Siberian Tundra: 十一月 2011

This is a story about Siberia Tundra

We all love our home, our beautiful and amazing Earth.Then we need to find the ways to maintain and improve it. As for me, I believe education and technology improve can really make a big change for saving our Siberian Tundra. First, education can help young people realize that tundra is really important for us, although they are barely going to live their during their life time. Tundra can help us control the balance of our ecosystem and provides the habitats for millions of species to make a living. Furthermore, Education also can help adult treat tundra more serious which means that they start to have a sense of protecting tundra and influence people around them. On the other hand, technologies'improvement also played a significant role in maintaining tundra's condition. The improved tech system can let human produce less trash and more recycled staff. Because of these, tundra's environment can keep in a balancing cycled just like thousands of years ago. Indeed, if our technology reaches a certain level, we human even can shape all our trash into useful staff which not only protect environment but also provide us a more sustainable life circle.

Where is Siberian Tundra's future?

From my perspective, Siberian tundra's condition is still in the good category compared to the other Biomes in the world.From the research that I did, I understand that Tundra has suffered a comparatively big human impacts in the past decades. In the vegetation, animals, habitat changes and airborne virus, the creatures in the tundra has changed significantly by human's impacts. However, I believe that all of these bad effects on tundra can be changed in the future and as long as human start to realize the important role tundra played in balancing the ecosystem, Tundra will still in a good condition in the next several decades. But,after centuries, we really did not know what is going to happen to Siberian Tundra. What we can really do is to minimize human's bad impact on Siberian Tundra.

Human Impact

Wildfire

Air temperature has warmed in the far north and as a result thunder and lightening storms that used to stay further south now occur in areas of Tundra. As a result, lightening caused wildfires have become more common. According to the National Science, the top 10 year period from 2000 to 2010 saw more area burned by wildfires in tundra than all the other fires from 1950 to 2000 combined.

Vegetation Changes

As the tundra has warmed, the area of true tundra has receded as larger, shrubbier plants move north. Other ares in the tundra have changed from grassy plain makes up tundra to marshy wet land, with tundra vegetation been replaced by wetland grasses. According to the Arctic change website, satellite image shows that between 1982 to 2000, the area of tundra, based on the type of plants growing there, decreased by 18 percent.

Habitat Changes

As temperatures have increased in the tundra, species that did not come to so far north in the past now migrate to the tundra during the summer. According to the Arctic Change, ring neck ducks, for example, had never been seen at an observation station in the near Canadian tundra prior to the 1980s. From that time through 2009, they commonly migrate through the tundra. Additionally, construction of pipelines have blocked traditional caribou migrate path.

Airborne Pollutant
Such airborne pollutants as DDT and PCBs have been carried into remote areas of the Arctic tundra. The tundra serves as nesting ground for many species of migration birds.pollutants like DDT can become concentrated in the systems of birds, causing thinning of their eggshells. Although DDT is banned in the U.S, warmer temperatures in the tundra have led to insect of outbreaks and increased use of pesticides may have unknown impact on tundra wild life.