'The Aliens to Watch:' How the Humble Earthworm is Altering the Arctic. They are a gardener's best friend, good for the soil and a treat for birds. But the humble earthworm may not always be good news, according to a study that suggests invasive earthworms could be making Arctic soils too fertile. The earthworm is not typically thought of as an invasive species. "Most parts of Europe have earthworms so we never really saw them as a problem," says lead researcher Dr Gesche Blume-Werry, an ecologist from the University of Greifswald in Germany. But Blume-Werry and her colleagues realized that "more and more spots in the Arctic have worms because humans brought them there." The Guardian

 

Russia Has Several Thousand Nuclear Objects Dumped on its Arctic Sea Floor. Now, the Most Dangerous Will be Removed. These objects are not environmentally safe, a representative of Rosatom made clear as he this week presented a clean-up plan for the north Russian waters. In the period between the late 1960s to the late 1980s, about 18 thousand radioactive objects were dumped to sea in the remote northern waters. Most of them represent little environmental risk. But some are increasingly seen as a hazard to Arctic ecosystems. The Barents Observer

 

Greenland and Faroe Island Included in Danish Arctic Strategy Work. Denmark's current Arctic strategy expires by the end of this year, and the work on a new one is well underway. Now, Greenland and the Faroe Islands are included in the process, Sermitsiaq writes. All parties of the Realm of the Danish Crown should be able to find themselves in the new strategy, says Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod (S), who visited Greenland last weekend. High North News 

 

Treaties, Modern Negotiation, and Indigenous Resource Management in the Canadian Arctic. Caught between two legal and political systems with conflicting interpretations of history, the Dehcho self-government negotiations falter. The task: the Dehcho Dene, Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) and Canada must harmonize their competing visions through nation-to-nation partnership and treaty federalism. What principles ought to guide constitutional struggles of this kind? During the first gathering of the fourth cohort of the Jane Glassco Northern Fellowship in the Yukon, Ta'an Kwäch'än elder Shirley Adamson impressed upon me that we "must always remember the treaties." Tethering modern negotiations to historical relationships both honours the past and appropriately frames the terms of dialogue. The Two Row Wampum, a 1613 treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Europeans often cited as an ideal framework for modern treaty-making,symbolizes a ship sailing side-by-side with a canoe in the spirit of coexistence and non-interference. However, the Dehcho Process looks more like a ship and canoe passing in the night. The Arctic Institute 

 

Ice Airfields to be Built in Arctic. Specialists at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University have developed a technology for changing the structure of ice, thanks to which it can be used in the construction of runways, as well as for storage sites on the continental territories of the Arctic. The project is called Ploshchadka (Site). "It implies the construction of pre-fabricated ice airfields by modifying the ice cover using special chemicals that allow aircraft to land on the processed ice strip," the university's Vice-Rector for Economics and Innovation Yevgeny Storozhuk said on the sidelines of the Army 2020 Forum. The Arctic 

 

As the Arctic Warms, the Inupiat Adapt. Utqiagvik sits at the very tip of the United States, saddled against the Arctic Ocean. The Alaska Native Inupiat are set apart from other Indigenous peoples by their subsistence hunting of the bowhead whale. Even today, this unique, centuries-old practice determines the social structure, reflects community values and supplements the people's nutrient-rich diet. Nearly all of Utqiagvik's roughly 5,000 residents, the majority of whom are Inupiat, rely on hunting to support their way of life. Which is why Harry Brower Jr., an Inupiaq whaling captain and Arctic Alaska mayor, finds it odd when outsiders try to explain things to him. KBNA

 

Arctic Ice Extent is Unlikely to Hit a Record-Low Minimum, But Lingering Ice is 'Thin and Porous.' Ice is still present in the Arctic Ocean, and a record-low minimum extent is highly unlikely next month, experts say. But the low quality of the sea ice floating in the Arctic has been startling, they say. Sea ice extent is defined as areas where there is at least 15 percent ice cover-sufficient to show up in satellite imagery-and concentrations are low in places that used to have solid and thick freeze. Nunatsiaq Online

 

Study Estimates Global Ice Loss of 28 Gigatons Since 1994; Arctic Worst-Hit. Melting and refreezing of ice around the globe is an annual natural phenomenon, but owing to the gradual rise in global average temperature, the cycle is no longer marked by just the seasonal variability. Over the last few decades, the accelerated irreversible melting has been a prime indicator of global warming and is posing a massive threat to the entire world in the form of rising sea-levels. Underlining this growing threat, a recent study has estimated that the planet Earth, in whole, lost a staggering 28 trillion tons (Gigatons) of ice between 1994 and 2017. The study, still under review and discussion, comes from researchers from the University of Leeds, University of Edinburgh and University College of London. Weather.com

Alumna Studies Plastic Pollution in the Canadian Arctic. As a child, growing up in the White Mountains of Arizona, Bonnie Hamilton '16 learned to appreciate and respect the knowledge and traditions of Indigenous peoples. Thanks to her father, who worked at the time as a public health officer for the U.S. Public Health Service, dinner table conversations were often about Indigenous people and their relationship to the environment - specifically, how to identify and solve environmental issues caused by humans, in a way that can benefit Indigenous populations. Hamilton is carrying on her father's legacy today, as she pursues a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto. She studies a confluence of subjects related to plastic pollution in the Canadian Arctic. The Morning Sun