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........ published in NEWSLETTER # 62

DISTURBANCE AND RECOVERY IN ARCTIC LANDS
by Professor R.M.M. Crawford, The University, St. Andrews (U.K.)

Disturbance is no new feature in the Arctic. The combination of climatic oscillation, environmental stress and disturbance from habitat instability has long made the Arctic an area of physical fragility to which the plant and animal life as well as early human settlers have appeared to be well-adapted. Recent changes with intense human exploitation, climatic warming and pollution from both within and outside the Arctic has exposed many high latitude regions to unaccustomed types of disturbance which threaten to overcome in many places the natural resilience of artic populations to habitat disturbance.

This book (NATO ASI SERIES 2-25) which resulted from a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Rovaniemi, Finland, in September 1995, discusses the nature of these disturbances and the prospects for recovery under six major headings:

• I. Arctic Communities, Past, Present and Future
• II: Arctic communities under Stress
• III. Heavy Metal Pollution
• IV. Anthropogenic Disturbance
• V. Oil Extraction and Ecosystem Disturbance
• VI. Ecosystem Recovery at High Latitudes.

A particular feature of the book is the circum-polar cover with many authors from among the younger communities or researchers in Russia.
Reference books: 2-25, 4-5, C308, I16, I27, I47

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