Arctic Coasts Losing Shoreline
19.04.2011 - Water & Oceans, Land & Geology, Arctic
According to a collaborative study conducted by a consortium of more than 30 scientists from 10 countries, the retreat of the Arctic coastline as a consequence of climate change amounts to half a metre per year on average.
The International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the international joint project Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ), the International Permafrost Association (IPA) and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) working group of the Arctic Council all initiated and coordinated the study.
The consortium investigated over 100,000km of coastline. Their results have now been published for the first time in a status report. Entitled “State of the Arctic Coast 2010”, the report appeared in the journal Estuaries and Coasts and underlines the substantial changes Arctic ecosystems and populations might have to face near the coast.
Scientists say the changes are particularly dramatic in the Laptev, East Siberian and Beaufort Seas, with coasts eroding more than 8 metres a year in some places. The phenomenon could spread as one third of the world's shores consist of permafrost, warn scientists. As sea ice declines steadily, the shores are increasingly losing their protective barrier, which previously shielded them from the eroding force of the waves.
While thinly populated, the coasts in the Arctic are important for economic and social life. For the ecosystems in the area, the progressive erosion at the coast means a substantial change in ecological conditions.
“When systematic data acquisition began in 2000,” said Dr Hughes Lantuit from the Alfred Wegener Institute, a partner in the study, “detailed information was available for barely 0.5% of the Arctic coasts”. The collaborative study, which lasted for more than ten years, has allowed the researchers to gain a comprehensive overview of the state and risk of erosion in the Arctic coastal areas.
