Susceptibility to Environmental Impact in the Queen Elizabeth Islands

Abstract

Exploration for oil and gas is proceeding on a rapidly increasing scale in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, and the region needs therefore to be assessed comprehensively in terms of susceptibility of habitat to physical disturbance. ... The evaluation is however necessarily provisional, since only a small part of the total land area has so far been the subject of detailed biological description. Areas likely to be ecologically critical are delimited with the object of assisting governmental and industrial planning. ... Land areas were subdivided into four broad categories based largely on observations made by the present authors. ... The categories are as follows: 1) Polar Desert (31% of land area): susceptibility low .... 2) Polar Semi-desert (25% of land area): susceptibility moderate .... 3) Diverse terrain (22% of land area): susceptibility high in many sites. ... 4) Large meadows (<2% of land area): susceptibility high .... While biological diversity and plant cover are far less in the High Arctic than in the warmer mainland Arctic, there are numerous areas where the land is susceptible to disturbance. The most common forms of degradation are sheet and gully erosion in areas of sparse plant cover, and the softening in summer of slightly disturbed surfaces on moist, fine-grained substrates. This situation contrasts with that in the Low Arctic where removal of vegetation and potential thermokarst are of great concern. In relatively small areas of high plant cover, surfaces have a susceptibility similar to the extensive tundra areas farther south. The biological consequences of disturbance can be much greater, however, not because of deleterious effects on the landscape alone, but because these isolated rich sites comprise the bulk of the energy base for the remainder of the terrestrial food web.