cross tabulation was performed through the intersection of the classes of the ground and surface warming maps with a resulting contingency coefficient C= 0.805. Identical grid samples extracted from the ground warming and surface warming maps were related statistically with a resulting correlation coefficient of r= 0.75. Differences in the magnitudes of the warming exist due to the limited number of compatible data sets, errors in ground warming and air warming reconstructions, and land surface changes affecting the energy balance and subsurface heat fluxes. The influence of these effects requires further study. It is unlikely that all of the sites for which GST warming has been proven to correlate with air warming would have identical topography, vegetation, and hydrogeological disturbances for an area as large as the one under study (about 720,000 km²). The warming effect in the study area, as preserved by the ground, is mainly climate related.     

Climate and human induced hydrological change since AD 800 in an ombrotrophic mire in Pomerania (N Poland) tracked by testate amoebae, macro-fossils, pollen and tree rings of pine

This high-resolution, multiproxy, palaeoenvironmental study of the Słowińskie Błota raised bog in N Poland, 10 km from the Baltic Sea, covering the last 1200 years reveals different aspects of environmental change in a range of spatial scales from local to regional. Testate amoebae allowed quantitative reconstruction of the local water table using a transfer function based on a training set from N and W Poland. Special attention is paid to the testate amoeba Arcella discoides , which responds to rapid water-table fluctuations more than to average surface wetness. Macrofossils supported by local pollen tracked the local vegetation dynamics caused by local human impact and disturbance, including nutrients. Regional pollen showed human-induced landscape change outside the bog. Tree rings of Pinus sylvestris reflected the history of tree establishment and desiccation of the bog. Strong correlations between DCA axes 1 of regional pollen, of macrofossils and of testate amoebae, and a testate-amoebae-based water-table reconstruction that excludes A. discoides , indicate that changes on all spatial scales are linked, which is explained by a strong hydrologic connection between bog and surroundings. The combination of proxies shows that groundwater levels were modified by both human impact and climate change.     

Design and development strategy for multi-media GIS to support environmental negotiation, administration, and monitoring at the regional level

Environmental protection agencies must administer and monitor compliance with environmental legislation and regulations, provide information to educate the public on the importance of environmental issues, and support the negotiation of environmental conflicts between socio-economic sectors. To perform these activities at the regional level requires the assembling, management, analysis, and presentation of large amounts of geo-referenced information from different sources, formats, and scales. Multi-media Geographic Information Systems (MM-GIS) offer an alternative to deliver this functionality to support the daily activities of environmental professionals. In the dynamic context of the work carried out by environmental agencies, data and conditions must be updated frequently. The proposed design and development strategy for creating MM-GIS is based on the premises that these agencies have scarce personnel, computer, financial, and time resources, and that there is a shortage of experienced developers. It expands the multi-media handling capabilities of GIS and is aimed at facilitating the involvement of professional users in the maintenance and development of a system. It is expected that this involvement will reduce the risk of a MM-GIS becoming obsolete shortly after its completion. A case study and the resulting MM-GIS for a region on the west coast of central Mexico is presented.     

The thermal structure of Hansbreen, a tidewater glacier in southern Spitsbergen, Svalbard

Ice temperature measurements were taken from three shallow and five deep (to bedrock) boreholes on Hansbreen, Svalbard, in selected years between 1988 and 1994. In general, results show a subpolar, polythermal structure. The glacier accumulation zone is of warm ice within the entire vertical profile except the uppermost layer of seasonal temperature fluctuations where there is an upper cold ice layer in the ablation zone which varies in thickness and may even be absent in the western lateral part. The upper layer of cold ice thins along the glacier centre-line from the equilibrium line altitude down to the glacier front. The depth of the pressure melting, indicating the base of the cold ice layer, was defined at the borehole measurement sites but was not manifested as an internal reflection horizon using multi-frequency radar methods. The isotherm lies about 20 m above a radar internal reflecting horizon near the equilibrium line altitude and about 40 m above it in the frontal part of the glacier. The internal reflection horizon almost certainly reflects the high water content within temperate ice and not the cold/temperate ice interface. At 10 m depth, the temperatures are 2–3°C higher than the calculated mean annual air temperatures, demonstrating the importance of meltwater refreezing on the release of latent heat.