ABSTRACT
The pressures facing arctic and alpine environments in the coming decades will be increasingly severe and in order to minimize the impacts of resource development, tourism and pollution on them, their biota and native peoples, it is vital that our understanding of arctic and alpine ecosystems be as fully documented as possible. In the case of the North American Arctic, concern over the problems has been reflected by the Royal Society of Canada Symposium on the Tundra Environment and by the National Workshop on People, Resources and the Environment North of ’60. Gas and oil in the Canadian Arctic Islands must assume great importance and consideration of the geological structure of northern Siberia and its vast continental shelf suggests even greater gas and oil potential there. In contrast to the concentration of arctic ecosystem research, studies of the alpine ecosystems match the geographic distribution of alpine lands and are thus widely fragmented and totally lacking in coordination.
