Critical review on norther canada - Essay Example

He is one of the most qualified and eminent scientists of fresh water today. Professor John P. Smol is a professor in the Department of Biology and also chairs Environmental Change at Queen’s University. He has rested his entire career to the study of environment and problems related. His work has been widely used in acid-rain debates and in studies related to global environmental change. He has written more than 230 publications and will soon publish his thirteenth book related to environmental issues.

In the last ten years he has been awarded 18 medals, fellowships and various prizes for his phenomenal contribution. The article throws light on the impact of climate warming on the Arctic over the North America, Eurasian Arcitic and other polar regions. The authors stress that Arctic is high latitude system which has come under threat due to warm climate and human-caused environmental activities. The paper seeks to refute claims and the widely believed perception that Arctic lakes, ponds and rivers are immune from the impact of activities undertaken by humans.

It is explained how changing albeta and cold water biota make them sensitive to climate changes and green house warming only accelerates the process. They suspect Arctic Aquatic fauna to comprise of a high concentration of contaminants due to changes in its lakes and rivers over the years. The purpose of the paper is to point out the gravity of impact of human activities on the Arctic and it is way more than most environmental mangers predict. The authors cite Sprague’s (2006) work “Great wet north?

Canada's myth of water abundance” in pointing out that the flowery stories planted by Canadian media and politicians over abundance of water in the region are a fluke. Sprague’s work is correctly quoted to correct the false impressions people have about the country’s water resources. The biggest strength of this paper is the consistency of the work. The authors of the paper do not digress. This assertion is repeated again with a plausible concern in the end when Krummel’s (2003) work is cited to explain why in high latitude regions politicians tend to ignore environmental problem.

It is well illustrated with a lot of pictures and graphs. The article is well supported with a lot of correctly cited statistical references. For instance, the authors point out Brunskill’s hydrological figures when stating that most lakes in the north have less than one percent of their water replaced every year. However, there are places, where the authors could have gotten into more insight for instance they assert that high exposure to ultra-violet rays can inflict a lot of harm to the DNA in phytoplankton’s and zoo-planktons.

Hessen and Williamsons work from the nineties is quoted but without any further explanation. When I piqued through their work, I figured they had also explained how and what causes the damage. Again while specifying how snow cover affects lake properties, they point out by citing Sorwari’s (2003) workthat snow cover can have huge limonological implication. But they failed to cover what kind of limonological limitations? These were some of the minor glitches in the otherwise well researched paper.

The authors made it a point to use most of the latest references which was a major plus point. There were only a few places where they had referenced all the way back to papers from 1980s- Carmouse (1983) and Prowse (1985) to name a