The solution of limestone in an Arctic environment,, 1972, Smith D. L.

Geomorphology of the North Karst, South Nahanni River Region, Northwest Territories, Canada, PhD Thesis, 1976, Brook, George Albert,

First investigated on the ground in June 1972, the Nahanni karst of northern Canada is the most complex karst terrain yet reported from high latitudes. It is centered at 61°28' N, longitude 124°05' W and lies within the zone of discontinuous permafrost. Mean annual temperature is 24°F and mean total precipitation 22.3 inches. Principal karst forms are fracture-located karst streets and irregularly-shaped closed depression called karst platea which may be up to 600 feet in depth. Platea often contain karst towers which are residuals of wall recession. Vertical-walled pond dolines up to 120 feet deep are common in bare karst areas while subjacent karst collapse, subsidence and suffosion depressions occur on marginal shale- and drift-mantled surfaces. Three small poljes have been identified, two produced entirely by solution, the other a structural form. These are periodically inundated. There are several peripheral fluvial canyons up to 3,000 feet deep that are blocked by glacial drift and which presently drain underground. Similarity in the hydrogeological properties of Nahanni Formation limestones at a variety of scales has led to the development of morphologically-identical karst forms which range in size from inches up to hundreds of feet. Furthermore, many of these landforms are part of a developmental sequence that at one scale links vertical-walled dolines, karst streets, platea and poljes; and at another links solution pits, grikes and joint hollows on limestone pavements. The evidence suggests that poljes form by the coalescence of dolines and uvalas just as Cvijic suggested in 1918. In attempting to explain the almost "tropical" nature of the sub-arctic Nahanni karst landform assemblage, a number of facts are of importance.
(a) The Nahanni Formation limestones have been highly warped and intensively fractures during the past one million years. Open fractures have encouraged karstification by allowing easy movement of water underground. Warping has provided the relief necessary for the development of solutional forms with a distinct vertical component.
(b) The karst can not be considered relict because it was glaciated during the Pleistocene. In addition the hydrological activity in it today is comparable with that in many humid tropical karst areas.
(c) Solutional denudation rates governed by aspects of surficial and bedrock geology may in some localized areas be equivalent to rates in humid tropical carbonate regions.
(d) At present rates, the most highly developed forms could have been produced within the last 200,000 years and because there is evidence to indicate that the karst may not have been glaciated for up to 250,000 years, such a period has been available for solutional development.
Because the Nahanni region has not been glaciated for an extremely long period, it may be one of only a few high-latitude carbonate terrains that have had time to develop fully. Its very existence questions the validity of the concept that the intensity and direction of karst development is climate-controlled. In the Nahanni at least, the structural and lithological properties of the host limestone appear to have been of greater importance. The labyrinth karst type present in regions of humid-tropical to sub-arctic climate, is an outstanding example of a structurally-controlled karst landscape. It may well be that the same controls also influence the distributions of other karst types.

Estimates of the age of the existing relief within the Southern Rocky Mountains of Canada, 1981, Ford D. C, Schwarcz H. P. , Drake J. J. Et Al.

Mean Annual Runoff and the Scallop Flow Regime in a Subarctic Environment: Preliminary Results from Svartisen, Norway, 1983, Lauritzen Se. , Ive A. , Wilkinson B.

THE PHYSIOGRAPHY AND SPELEOGENESIS OF CASTLEGUARD CAVE, COLUMBIA ICEFIELDS, ALBERTA, CANADA, 1983, Ford Dc, Smart Pl, Ewers Ro,

The mineralogy of Castleguard Cave, Columbia Icefields, Alberta, Canada, 1983, Harmon R. S. , Atkinson T. C, Atkinson J. J.

Polydesmide et Craspedosomides cavernicoles nouveaux de France et du Maroc (Myriapoda; Diplopoda)., 1985, Mauriès Jean Paul

This is a description of the affinities and biogeographic significance of three new cavernicolous species of Diplopoda from France and Morocco. One species apparently belongs to the Polydesmida (family Paradoxosomidae) and the other two to Craspedosomida (families Caratosphydae and Chordeumidae). 1) Eviulisoma abadi n.sp. is distinguished from other species of this genus by total depigmentation, by the characters of the gonopodial orifice and the male gonopods, by the low number of segments (19) and by its geographic isolation (Morocco) and ecology (Kef Aziza cave). This justifies the establishment of a new sub-genus, Jeekelosoma. The other species of this genus are found in equatorial Africa and the east. E. abadi is the first paleoarctic species of this genus and is the second paleoarctic species of the tribe Eviulisomidi after Boreviulisoma liouvillei Brol.). It is also the first known from a cave. Like the two other known species of Paradoxosomidae known from the southwest of the paleoarctic zone, Boreviulisoma liouvillei Brol. and Oranmorpha guerinii (Gerv.) the new species is indicative of originating in the Ethiopian region at a time when the Sahara was not a barren desert. 2) Ceratosphys maroccana n.sp. from Gouffre Friouato (Morocco) probably is not an epigean troglophile; it is the southernmost species of this genus which is normally found in France and Spain. This is apparently a remnant of a small group of species from the south of Spain that constitute a sub-genus Proceratosphys Mau. and Vincente. 3) Orthochordeumella leclerci n.sp. (caves of Ardèche, France) manifest the presence unique in this genus of cavernicolous characters including depigmentation and extreme length of antennae and is the only truly troglobitic species of this genus. Other characters are less distinctive but it is possible to distinguish this species by sexual characteristics from other species, notably that from the neighbouring geographic area, O. cebennica (known only from the Ardèche region) which is troglophilic. The other three species are found in epigean forest habitats, one in the Pyrenees, the other two in the Tyrol, the Swiss Jura, Baden and the northeast of France and Belgium.

Paléokarst paléozoïque en Antarctique, 1986, Maire R. , Laurent R.

PALEOZOIC KARST IN ANTARCTICA - Karst features in Antarctica have been rarely observed. In their study on the geology of the Beardmore Glacier area in the Transantarctic Mountains (south of Ross Ice Shelf), BARRET and al. (1968) describe a pre-glacial karst topography (Mt. Counts) and especially a former cave (diameter 10 m) 10 m below the erosion surface and filled with coarse green sandstone. Shaped in the "Shackleton limestone" (Low to Middle Cambrian) probably during the Permo-Carboniferous (hercynian cycle), this karst is fossilised by the Pagoda formation, a permian tillite of the Beacon sequence (Devonian-Permian- Triassic).

Observations préliminaires sur les cavités de la région du lac Centrum (NE Groenland), 1987, Loubiere, J. F.

CAVES OF CENTRUM LAKE AREA (NE GREELAND) - In 1983, M.Chiron, G.Favre, J-F. Loubière and J-P. Tétard identified a network of caves located in the extreme nord-east of Greenland. A cambro-silurian limestone zone stretches out to the south-west of Kronprins Christian’s land, the northern extremity of the great range of folded mountains of eastern Greenland. During an era characterised by the absence of permafrost and by a warmer climate favouring underground water circulation, these limestone formations were hollowed out by karstic river system. Such climatic conditions have long ceased to exist. During the major glaciations of the Quaternary period, the cavities were greatly modified. Glacier movements, cutting into the plateau, broke up the networks. The original underground deposits were then altered by allochtonous material of aeolian and morainic composition. Severe and ongoing frost shattering has added to this destructive process. It is hoped that this article will help to draw attention to these caves and to the more general subject of paleo-climates, especially their effects in the polar region during the Plio-Pleistocene transition (Electron Spin Resonance method on stalagmite and discovery of a mycelian hypha into calcite structure).

An Annotated Speleological Bibliography of Oceania, 1987, Bourke, R. Michael

A preliminary annotated speleological bibliography is presented for Oceania. The region covered extends from Irian Jaya (Indonesia) in the west to the Galapagos Islands (Equador) in the east. There are 268 references given from the following countries and territories: Antarctica, Belau, Cook Islands, Easter Island, Fiji, French Polynesia, Galapagos Island, Guam, Irian Jaya, Marian Islands, New Caledonia, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, Western Samoa, Wallis and Futuna.

Pseudosinella revisited (Collembola, Entomobryinae), 1988, Christiansen Kenneth, Moberg Thomas

Eight controversies are active in the study of macroevolution. These are: 1) the meaning of the term macroevolution, 2) the role of chance, 3) the role of stasis and gradualism, 4) whether significant change Is Iimited to speciation events, 5) the environmental conditions where macroevolutionary change occurs, 6) whether Neodarwinian mechanisms are adequate to explain change, 7) the existence and nature of hierarchical evolutìonary processes, and 8) Darwin's views about all this. After a brief examination of each of these issues we used the extensive data available for 9 species of European and Nearctic cave Pseudosinella to examine the third, fourth and fifth controversies mentioned above. Our conclusions are that while we are unable to demonstrate ongoing directional selection, we have clear evidence that significant adaptive change is not limited to speciation events. It does however appear that the amount of adaptive change is greater in the process of speciation than in between. We also show that there is no evidence for clear periods of stasis in the evolution of these forms. This leads us to a new model of the macroevolutionary process combining features of gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. We also showed that evolutionary change Is not associated with unstable environments but rather with more stable ones.

Breccia bodies in deformed Cambrian limestones, Heritage Range, Ellsworth Mountains, West Antarctica, 1992, Sporli K. B. , Craddock C. , Rutford R. H. , Craddock J. P.

Rock weathering rates in arctic and subarctic environments (Abisko Mts., Swedish Lappland), 1996, Andre M. F.

Aufeis of the Firth River basin, Northern Yukon Canada: Insights into permafrost hydrogeology and Karst, 1997, Clark Id, Lauriol B,

The 31-km(2) aufeis ice sheet of the upper Firth River holds a wealth of information on groundwater hydrology in periglacial environments. Baseflow recession calculations, corrected for aufeis storage (12% of basin discharge), indicate specific groundwater recharge rates of up to 100 mm yr(-1) (up to 50% of runoff), suggesting a significant proportion of drainage from karst. The upper Firth River aufeis is a composite aufeis, with discrete baseflow contributions from different watersheds. Since the late Pleistocene, annual growth of the aufeis has exerted a strong control on lateral erosion and the local river channel geomorphology. Two groundwater recharge processes are distinguished on the basis of carbonate geochemistry and 8(13)C: (1) Methanogenic groundwaters, with C-13(DIC) up to -3.3 parts per thousand, are recharged through saturated soils underlain by permafrost; conditions which support anaerobic consumption of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and produce up to 700 mu g-CH4 L-1 (calculated), and (2) Karst groundwaters, with C-13-depleted DIC, recharged through unsaturated soils and circulate through fissured talik in the carbonate bedrock. Most drainage from the region shows varying contributions of these two groundwaters, although a greater contribution from the methanogenic groundwaters occurs in north-facing watersheds. The 8(13)C values far cryogenic calcite precipitates in the ice indicate that the karst groundwaters are the major contribution to aufeis growth. The combined use of 8(13)C(DIC) and geochemistry may be a useful tool to quantify methanogenesis in northern watersheds

Rock Coatings, 1998, Dorn Ronald I.

The arid, arctic and alpine regions of the earth expose +bare' rock surfaces that are, in reality, clothed by paper-thin coatings on rocks. Intellectual curiosity about the nature, origin, and application of these encrustations has spawned over 2000 scientific papers in over two dozen disciplines. Even as there has been a burgeoning interdisciplinary interest in rock coatings, the lack of a synthesis has seriously hindered advances in research. This book presents the first-ever synthesis on rock coatings.