|
Arctic Coastal Tundra
The Arctic coastal tundra is an ecoregion of the far north of North America, an important breeding ground for a great deal of wildlife. Setting This ecoregion is located on the north coast of Alaska, and includes the east coast plain of Banks Island, as well as the Anderson River and Horton River plains, and the Tuktoyaktuk coast in the Northwest Territories. This is an area of low, flat, boggy coastal plains. The underlying soil of this damp Arctic coast is thick, solid permafrost, covered in summer with thermokarst "thaw lakes" of melted ice. Ice features such as ice wedges and pingo mounds of soil and ice can be found. This coast has an arctic climate warm enough to allow plant growth in late-June, July and August only, and even then frosts may occur. On the whole this is a damper, wetter area than the Low Arctic tundra ecoregion that continues along the coast west of here to Quebec. Flora This area supports wetland plants especially sedges and grasses, mosses and li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Firth River
Firth River is a major river in Yukon, Canada. It begins at the east side of Davidson Mountains and flows into the Beaufort Sea of the Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ..., just south of Herschel Island. References {{Reflist Rivers of North Slope Borough, Alaska Rivers of Alaska Rivers of Yukon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brant Goose
The brant or brent goose (''Branta bernicla'') is a small goose of the genus '' Branta''. There are three subspecies, all of which winter along temperate-zone sea-coasts and breed on the high-Arctic tundra. The Brent oilfield was named after the species. Description The brant is a small goose with a short, stubby bill. It measures long, across the wings and weighs . The under-tail is pure white, and the tail black and very short (the shortest of any goose). The species is divided into three subspecies: * Dark-bellied brant goose ''B. b. bernicla'' (Linnaeus, 1758) * Pale-bellied brant goose ''B. b. hrota'' ( Müller, 1776) (also known as light-bellied brent goose in Europe, and Atlantic brant in North America) * Black brant goose ''B. b. nigricans'' (Lawrence, 1846) (sometimes also known as the Pacific brant in North America) Some DNA evidence suggests that these forms are genetically distinct; while a split into three separate species has been proposed, it is not wid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lichen
A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.Introduction to Lichens – An Alliance between Kingdoms . University of California Museum of Paleontology. Lichens have properties different from those of their component organisms. They come in many colors, sizes, and forms and are sometimes plant-like, but are not s. They may have tiny, leafless branches (); flat leaf-like structures ( [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moss
Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta ('' sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and hornworts. Mosses typically form dense green clumps or mats, often in damp or shady locations. The individual plants are usually composed of simple leaves that are generally only one cell thick, attached to a stem that may be branched or unbranched and has only a limited role in conducting water and nutrients. Although some species have conducting tissues, these are generally poorly developed and structurally different from similar tissue found in vascular plants. Mosses do not have seeds and after fertilisation develop sporophytes with unbranched stalks topped with single capsules containing spores. They are typically tall, though some species are much larger. ''Dawsonia'', the tallest moss in the world, can grow to in height. There ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyperaceae
The Cyperaceae are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as sedges. The family is large, with some 5,500 known species described in about 90 genera, the largest being the "true sedges" genus '' Carex'' with over 2,000 species. These species are widely distributed, with the centers of diversity for the group occurring in tropical Asia and tropical South America. While sedges may be found growing in almost all environments, many are associated with wetlands, or with poor soils. Ecological communities dominated by sedges are known as sedgelands or sedge meadows. Some species superficially resemble the closely related rushes and the more distantly related grasses. Features distinguishing members of the sedge family from grasses or rushes are stems with triangular cross-sections (with occasional exceptions, a notable example being the tule which has a round cross-section) and leaves that are spirally arranged in three ranks. In comparison, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is the largest province by area and the second-largest by population. Much of the population lives in urban areas along the St. Lawrence River, between the most populous city, Montreal, and the provincial capital, Quebec City. Quebec is the home of the Québécois nation. Located in Central Canada, the province shares land borders with Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast, and a coastal border with Nunavut; in the south it borders Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York in the United States. Between 1534 and 1763, Quebec was called ''Canada'' and was the most developed colony in New France. Following the Seven Years' War, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pingo
Pingos are intrapermafrost ice-cored hills, high and in diameter. They are typically conical in shape and grow and persist only in permafrost environments, such as the Arctic and subarctic. A pingo is a periglacial landform, which is defined as a non-glacial landform or process linked to colder climates. It is estimated that there are more than 11,000 pingos on Earth. The Tuktoyaktuk peninsula area has the greatest concentration of pingos in the world with a total of 1,350 pingos. There is currently remarkably limited data on pingos. History In 1825, John Franklin made the earliest description of a pingo when he climbed a small pingo on Ellice Island in the Mackenzie Delta. However, it was in 1938 that the term ''pingo'' was first borrowed from the Inuvialuit by the Arctic botanist Alf Erling Porsild in his paper on Earth mounds of the western Arctic coast of Canada and Alaska. Porsild Pingo in Tuktoyaktuk is named in his honour. The term pingos, which in Inuvialuktun m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ice Wedge
An ice wedge is a crack in the ground formed by a narrow or thin piece of ice that measures up to 3–4 meters in length at ground level and extends downwards into the ground up to several meters. During the winter months, the water in the ground freezes and expands. Once temperatures reach −17 degrees Celsius or lower, the ice that has already formed acts like a solid and expands to form cracks in the surface known as ice wedges. As this process continues over many years ice wedges can grow, up to the size of a swimming pool. Ice wedges usually appear in a polygonal pattern known as ice wedge polygons. The cracks can also be filled with materials other than ice, especially sand, and are then called sand wedges. Formation There are many theories that attempt to explain the origin of ice wedges but only one has been consistently supported by most prominent scientists: the thermal contraction theory. Thermal contraction theory The thermal contraction theory posits that durin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thermokarst
Thermokarst is a type of terrain characterised by very irregular surfaces of marshy hollows and small hummocks formed as ice-rich permafrost thaws. The land surface type occurs in Arctic areas, and on a smaller scale in mountainous areas such as the Himalayas and the Swiss Alps. These pitted surfaces resemble clusters of small lakes formed by dissolution of limestone in some karst areas, which is how they came to have "'' karst''" attached to their name, even though no limestone is actually present. Small domes that form on the surface due to frost heaving with the onset of winter are only temporary features. They collapse during the following summer thaw, leaving a small surface depression. Some ice lenses grow and form larger surface hummocks (" pingos") which can last for many years, and sometimes become covered with grasses and sedges, until they begin to thaw. These domed surfaces eventually collapse – either annually or after longer periods – and form depressions whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Permafrost
Permafrost is ground that continuously remains below 0 °C (32 °F) for two or more years, located on land or under the ocean. Most common in the Northern Hemisphere, around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere or 11% of the global surface is underlain by permafrost, with the total area of around 18 million km2. This includes substantial areas of Alaska, Greenland, Canada and Siberia. It can also be located on mountaintops in the Southern Hemisphere and beneath ice-free areas in the Antarctic. Permafrost does not have to be the first layer that is on the ground. It can be from an inch to several miles deep under the Earth's surface. It frequently occurs in ground ice, but it can also be present in non-porous bedrock. Permafrost is formed from ice holding various types of soil, sand, and rock in combination. Permafrost contains large amounts of biomass and decomposed biomass that has been stored as methane and carbon dioxide, making tundra soil a carbon sink. As global wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuktoyaktuk
Tuktoyaktuk , or ''Tuktuyaaqtuuq'' (Inuvialuktun: ''it looks like a caribou''), is an Inuvialuit hamlet located in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada, at the northern terminus of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway.Montgomery, Marc"Canada now officially connected by road-coast to coast to coast" ''CBC Radio'', 15 November 2017. Retrieved on 15 November 2017. Tuktoyaktuk, one of six Inuvialuit communities in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, is commonly referred to simply by its first syllable, ''Tuk'' . The settlement lies north of the Arctic Circle on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and is the only community in Canada on the Arctic Ocean that is connected to the rest of Canada by road. Formerly known as ''Port Brabant'', the community was renamed in 1950 and was the first place in Canada to revert to the traditional Indigenous name. History Tuktoyaktuk is the anglicized form of the native Inuvialuit place-name, meaning "resembling a caribou". Accordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horton River (Canada)
The Horton River is a river in Inuvik and Sahtu Regions, Northwest Territories and Kitikmeot Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is a tributary of the Beaufort Sea and hence part of the Arctic Ocean drainage basin. Only the first few kilometres from its source are within Nunavut. Course The river begins at a small lake about north of the northeast Dease Arm of Great Bear Lake. It passes through the Smoking Hills and reaches its mouth on the east side of Cape Bathurst at Franklin Bay on the Amundsen Gulf of the Beaufort Sea, where it forms a small delta, about northwest of the community of Paulatuk. The mouth had been further north at Harrowby Bay on the west side of Cape Bathurst until about 1800 when a meander eroded through. There is an airstrip just north of the mouth. DEW Line/NWS Located about north northwest of the rivers mouth, at , lies the Horton River Short Range Radar Site (BAR-E), also known as Malloch Hills. Originally opened as a Distant Early Warning Line sit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
