Antarctic Treaty

According Garrett Hardin (1968), each herdsman wants to keep as many cattle as possible. The rational herdsman decides that adding additional animal to his herd will increase his utility. But each herdsman shares the commons, so if each herdsman decides to keep increasing cattle to the commons, the end result will be the depletion and ruin of the commons.

The commons here can be compared to Antarctica. Antarctica is an unregulated area of land which yields benefits to tourist companies who want to keep increasing tourist numbers as each additional tourist yields these companies higher utility (i.e. higher profits). The main assumption that Hardin uses is that the commons is unregulated. In this globalised world, it is rare, in my view, to find an industry that is unregulated – especially when it comes to nature and the environment. What matters in this debate though, is not whether there are regulations but how effective the regulations are.

One solution to the negative impacts explained last week is to reduce tourist numbers. This could potentially reduce the introduction of invasive species and the impact on penguin habitats. But as is obvious in my post from 27 October, tourist numbers are rising and I think this solution is unlikely. Companies running expeditions such as Poseidon Expeditions, Quark Expeditions, Chimu Adventures are profit maximising companies. This means they want to make as much money as possible and so reducing passenger numbers is undesirable because this reduces revenues and profits. Nevertheless, the Antarctic Treaty endeavours to do just this. In recognition of greater human visits to Antarctica, the Antarctic Treaty has been set up to prevent an environmental catastrophe.

The Antarctic Treaty

It was formed in 1959 and came into force in 1961 to govern human activities. It comprises of 46 countries, of which 28 have advisory status (i.e. power to make decisions). The treaty believes that the following provisions are the most important (Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, n/d):

1. Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only (Art. I).

2. Freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and cooperation (Art. II).

3. Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available (Art. III).

It claims these are the most important, however on reading these, my first impression is that there is no mention of the environmental concerns. Research seems to be the main agenda. As you will read later in my blog, research centres can also have negative impacts on the continent. So this is one flaw that I spotted when I began researching the treaty.   

The Rules of the Treaty are known as the Antarctic Treaty System, consisting of three international agreements:

1. Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (1972)

Aims to reduce commercial exploitation of seals.

2. Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (1980)

Aims to conserve and manage marine living resources in Antarctic. The following measures, among others, are being taken (Fabra and Gascon, 2008):

a. Develop a management regime for krill that takes into account the impact of fishing on dependent species

b. Establish a monitoring program

c. Develop fisheries management policies

3. Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty/ Montreal Protocol (1991)

Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty/ Montreal Protocol

The relevant agreement that relates to tourism is number 3: Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. This protocol was established in 1991 once it was recognised that the number of tourists were increasing. This treaty is broken up into six annexes including:

1. The requirement of an environmental impact assessment/initial environmental evaluation for every activity before it’s due to start 

2. Rules concerning the conservation of fauna and flora 

3. Rules on waste disposal and waste management 

4. Rules on marine pollution 

5. The establishment of protected areas 

6. Preventative measures and contingency plans shouldoperate in case of an environmental disaster. 

(Accessed through: Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, 2011)

Of the Annexes, number three and number six mention tourism. There were previously no restrictions or regulations on tourism, but this changed in 2009 when an agreement was made among member countries to limit tourism by reducing the size of cruise ships, capping the number of passengers that land in Antarctica to 500 and capping passengers on the shore at any given time to 100 (BBC, 2009). This agreement was discussed in the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Baltimore. Box 1 displays the general principles that came out of these discussions.

Box 1: General principles of Antarctic tourism agreed in 2009
Source: Lamers et al. (2012)

So hopefully from this post I have illustrates that action is indeed being taken to help reduce the human impacts on Antarctica. The international community is not ignoring what is happening to wildlife in Antarctica and it’s important to acknowledge this. International treaties help regulate and reduce negative environmental issues. In particular, Annex 3 which relates to waste management is a useful starting point to improve the environment. 

This is where I’m going to end today. Because regulation aims to reduce the human impact, this is one point to positive impacts, so the updated score for negative impacts vs natural/positive impacts is 3-2. These treaties signify that we acknowledge and want to reduce our wrong doings. But are these really effective? Keep a look out for the next post where I will determine whether its one more point to negative impacts or not.

Holidaying in Antarctica II

This post is about even more impacts that tourism has had on the Antarctic environment.

Oil Spills

Oil spills that have occurred in Antarctica have never been of the same magnitude as oil spills that occur from oil pipe leakages such as the BP oil spill in 2010, where 210 million gallons of crude oil was spilt (The Telegraph, 2011), or the Little Buffalo oil spill in Canada that occurred in 2011, spilling more than 800,000 gallons (Yahoo News, 2014). Nevertheless, this does not mean that they don’t have severe consequences when they occur. If anything, oil spills have an even worse effect because marine life here is much less adaptable and rarer. 

When ships travel down to Antarctica they sometimes have oil spills. The frequency of oil spills is shown in table 1, along with a summary of their impacts on wildlife.

Source: Aronson et al. (2011)

From the table, it is clear that oil spills in Antarctica don’t happen as often as the spills that appear in the news from drilling sites. Over the past 30 years, Aronson et al. (2011) seem to report just five spills. Interestingly, all of the reported oil spills have occurred during Antarctica’s summer, confirming that these are impacts from tourism. Some of these oil spills had no reported effects, demonstrating that there should be no concern about tourism related oil spills, right?

Not quite! The reason why oil spills in Antarctica are problematic is that Antarctica does not have infrastructure to deal with oil spills properly. They don’t have infrastructure to undertake large scale clean-up operations or clean up oil soaked mammals. Moreover it is difficult to conduct these operations because of harsh conditions during the winter. Because of this, the effects of large oil spills can have long run impacts of marine and terrestrial wildlife.

Bahia Paraiso

The largest oil spill that happened was when the Bahia Paraiso tourist ship sank, carrying 130 tourists (but luckily they all evacuated just before the sinking!). The wildlife impacts of this spill were significant. The South Polar Skua, pictured in figure 1, is a sea bird found prominently in Antarctica. Antarctica is the bird’s natural habitat. Following the oil spill in 1989, the mortality rate among this bird species increased sharply and remained high while the oil was present. This could have been because the birds feed on krill and fish, both of these were chemically contaminated as a result of the spill. Young chicks were affected the most, with all of the chicks of a sample of 53 nests dying during the spill in December (Eppley and Rubega, 1990).  One reason for this was that parents had been fouled by the diesel oil when they went out looking for food in oil slicks (where fish and krill are found). Because of this, they spent more time away from their nests to bathe in freshwater ponds before returning to their nests. In the meantime this left young chicks unprotected and vulnerable to attack by other skuas. This affect was widespread and affected the entire population.

Figure 1: South Polar Skua

Other effects of this oil spill include the transfer of oil from parents to young or from prey to predator; changes in food availability due to effects on other populations and toxicity resulting in mortality of Adélie penguins. 

So the bottom line is that oil spills are catastrophic to wildlife in Antarctica and wouldn’t even happen if it wasn’t for all those tourists and tourist companies making careless mistakes. The new score is negative impacts: 3, positive/natural impacts: 1.

Again, I understand this post may be slightly depressing, so I would like to end with a few positive points. I came across the ytravel blog which includes a page about Antarctica. Along with a great selection of photos of Antarctica, it also includes a list of reasons to visit Antarctica! It can be accessed by clicking here. Also, my next post will be about how Antarctic treaties and international laws are trying to protect Antarctica – it’s not all doom and gloom! Until then, I’m going to leave you with a short video to brighten up this post, illustrating why we should celebrate the wildlife in Antarctica. Although note - it seems that some of the clips were videoed by tourists!

Edit: If you would like to know more about tourism in Antarctica, Fiona has a wonderful post about it and also gives her perspective on tourism. Here is a link to her blog.

Holidaying in Antarctica

Antarctica has become a popular tourist destination over the years. First starting in the 1950s, expedition cruises take tourists to see the wildlife, unique scenery and geology, and visit research centres. Nowhere else on Earth can visitors can go to a continent totally surrounded by the sea and observe some of the world’s rarest species in some of the world’s harshest conditions. These are all reasons why tourism is gaining momentum and why the tourist season has increased to 173 days per year (Aronson et al. 2011). But how is the tourism industry affecting the wildlife in Antarctic?

Penguins

Before the 1950s, wildlife in Antarctica was not used to seeing humans in their habitats very much. Human activity was mainly focussed on research and so a lot of human activity was conducted in research centres – no one was actively looking for penguins or seals or whales. Now that they are, some penguin species are reacting to them, while others are not.

I found this funny cartoon, portraying this point:

Figure 1. Adapted from Antarctic-monument.org  

Seventeen species of penguins can be found on Antarctica. Of these, there are four penguin species that breed on the Antarctic continent itself: the Adelie, the Emperor, the Chinstrap and the Gentoo penguins (Antarctic Connection, 2014). Lynch et al. (2010) conducted a study on Petermann Island (see figure 3) which found that the Gentoo penguin has shown a reduction in breeding productivity in areas where tourists frequently visit. One explanation for this could be that they are less likely to establish a nest in areas that are frequently visited. Although correlation does not mean causation, it’s in my view that tourist visits has played a role in their population because visiting their habitats can be unsettling.

In spite of this, surprisingly Lynch et al. (2010) also found in their study that the Adélie penguin was not affected by frequent tourist visits in terms of breeding. This shows that the effect of tourist visits is species specific and therefore can be difficult to measure. Figure 2 shows the penguins.

Figure 2. Gentoo penguin (left) and Adélie penguin (right)

The Lynch et al. (2010) paper was very insightful to read. Even though I read it to learn about the impacts of tourism on the breeding productivities of the Adélie and Gentoo penguins, I also learnt about a new potential human cause of a trending population decline of the Adélie penguin. During their study, the authors realised that there was a tick infestation among the Adélie penguin colonies at Petermann Island in North West Antarctica, a popular tourist destination because of its proximity to the southern tip of Argentina. This is shown in figure 3. The fact that tourists frequently visit the Island can help explain the spread of this I. uriae parasite. The evidence leads me to believe that the I. uriae parasite was transported from another North Western Island because the authors point out that this was the first time they had witnessed it on Petermann Island since they started investigating penguins there twenty years ago. This demonstrates that tourist expedition cruises may have transported it from another island. The authors also mention that they can’t rule out that climate change could have created conditions allowing its existence in this region. Either explanation holds humans responsible, at least in part, of this occurrence.

Figure 3: Petermann Island

Invasive species

This leads me nicely to my next topic about how tourism causes the invasion of foreign species. Tourist ships tend to contain double hulls. This is a cause of concern because double hulls provide insulation against temperature reductions as ships make their way to Antarctica, allowing invasive species to survive. An example of an invasive species is the mussel species, Mytilus Galloprovincialis, which was observed to have survived in a sea chest on a supply ship by Lee and Chown (2007). Another invasion species found is a type of green algae called Enteromorpha Intestinolis which was discovered growing on Half Moon Island off the West Antarctic Peninsula, apparently because it was transported there by tourist vessels (Clayton et al., 1997; Aronson et al., 2011). These invasive species can be problematic because they affect the food chain, invade habitats and can potentially initiate and spread new diseases to existing marine wildlife. The latter effect is demonstrated by the tick infestation found on Petermann Island. 

All in all, it seems that tourism in Antarctica is having a somewhat damaging effect on wildlife. Understanding these impacts have actually put me off wanting to visit Antarctica for a holiday, then again, I don't think I would be able to survive the cold anyway! So far, the scores for negative human impacts verses positive/ natural impacts on Antarctica are 2-1.

Apologies for such as negative post! Sometimes the impacts of humans on wildlife are harmful and I am trying to shed light on this. My next post will be about oil spills from tourist ships and how this affects sea birds and other wildlife. So until then, thanks for reading!

Tourism in Antarctica – An Introduction

Today’s post will be a light one, introducing tourism and the different ways that it impacts Antarctica.

It is correct to say that there are no continents on Earth that humans have not touched. Human visits to Antarctica were initially for research only. However humans are visiting the continent in vast numbers for no reason other than for entertainment and pleasure (see Figure 2). Seeing wildlife is perhaps the only reason why tourists venture out to Antarctica, but ironically, their activities are harming the very environment which they claim to idolise. The visits have been identified as causing disturbance to wildlife, having negative impacts on vegetation and soil and leaving litter ashore (Bauer, 1994). Furthermore, Aronson et al. (2011) identify further disruptions to the environment such as pollution and the introduction of invasive species. These impacts are no doubt harmful to the Antarctic ecosystem. This raises some important questions such as: to what extent is the industry being regulated, what does the future of Antarctic tourism look like given the issues concerning ice instability and global warming and how severe is the wildlife impact of tourism?

Figure 1: Tourists observing penguins

Figure 2 shows the pace of tourism growth in recent years. This graph is an indication of what the future for Antarctica holds and the severity of the impact of humans through tourism. The figure shows that total tourism increased to more than 45,000 visits per year from 2007 to 2008. After 2008, there has been an overall decline in tourism, falling to about 37,000 per year in 2009. This is presumable attributed to the global financial crisis and reduction in consumer spending as incomes fell. Nevertheless, tourist numbers are still higher than they have been for the past 20 years.

Figure 2: Estimated numbers of passengers travelling annually to Antarctica on expeditions and cruise-only tour ships between 1992-2010. Source: Aronson et al. (2011)

Keep a look out for the answers to the above questions and insightful discussions on this topic!

Natural Climate Variability and The Arctic Oscillation

Last week, I posted about the Larsen B ice shelf, proposing that its break up may have been human induced. There is a lot of uncertainty about climate change at the moment. In my very first post, I highlighted this issue explaining that it can leave you feeling confused about what is actually happening! Some researchers believe that the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed because of greenhouse gases, while other researchers, primarily climate change sceptics, believe that natural climate variability is actually contributing to the climate in Antarctica. This post is going to present their arguments. 

The Arctic Oscillation

Antarctica experiences changes in climate due to natural climate variability. One example of this is the Arctic Oscillation. The Arctic Oscillation fluctuates between a positive and a negative state, as shown in Figure 1. When in a positive state, the Arctic experiences unusually low atmospheric pressure and a warmer climate (Bjornaes and Pal, 2012, 'The State of the Poles', p.19). Furthermore, the jet stream blows strongly from west to east. When in a negative state, the Arctic experiences high pressure and the jet stream is weaker. 

Figure 1. Arctic Oscillation. Adapted from Bjornaes and Pal (2012, 'The State Of The Poles': p.19). 

The Arctic Oscillation affects the climate in Antarctica. A study by Chylek et al. (2010) investigated the effect of the Arctic Oscillation on the Antarctic climate and found that when the Arctic warms, Antarctica cools and vice versa. Additionally, Brunier and Brook (2001) observed this “bipolar see-saw pattern” from ice core records dating back to the last glacial period, demonstrating that this phenomenon is independent of human impacts. Figure 2 is a graph that illustrates the bipolar see-saw pattern, plotting temperatures against time. It is evident that as temperatures in the Arctic fall, in Antarctica they rise, despite emissions and other anthropogenic interferences with climate change.

Figure 2. Bipolar Seasaw Pattern. Source: Chylek et al. (2010).

Arctic (blue) and Antarctic (red) temperature time series smoothed by a 11 year running average (thin lines) or 17 year running average (thick lines)

Larsen B 

The bottom right of figure 1 shows a time series of the patterns of negative and positive oscillation indexes. The circled year represents the year 2002, the same year that the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed. The figure shows that the Arctic Oscillation Index (a measure of the magnitude of the Arctic Oscillation phenomenon) was negative that year, demonstrating that when the Arctic cooled, Antarctica warmed. It can be argued that this warming accelerated the melting of ice during the summer months which led to the break-down of the Larsen B ice shelf. In fact, Domack et al. (2005) conducted a study to determine the stability of the Larsen B ice shelf during the Holocene and found that the ice shelf had been thinning throughout the Holocene, i.e. throughout the past 11,500 years! This is evidence against human induced warming affecting the Antarctic right? 

How does the Arctic Oscillation work? 

In this description, I will explain how the oscillation leads to a warmer Arctic. A similar mechanism operates in the opposite direction to explain Antarctic warming as well. Described by Chylek et al.(2010), winds over the Southern Ocean are drawn to the surface by wind stress. This water is heated by the sun and the Atlantic surface current transports it away from Antarctica. As the water warms more, it travels towards the Arctic leaving Antarctica deficient in heat. The more efficient this transport, the greater the warming. This demonstrates the importance of the role of ocean currents in natural climate variability.

Conclusions

Arctic Oscillation and the work done by the researchers mentioned above are just one of many scientific models and explanations for the Larsen B ice shelf collapse and for climate in Antarctica. If studying Economics and geography at UCL has taught me anything, its that the world is full of uncertainties. Researchers aiming to devise what is human induced and what isn't in our planet will always end up with different explanations because Earth is complex. 

My personal view regarding this matter is that natural causes are not strong enough to determine what caused the Larsen B ice shelf to disintegrate. Although evidence presented suggests that Arctic Oscillation impacts the climate in Antarctica, uncertainty lies in the magnitude of the positive feedback systems between Antarctic waters and heating from the sun. There is also uncertainty in the strength of the transportation of these waters. To me, it seems unlikely that early humans at the start of the Holocene caused enough warming to contribute to the thinning of the Larsen B ice shelf, as illustrated by figure 3 in my post last week. 

That's all today! The score so far is 1-1. Next time, I will explore how tourism has affected Antarctica, thank you for reading!

Melting Ice - Larsen B

In my last post, I introduced melting sea ice as one of the major changes occurring to our planet, and one that is certainly affecting Antarctica at the moment. Today I’m going to discuss the melting ice in more depth.

Over the past 200 years or so, the human footprint on the world has become so apparent and so profound that we humans now ‘rival the great forces of Nature and are pushing Earth to a new planetary terra incognita’ (Steffan et al. 2007: 614). This has created to need for a new epoch away from the Holocene to one that is more reflective of human actions. “The Anthropocene” was termed to capture this. Although there is much debate about the precise time that this epoch started, e.g. at the start of the Industrial Revolution, or a few hundred years earlier (Zalasiewics, et al. 2011; Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; Gale and Hoare, 2012), this epoch signifies that because of humans, Earth is becoming warmer, less biologically diverse, less forested, wetter and stormier (Steffan et al. 2007). The emission of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere is creating a warming effect, i.e. the greenhouse effect, whereby the Earth will warm by 1.4 to 5.8^oC by the end of the century (Crutzen, 2002). I came across a very insightful TEDx talk in which Steffan Will goes into more depth explaining the origins of the Anthropocene which can be view here if my readers wish to learn more. 

Unsurprisingly, a warmer planet is troublesome for ice. Below is a graphic representation of Antarctica, displaying the continent's ice shelves and glaciers.

Figure 1. Source: Adapted from Rignot and Stanley (2002)

According to Pritchard et al. (2009), some glaciers are thinning at alarming rates. For example, Pine Island glacier is thinning by up to 18 feet per year, while the Smith glacier is thinning by 27 feet per year. This highlights the severity of warming occurring today. Glaciers in Antarctica are at risk of becoming less stable as the planet warms.

The circled ice shelf in Figure 1 is the Larsen B ice shelf. In 2002, it collapsed and fell apart. Cited by Schmidt (2011), this was predicted by Mercer (1968), who wrote that global warming caused by industrial pollution would lead to a collapse West Antarctica’s ice shelves. Figure 1 shows the levels of carbon dioxide emissions from 1850 onwards. The figure agrees with Mercer, showing that emissions have risen due to industrialisation. I have also included a diagrammatic representation of the change in global temperatures, shown in figure 3. Figures 2 and 3 are complementary in that they demonstrate the correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature rises

Figure 2: Total global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion initiated by industrialisation.
Source: Hardy (2003) 'Climate Change: Causes, Effects and Solutions', p. 13.

Figure 3: Variations in Earth's temperature for (a) the past 1,000 years and (b) the past 140 years, gathered from proxy measurements based on tree rings, corals, ice cores and historical records. Source: Hardy (2003) 'Climate Change: Causes, Effects and Solutions', p. 41.

A recent study by Rebesco et al. (2014) showed that the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed because of warmer air, partly by human activities and our effects on warming the planet. Their results show that the Larsen B ice shelf shattered in the following way:

• Warmer temperatures warmed up the air
• Warmer air melted ice during the summer months
• This water flowed into cracks inside the ice shelf
• As winter approached, all the water froze again and expanded in the cracks
• This caused the ice shelf to shatter from the increased pressure in the cracks

Below is a very short video capturing the Larsen B ice shelf collapse from satellite images in 2002, illustrating what happened visually. Unfortunately I can't post the actual video on the blog. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N61EP5zB8uU#t=28

To summarise this post, I’ve presented the view that the Larsen B ice shelf collapse was partly caused by humans because of human induced warmer air in Antarctica. The score for negative human impacts verses positive/ natural impacts is 1-0. In my next post, I will present some of the criticisms of the views presented in this post. 

Is it Really SOS Antarctica?

Welcome to my blog about how humans have affected Antarctica. In my first post, I will explain why I’ve chosen to write about this topic and go through some of the areas I will blog about in the coming months. 

So why have I chosen to blog about Antarctica?

Yesterday, The Guardian had a report about record levels of Antarctic sea ice. Meanwhile three weeks ago, the BBC reported on ‘unprecedented’ melting of the Antarctic Peninsula. Five months ago in May 2014, The Times reported that the amount of melting ice has doubled compared to ten years ago. Are you confused? Well I don't blame you! Antarctic sea ice has appeared in the news at least once a year for the last ten years. The topic pops up so frequently, all reporting different things, that it is hard to comprehend what is actually happening. The fact that Antarctic sea ice is in the news so often makes it apparent that climate change is one of the biggest issues the world is facing today. The impacts of climate change, as seen above, are confusing, but in particular the impact of anthropogenic climate change is more controversial which is why I have chosen to blog about it. I want readers to understand more about Antarctica because it is such a unique and fragile continent (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Antarctica from space shows how unique and fragile the continent really is. Source: The Guardian, 2014

What to expect?

By reading my blog, you will understand the complexity of climate change as throughout the next three months, I will present you with case studies, theories and research, citing from academic journals, books and news articles, that help explain the human impacts on Antarctica. One of the main impacts that humans have on Antarctica is our contribution to melting ice. I will present arguments for and against this view and various others using academic literature and scientific research, debating around these topics. Other effects that I will blog about include ozone depletion, marine/ terrestrial life and tourism. These effects will help me answer the question of whether it really is SOS Antarctica. Furthermore, throughout this blog I will keeps a score of the natural or positive human impacts versus negative human impacts because it is important to distinguish between the different effects. It will also help keep track of whether humans are actually causing Antarctica to become distressed.

This blog will go beyond climate change. I don’t want my readers to think of this blog as a climate change blog. Instead, the aim of my blog is to provide you all with an idea of the alternative ways that humans are affecting Antarctica. 

In this post I have introduced melting ice as one of the key environmental changes Antarctica currently faces. To end, below is a link to an interactive map showing the effect on all continents if all the ice in the world melted, including Antarctica. I would definitely encourage my readers to explore the effect on other continents, but in particular notice the significant loss in land mass predicted in Antarctica – how ironic that the melting of Antarctic ice will reduce its own land mass! That’s all from me today, I hope you enjoy exploring Antarctica with me over the coming months! 

National Geographic Interactive Map