Rare Earth Elements : Canadian Natural Resources

"We all know that is not a geopolitically acceptable situation [Beijing's monopoly of rare earth minerals]."

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime shot [for Canada and rare earth minerals stability] at being in a position to have a degree of control in a very large market."

Robert Fung, chairman, Torngat Metals mining firm, Canada

"[The world faces an] increasingly uncomfortable reliance [on China for commodities, particularly for rare earths and other critical minerals. China declines to] play by our rules [in development of such minerals, its style is to undercut the free market]."

"For decades, China has held monopoly-like control over critical minerals production and distribution, rendering the rest of the world reliant on procurement, and creating a level of risk that deters investors from entering these markets."

"If we can get to it and create the right conditions, we could be in a very, very strong place going forward."

Pierre Gratton, head, Mining Association of Canada

"Natural graphite is the poster child for minerals dominated by China and, in the face of a near monopoly wielded by one of the most powerful governments in the world, no combination of attributes could convince prospective sources of capital to invest in required expansion."

"Supply chains around the world seemed mostly content with heavy reliance on a single nation."

Jamie Deith, chief executive, Eagle Graphite mining firm

In testimony before the House of Commons natural resources committee, mining executives and national security experts warned the federal government over the current situation whereby China dominates strategic mineral supplies through its decades-long plans for market control of critical minerals -- inclusive of the 17 rare earth elements -- through the rapid expansion of its processing capacity; alternately by acquiring foreign assets with a plan to dominate supply chains.

 

Used to develop strategic products such as solar panels, wind turbines, electric car batteries, mobile phone components and guided missiles, minerals include magnesium, lithium and scandium. Among Canada's natural resources there exists an abundance of these minerals, from a large deposit of neodymium in northern Saskatchewan (for the manufacture of magnets), to large pockets of lithium to be found in Quebec. 

According to experts advising the government, those natural resources should be viewed for the strategic advantage they represent, to support Canada's supply chain and in the process protect against China's coercive foreign policy tactics at the very time that Canada-China relations have deteriorated in the detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in a deliberate attempt to pressure the government to release Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese communications giant Huawei, arrested in Canada on a U.S. extradition warrant.

A bastnaesite mineral containing rare earth. Canada’s rare earth industry has shrunk over the past decade from a hundred explorers to just a handful of companies, which mostly refine or recycle the elements. Photo by Reuters

China has, over the years, amassed roughly 80 percent of global processing capacity for strategic minerals, using that position to manipulate prices in a strategy meant to punish and eliminate its competitors. Canada, it was stressed, with its abundance of natural deposits of minerals such as lithium, nickel -- and a long list of others, appropriately protected, could result in a significant strategic edge in coming years for Canada.

Australia and Canada have the geological resources in minerals used in the manufacture of magnets for electric cars. Australia has lost little time in development of those strategic assets. Policy makers were urged to create a framework for the development and protection of Canadian supply chains for batteries and associated products; the federal government receiving urgent recommendations to establish a $250-million program over a five-year period to incentivize investment in demonstration projects. 

According to Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, China will likely possess 67 percent of global capacity to build lithium-ion batteries by 2030, reflecting its significant investments, including in "mega factories". In comparison, North America will have a mere 12 percent of the market, according to BMI research. "We are in the midst of a global battery arms race, where the world's major economies are building a base to the energy storage revolution."

As an example of China's strategies to achieve monopolistic advantage, it has engaged in flooding markets with supply to lower prices, thus making it less economically feasible for competitors to develop rare minerals. It is a strategy that Beijing has launched from day one, successfully utilized in establishing itself as the world's premier, low-cost, low-wage production facility for all manner of consumer goods, in the process putting established production across Europe and North America out of business in a failure to compete with China's winning-edge cheaper production costs.

 

Rare earths experts will be part of the team running the new processing plant. (Image courtesy of Saskatchewan Research Council.)

 

Witnesses before the House of Commons committee stressed the importance of developing deeper ties with Europe,the United States and Japan to strengthen their collective non-Chinese supply chains. A proposal that government work with industry to develop 'battery hubs' as one way to make certain Canada has control of a part of the market through the entire supply chain, was put forward by Vale Canada.

"We will definitely have to expand. Not only do we need to promote the auto industries into making EVs [electric vehicles], which means promoting them with consumers, but we also have to support the development of that supply chain."

"The processing of the minerals, the development of the battery cells, the battery materials, all need to be brought together and incentivized."

Nancy Concepcion, executive manager, Vale Canada

Wildfires: Let Them Burn Backcountry?

"It’s a few extreme fires that cause all our problems, at least from society’s point of view."
"This is where the appropriate response … allows you to concentrate on problem fires and hope to get to them while they’re still small, while allowing Mother Nature to take its course in the back 40."
Dr. Mike Flannigan, professor, University of Alberta

"That fire [a 1976 backwoods wildfire] could have probably been allowed to just burn and it would have put itself out. But in those days, the mantra was: All fire is bad, so we got to suppress it."

And that’s what we did."
"As a society, we have to recognize that if we’re going to manage this problem appropriately, we’re going to have to accept the fact that, at times, we may have to have a little smoke in the air that we may not like. But it’s going to a better outcome than what we’re seeing in the Chilcotin [region of British Columbia] today."
Brian Simpson, retired, former head, B.C. Wildfire Management Branch

A wildfire burns on a mountain behind a home in Cache Creek, B.C., in the early morning hours of July 8.  DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

"This huge grief that’s come from Fort Mac [ferocious 2016 Fort McMurray, Alberta wildfire] came from less than 10 per cent of the loss of that town and, really, what would we be looking at if we lost half of that?"

"We could have been looking at a staggering loss on the financial side and how we didn’t lose hundreds of people, I don’t know."
"If you look historically at some of the 19th-century fires: fire got into Fredericton [New Brunswick], fire’s gotten into Timmins [Ontario]. We even had one around Halifax [Nova Scotia] just a couple years ago where a few homes were lost. And the big fire in Tennessee late last year just shows we can have big fires in the East."
Glen McGillivray, managing director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, Toronto

Last year’s Fort McMurray wildfire, shown in this May 7, 2017 file photo, destroyed nearly 1,600 buildings.  Jonathan Hayward/THE CANADIAN PRESS

There is now general agreement among scientists involved in ecological research that suppressing wildfires hasn't worked to the advantage it was meant to reflect through best forestry practise in response to these natural phenomena. The realization that a different kind of forest management is required is not new, it has been considered for quite some time, but old practises thought to be the logical reaction of authorities to fires threatening great swaths of forest and any towns and homes increasingly in their path are difficult to set aside.

However, a new approach involving backcountry fires permitted without human intervention to burn across millions of hectares is beginning to make sense to those tasked with the monumental job of husbanding these natural resources. Wildfires across North America still routinely see a response owing to the tradition of gathering fire-fighting resources to attempt to control them as they burn their way through valuable timberland. Now, the focus is to restrict firefighting activities to those areas where towns are threatened, and to simply allow wildfires where no human habitation is to burn themselves out.

Biologists are now recognizing that plants and animals appear to thrive in blackened, burnt-out forests, that renewal swiftly takes place, and that indeed some species of flora require that scorched-earth situation to enable them to renew and flourish. It is when human lives, and the livestock they maintain are threatened by being in the pathway of an out-of-control wildfire that the alarm bells bring in all the massive equipment and experienced wildfire-fighters to ward off catastrophe and then the lives of firefighters too are at stake.

Public safety where communities have established themselves in close proximity to forests, or communities that have long been in existence in those vulnerable forested areas remain the driving force behind firefighters answering the call to battle wildfires. An estimation of how often forests went through the natural process of burning out before the era of human habitation, hazards estimates of between eight million to 12 million hectares annually. At the present time that burnout is estimated at 1.5 million to two million hectares, with fire suppression action.

Around the 19th century the prevailing view was that forests ideally should be represented as economically valuable standing timber. Industrial scale techniques to battle wildfires gave firefighting agencies the capability of fighting wildfires by the 1930s, maintaining the landscape by suppressing wildfires. Even then a small grouping of environmental scientists felt that this type of response gave little benefit to the natural surroundings. The nature of wildfires has undergone a not-too-subtle change attributed to climate change; they have become more savage, more difficult to suppress and as such more dangerous to those fighting them.

Now, additionally, it is well understood that hundreds of species live, and some prefer to live in forests that have been recently burned, becoming by far the vastly preferred habitat. And with that realization the recognition by many more environmentalists that the health of the forests is maintained when fires thin them out of their climax condition, inviting the resurgence of the forest as saplings regenerate from the dead ash which in fact, enriches the forest soil.

It doesn't take long before trees begin sprouting, butterflies return to flit through shrubs when the density of a forest opens to the wind, sun and air and certain plants find their ideal growing places. The 'dead' forest in the wake of a wildfire becomes full of standing charred tree trunks called 'snags', many up to 24 to 30 meters in height, a sad and sorry sight, but a natural one. Environmentalists have noted that the black-backed woodpecker for one, included in the U.S. Endangered Species Act as threatened thrives under these conditions.

Environmentalists urge governments to help people living in forest-fire-vulnerable communities to think before they build there, or to withhold licenses to build. Alternately, taking steps in fire-prone areas to make homes fire-resistant, as for example, installing metal roofs on homes, enabling people to take partial responsibility for their choices and potential outcomes.

A wildfire burns on a mountain in the distance behind a house that remains standing on the Ashcroft First Nation, near Ashcroft, B.C., on Sunday July 9.  DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Cornering the World Market

"China did not corner the world rare earths market by accident. 'The Middle East has oil. China has rare earth', said Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1992, in recognition fhat rare earths are commodities strategic in both military and economic planning. At the Chinese government's direction, domestic state-owned firms, unrestrained by environmental niceties, then set about churning the Chinese landscape, while Chinese multinationals such as CNOOC, money being no object, scoured the world buying out rare earths producers abroad whenever foreign governments let them. In one attempt during the George Bush administration, CNOOC tried but failed to obtain Molycorp's mine."
Lawrence Solomon, policy director, Probe International, Toronto

Not Rare, but PreciousThough rare-earth minerals, comprised of 17 elements on the periodic table are called rare, they are actually common. But they are scattered in small amounts within soil such as that pictured here, at a port in Jiangsu Province, China. That makes mining rare-earth minerals costly and environmentally taxing.Photograph from Imaginechina/Corbis

Sounds exotic, doesn't it, the descriptive of 'rare earth'. What it describes is minerals that exist in minuscule quantities in soil. They may be dispersed widely around the world, but finding them in their excruciatingly small quantities is what makes them 'rare'. They are, however, of immense importance in today's world of technological advances.

Representing minerals with strange names like scandium, yttrium, lanthanum and many others reflecting 17 little-known chemical elements, but vital to manufacturers of cellphones, computers, TVs and a range of electronic products such as laser-guided missiles, fighter jet catapults launched from aircraft carriers, including the F-35 fighter jet beloved of the Pentagon.

A worker displays samples of rubidium, iron, and boron at a workshop in Ganzhou City. China used to export almost all its rare-earth metals, but increasingly needs more of it for its own industrial uses. That is one of the reasons the Chinese government says it is restricting exports now.Photograph by Zhou Ke, Xinhua Press/Corbis

They are, in other words, indispensable to the manufacture of products of everyday use and those meant for the military.

The United States had its home-grown supplier of rare earth minerals. This was Molycorp, which established its search for these products in the Mojave Desert, until its 2015 bankruptcy. Remember the recession of 2008 when the U.S. government was quick to bail out U.S. auto manufacturers? It made no such move on behalf of its sole producer of rare earth elements.

The backstory is that the Obama administration appealed to the World Trade Organization because Apple and similar other companies complained  about the China-dominated market jacking up prices. China responded to the WTO appeal by increasing its export of rare earths and in the process reducing their price to an extent that Molycorp could not match and still remain in business, leading to its bankruptcy.

Which led to the situation that high-tech manufacturers worldwide have few options but to buy from China. There are no competitors. So the United States, for one, with its powerful manufacturing base of advanced technical products is utterly dependent on China's rare earth exports; this means by extension that America's military markets depend on China to enable their manufacturing of rare earth-dependent products.

The new American administration under President Donald Trump harrumphs about jobs being lost in the United States, and of course China is a signal source of those lost manufacturing jobs. Molycorp employed 500 people, not a huge number of employees, but significant for what they produced and the assurance they granted to American manufacturers that rare earth products were to be reliably domestically sourced.

When combined with magnetic metals such as iron, rare-earth minerals create super-strong permanent magnets that are impossible to move with one's bare hands. A little rare-earth metal goes a long way. The strength of these rare-earth-enhanced magnets have helped to miniaturize electronics and to reduce weight in electric cars. Here, samples of rare-earth compounds are displayed in a showroom at Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company, China's largest rare-earths producer.Photograph by Nelson Ching, Bloomberg/Getty Images

As an interesting example, in a territorial dispute with Japan resulting from the Japanese navy detaining a Chinese fishing boat for playing their trade in Japanese waters, China stopped sales of rare earths to Japan. That incident caused prices to soar 4,000 percent worldwide, and of course left Japan temporarily without that critical manufacturing resource.

Similarly in 1994 China acquired U.S.-based Magnequench, established by General Motors to highlight its invention of the rare-earth-based neodymium-iron-boron magnet. The U.S. stipulated as a condition of the sale of such a strategic business, that the business remain operational for five years within the United States. As soon as that period elapsed, the U.S. operation was shuttered and China relocated the processes and the intellectual property to monopolize the market, to China.

Perhaps because Donald J. Trump comes from the cutthroat world of business enterprise, he is a step ahead of the Chinese penchant to highjack from willing enough dupes critical infrastructure and manufacturing along with the research enabling it, in a more cautious way than his predecessors. When Presidents Trump and Xi met this week in Washington there was doubtless much to discuss beyond the wild card of North Korea's maniacal Kim Jong-un.

The U.S. Department of Energy says that deployment of clean energy technology could be slowed in the coming years by supply challenges for at least five rare-earth metals. Here, a worker pours the rare-earth metal lanthanum, which is used in camera lenses and other types of glass, into a mold at a smelting workshop in Inner Mongolia. Photograph by David Gray, Reuters

Losing Forest to Wildfires

"This is almost a record-breaking season for us. Crews are on their third and fourth deployment already and we're only halfway through. We've had them stay for 18 days [instead of the usual 15]."
"The first two deployments, everybody has got a lot of juice But some of these guys are on their third and fourth deployments, back to back to back, and that's unusual. As we go further into the season, fatigue is a factor."
"In Alberta, we've got an excellent safety record. We just don't put people in that [life-threatening] position. I'm proud of the record we have in Alberta."
Doug Smith, area firefighting commander

"I'd say that [rappelling down from a helicopter into stands of burning timber] sends goosebumps up your arm every time."
"We go through that in every recruit [training] camp. We give them the story of the fallen firefighters. We pay our tributes to them."
Jamie Parker, rappel team member, Calgary

A wildfire rises over a hill in Jasper National Park on July 9, 2015. Edmonton Journal

"The Canadian safety record when it comes to wildland fire suppression is pretty remarkable. I don't believe we'll ever get it down to zero fatalities. One, two, three a year. I hate to say it, that's probably reality."
"We've had very few entrapments. We've had drownings, where firefighters are camped out on a line and they get chased into a lake by the fire. There are vehicle accidents. Normal things."
"We often look for technological fixes, but it still comes back to having good people on the ground -- crew bosses who know what they're doing and keep rookie firefighters out of harm's way. I don't think that's going to change."
Marty Alexander, retired wildland fire behaviour expert, Sherwood Park, Alberta

"There but for the grace of God. Everyone in our planes is a consenting adult and they know what they're getting into. And safety of the operation is paramount. But you still shudder at the thought [fire fighting amphibious water tankers crashing]."
"We have to make sure our crews are properly rested We have spare pilots so guys can get days off to decompress."
Paul Lane, vice-president, Air Spray, aerial firefighting company

A Lockheed Electra, operated by Air Spray, dumps a load of fire retardant. Edmonton Journal

The summer of 2015 has been hot, dry and demanding in most of Western Canada. From mid-week last week 1,422 fires had been reported in the province of Alberta itself alone. The result has been 485,838 hectares of land scorched, much above normal, with five-year averages at mid-summer standing at an average of 905 fires involving 254,527 hectares.

The demand for firefighters' services battling the wildfires has been so intense that longer rotations and extended shifts have resulted on the fire line. Time away from fighting the fires to allow fire fighting personnel to recoup some strength has been cut as well. Firefighters from Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick have responded to the urgent appeal to give aid.

Across Alberta alone roughly 1,500 personnel have been deployed, representing 500 firefighters from the province, with another 280 contract workers, topped off by the imported and emergency personnel. But they've been worked so hard there is always the opportunity for tired firefighters to make errors in judgement; safety is always front of mind, but fatigue and stress can deleteriously impact the best of intentions.

Not just anyone becomes a firefighter. To enter the government training program people must be able to pass rigorous physical and mental fitness tests. The training program itself, depending on particular duties involved, lasts between eight days to a month, with a focus on safety, respecting all the programs. Some jobs carry more risks than others; some jobs carry risks that are different than those encountered on other jobs; it varies.

The rappel teams are comprised of some of the most highly trained firefighters who drop from helicopters into areas that vehicles cannot reach. Their work consists mostly of clearing space to enable larger craft to land and their four- or eight-person Helitack crews to emerge, along with related equipment. The initial firefighting tasks are addressed under the agency of these first crews, fighting new fires, digging fire guards, cleaning out potential fuel sources such as fallen trees, and dousing hot spots with hoses, bags and pumps.

Bulldozers are used to clear the forest floor, scraping down to the mineral level. Other crews come in afterward to perform the mop-up finishing work. On the line, firefighters establish LACES [lookouts, anchor points, communications, escape routes, safety zones] before focusing their attention on  fighting fires, A carefully observed watch protocol for any signs of unsafe conditions is a vital part of the job, entailing a high degree of vigilance.

At the provincial firefighting training centre in Hinton, 19 memorials to fallen wildland firefighters have been erected. One of which memorializes Harro van Bockel, a rappel team member who, along with a fellow crew member was dragged while suspended below a moving helicopter, into a stand of burning timber. Mr. van Bockel died, the other team member survived his serious injuries.


Two fire-suppression-related deaths have occurred this season in Canada. When tree-faller John Joe Phare, 60, was struck by a tree in British Columbia he became the first fatality. Pilot William Hilts, 38, died near Cold Lake in the crash of a Fire Boss amphibious water tanker in May, owned by Conair Aerial Firefighting. A second Conair Fire Boss sank in British Columbia in early July, with the pilot surviving the  episode.

Air Spray scouts for smoke in their observation aircraft and drops fire retardant from the tanks of the Lockheed Electras under contract to the government of Alberta. Most pilots have already logged twice as many hours as is considered normal for this time of year. "This year, we're looking at the issue of running our equipment extremely hard because we're fighting that much fire. That's why we're buying more aircraft and gearing up.

"This problem isn't going to be going away this year or next", explains vice-president of Air Spray, Paul Lane. "There is a long-term upward trend and we'll need more equipment to meet demand."

Blighting The Atmosphere?

"[Wind turbine noise] annoyance was found to be statistically related to several self-reported health effects including, but not limited to, blood pressure, migraines, tinnitus [ringing in the ears], dizziness [and sleep disorders]."
"The findings support a potential link between long-term high annoyance and health."
Health Canada

[Failure to take infrasound seriously is quite astounding] ... Given the knowledge that the ear responds to low frequency sounds and infrasound, we knew that comparisons with benign sources were invalid and the logic [of relying on audible] sound measurements was deeply flawed scientifically."
"Given the present evidence, it seems risky at best to continue the current gamble that infrasound stimulation of the ear stays confined to the ear and has no other effects on the body."
Alex Salt, Jeffery Lichtenhan, acoustic authorities, Washington University School of Medicine

"The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt. It's clear from the documents that come out of other industry that they're trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS [wind turbine syndrome] and they've done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim."
Steven D. Rauch, Harvard Medical School

Photo credit: Sameer Shah

Thousands of people living close to those humongous wind turbines reflecting one of the assets in the arsenal of the environmental movement to harness natural phenomenon for energy, don't feel too personally confident of the usefulness of wind as an energy source, the way it is currently being harnessed. They might perhaps think more kindly of it as a resource tool if it were not directly affecting their quality of life, with those turbines too close to where they live for comfort.

The reported deleterious impact on the health of many people in communities that have had wind turbines erected within their home ground include complaints of adverse health effects, some of which so seriously affect the complainants they feel forced to remove themselves from the source physically, abandoning their homes and moving elsewhere. Primarily it is the sound that the turbines emit when they are responding to prevailing winds.


The audible sound waves are known to medical science as "annoyance" , reflecting a state of health whose potential can lead to a full range of illnesses named wind turbine syndrome. Health Canada had commissioned a Statistics Canada survey on the issue of impact to health of people living in the direct vicinity of wind turbines, reporting on migraines, tinnitus, dizziness, blood pressure and sleep disorders. Annoyance was discovered to be statistically associated with chronic stress measurements and blood pressure.

Aside from the large amounts of sound waves at a frequency above 20 Hz the audible level, the turbines produce large amounts of sound waves as well below 20 Hz; inaudible to the human ear, and as such, according to wind-energy proponents, completely harmless. Sound waves below 20 Hz are detectable by animals, many of which communicate at that sound frequency. As well, that human-inaudible sound communicates a sense of danger to animals relating to earthquakes or oncoming tornadoes.

Essex, ON. November 7, 2014 -- Wind turbines dot the landscape near Essex, Friday November 7, 2014. (NICK BRANCACCIO/The Windsor Star)

While it is known that the signals from infrasound enter the human brain, scientists have no knowledge yet of the effect of what occurs when the brain absorbs infrasound stimulation for prolonged periods; no long-term study exists. A 2001 review by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences called the Infrasound Toxicological Summary found over 100 infrasound studies globally with many of those reporting similar adverse health effects inclusive of fatigue, sleeplessness, nausea, heart disorders afflicting people living near wind turbines.

In a 2003 U.K. experiment by the National Physical Laboratory, Britain's largest applied physics institute, two music concerts were arranged to be staged one directly following on the other in London's Purcell Hall. Two different musical pieces in each concert included infrasound, the result being that when the infrasound-impacting pieces were played the audience reported elevated sensations of nausea, dizziness, increased heart rates and neck and shoulder tingling.

In the absence of long-term studies, the short-term studies that have been scrutinized may not provide the whole picture of what is occurring. Wind turbines may yet be found to be entirely benign. It is not outside the realm of possibility that a kind of affective hysteria may be responsible for the deleterious health symptoms reported by people living close to the turbines. There is also the possibility that the turbine manufacturers might conceive of a solution to the sound emitted, thus eliminating the problem.

This without considering additional complaints about the visual impact of the wind turbines marching across a landscape. On occasion, depending upon where the wind turbine farms are located, disturbing the natural visual serenity of well-loved areas, including those dependent on tourism. That also, without including the dreadful toll that wind turbines take on the avian population, killing thousands upon thousands of birds with their revolving blades.

In the meanwhile, a Canadian court is mulling the situation and is soon to make a decision whether wind turbines are in violation of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms through raising a risk to human health in their use to people held hostage to the sound by wind turbines installed in their geographic vicinity. One can only wonder whether, when such energy-derivative sources, beloved of environmentalist are placed where the environmentalists live, what their reaction might be.

The Chinese Arctic Circle

"For anyone interested in geopolitics, this is the region to follow in years to come. [Huang] might be just another smiling businessman [but] we are talking about perceptions here."
"And the perception is that China wants a foothold in the Arctic."
"When you are a big country, you can claim to be whatever you want, and people believe you."
Willy Ostreng, president, Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research

"No need to doubt that billionaire Huang Nubo is a straw man for the Chinese Communist Party and the country's authorities."
Nordlys, northern Norway newspaper

"We will throw in the polar bears for free."
Ole Einar Gjerde, Norwegian realtor

Eerie: A green aurora appears over Svalbard in Norway, an area close to the north pole which is shrouded in darkness for much of the year

For sale by private owner: Arctic tract of land roughly twice larger than Manhattan. Major attraction, icy beauty, peace and quiet; this is no Manhattan. The property exists, wintry-cold in perpetuity, located across an icy fiord's distance from Longyearbyen, capital of the country's most northern territory. The property is for sale. Those with deep enough pockets and even deeper covert interests beyond what is being claimed have expressed their desire to own it. Will Norway permit that to happen?

The property business deal Mr. Giaever is eager to conclude as is the buyer who suffered a rebuff the year before when he attempted to purchase a tract of frozen wilderness in Iceland, has reason to believe he will have better luck with Norway. A preliminary deal was reached, to buy a waterfront plot for roughly $4-million near the northern city of Tromso. It is, however, the much larger tract of land on Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago that Norway's state broadcaster claims to be the real target.

Chinese tycoon, Huang Nubo's company, Beijing Zhonkun Investment Group has denied Norwegian media reports that it is aiming to buy high Arctic land. Its only, and above-board focus, it claims, is on plans to build a luxury resort complex in Lyngen on the Norwegian mainland near Tromso. Its ownership would place Mr. Huang's company inside the Arctic Circle, and as such has drawn well-founded suspicion. The seller, Ola Giaever, eager to sell his property near Tromso states: "This is a business deal. Nothing less (sic: nothing more?) is going on."

China, though not even remotely a country bordering the Arctic -- such as Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway and Iceland -- has a keen interest in the area. That interest is propelled by the prospect of eventual exploitation of the mineral and fossil fuel resources held to be embedded in the area. To that end, though preposterous, China even declared itself a "near Arctic state" despite the tip of its northernmost region being thousands of miles from the Arctic Circle.

"Xuelong" or "Snow Dragon has concluded a three months long Arctic expedition (Photo: antarctica.gov.au)

China, according to Mr. Ostreng, has "openly declared its Arctic ambitions", investing in an icebreaker -- the Snow Dragon -- sending scientists to Scalbard along with teams of international researchers, lobbying successfully to be accepted as an observer at the Arctic Council, itself a collection of countries with legitimate connections to the Arctic: Norway, Canada, Iceland, Russia and the United States.

Husky's delight: A rare pink sky over Svalbard, Norway. The spectacular sight only occurs once in every five years

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the region of the Arctic contains roughly 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its natural gas, untouched reserves to this date, resulting from the difficulty and high infrastructure cost of development. Russia, a legitimate stakeholder in the area, has announced a $400-billion investment to extract Arctic resources over the next two decades; assuming it can find the wherewithal for that planned investment.

Russia and China have historically been at odds with one another, but relations have warmed somewhat of late. Which hasn't meant that Russia is unconcerned over China's interest in the Arctic. "The struggle for resources is getting tougher", observed Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft, Russia's state oil company, who contends the Arctic holds over 20 percent of the world's oil reserves.

A wisp of green light twists over a pink sky in this incredible picture of northern lights over Svalbard in Norway. German photographer Kerstin Langenberger, 29, captured the incredible moment when she was travelling 800 miles from the North Pole

The Norwegian land now in dispute on Svalbard, up for sale is owned by descendants of a Norwegian shipper who bought it in 1937. It is the sole privately held territory left in Norway, and the first to be available for development since 1952. The state of Norway owns all else, and the area holds a Norwegian state coal company, Store Norske, and a Russian state-owned coal company, the Arctic Coal Trust.

The five countries whose territory does verge on and include territory within the Arctic Circle speculate China's efforts to attain a permanent foothold in the region of growing geopolitical and economic importance will deleteriously impact on their own interests. All the more so as expectations that global warming will continue to melt the Arctic seas, making year-round shipping from Asia less expensive, and enhancing prospects for natural resources exploitation.

1. 7,519 mi

   Distance from Arctic Cir to China

   

Home is Where the Soothed Appetite Is

"We have people who come to site, they don't know what a mango is... They try to eat them like apples."
"We can go through tonnes of bologna, white bread and ketchup and then the next night you'll go through a couple hundred pounds of tenderloin that's wrapped in prosciutto and slow-roasted. It really goes the full spectrum."
"People have never had cherries that haven't come out of a jar."
"The only cardinal rule we seem to have is on Tuesdays they get prime rib or rib eye [steaks]."
Executive Chef Allan Bedard, Goldcorp Musselwhite Mine, northern Ontario

Handout/ Musselwhite Mine    An apple, bacon, pecan and blue cheese stuffed pork tenderloin wrapped in prosciutto and roasted and topped with a maple rosemary butter at Musselwhite Mine.

"We have the best restaurant north of 60."
"It's a key to maintaining stability within the workforce. If you don't have a very good camp facility and food is not great, word spreads fast."
Dale Coffin, director, corporate communications, Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., Nunavut

"They all say: 'We have great food, really comfortable accommodations' and all that."
"I feel that as there is more development in remote locations, the companies setting up these operations do make a point to make it seem more luxurious. So it's not like you're living in a tent or a trailer."
Oliver Carusone, 22, fourth-year student, Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining, Queen's University

"The trend has been toward fresh, away from frozen, pre-prepared stuff, away from greasy, french fry stuff. People are much more interested in healthy options."
"The sky's the limit. It'll be as good as any Toronto high-end restaurant. But then there are lots of other ones where it's a much more basic offering."
Dave O'Connor, managing director, Outland Camps, catering/remote workforce company

Handout/ Musselwhite MineSirloin steak in a garlic and coffee rub served with a fennel and citrus braised cabbage, topped with sous vide soft poached eggs at Musselwhite Mine.

"With employees on site for 14 days at a time, we have to make sure the food is very good to keep up morale, but we don't want to give the impression that it's filet mignon and crab legs every night."
Tom Ormsby, director, external and corporate affairs, De Beers Canada

The "restaurant" of which Mr. Coffin spoke belonging to Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., is located 170 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle at the Meadowbank mine in the Kivaliq region of Canada's newest territory, Nunavut. Half of the workers employed there are from Quebec, and another 30% from Nunavut. It's a fly-in, fly-out concern where workers are deployed on a two-on, two-off shift; two weeks on work site, two weeks relief off.

Temperatures can descend to minus 70C, counting the wind chill and the days in winter are gloomily dark. Since alcohol is banned at the camps, food remains the sole comfort for workers separated from family. A 2012 Mining Association of Canada report came to the conclusion that within another decade the mining industry will require fully one hundred thousand additional workers to meet the need of the northern mines workforce. How're you gonna get them up to the mines without entices?

Meadowbank Mine/Agnico Eagle Mines   The Meadowbank mine is an open-pit gold mine in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. It is located 2,600 kilometres northwest of Toronto.

Certainly the pay is good, but there's more to life than good pay and stark isolation. So accommodations have also improved with rooms suite-style, rather than the old-style dormitory arrangements, and with that change the quality of food offerings has also improved immeasurably. Mr. O'Connor's catering company gave service to 60 remote camp sites representing various industries throughout Canada, in 2014. That demand will only increase.

One of the logistical challenges for Outland Camps catering in provisioning these remote camps with exceptional food offerings for workers is the need to fly in fresh produce and themselves hire staff to work at those remote sites. So higher-end food at mine sites presents as one solution; from international cuisine to traditional Aboriginal food menus. Quite the change from the once-predictable meat-and-potato diet.

Handout/ Musselwhite MineCajun spiced shrimp served with a onion, tomato and pea blend and sauced with an oyster hoisin glaze at Musselwhite Mine.

Coming from rural First Nations communities where fresh food is hard to come by and expensive, the experience of eating fresh fruits and vegetables presents as a novelty to some of the Aboriginal mine workers. And Mr. Bedard, working for Windigo Catering, itself owned by Windigo First Nations, has taken to altering the names of unfamiliar foods to make them appear more appealing to mine workers who tend to shy away from expressions they have no knowledge of.

He changed Sauerbraten to "buttermilk braised beef"; curry to "spice rubbed lamb with a sweet, coconut milk sauce". When he produces what he terms "pedestrian" food, he makes changes like adding applewood-smoked bacon and Gouda to traditional macaroni and cheese casseroles, topping them with crumbled potato chips. His kitchen leaves nothing to be desired in useful food preparation tools, including a sous-vide machine the envy of the culinary world, and $60,000 ovens.

"Sometimes", he says, "we all have that moment where you take that [food] and you bite into it. You don't really forget about things but you're just more focused on that warm, nurturing sensation. For a lot of people, food is home."

Handout/ Musselwhite Mine   A sample of the food served to miners at Goldcorp's Musslewhite Mine, an underground gold mine located around 500 km north of Thunder Bay, Ont.

Moderating the Golden Mean

The year 2013, set to wrap up shortly, has left an indelible impression that Global Warming is not an imminent concern. Climate Change may be another thing altogether, since it seems as though, to us poor cowering human creatures of nature, that each time a storm of one kind or another occurs, it seems far more violent than all those that have taken place in dim memory. More frequent and more powerful earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires and flooding.

Yet looking back in documented history of such natural events, they have always been with us, always extracted their share of human misery and environmental change, and humans have always been involved in degradation of our environment. Cyclic alterations in weather and atmospheric conditions influenced in large part by our sun; growth cycles and other indices of natural change are a well-enough known phenomena to science.

Yet much of all of this has been ascribed to the penchant of humans to abuse the bounty of nature, to so upset the balance through our flagrant misuse of natural resources that we have insulted and assaulted nature and her bounty once too often. Modern-day prophets were thundering their anger with accusations of anthropogenic atrocities leading to an inevitable apocalypse with the total collapse of benign nature resulting in a backlash that would threaten the survival of all living species on our globe.

Polar bears, those beautiful, wild and powerful creatures of huge physical power and imaginative appeal, were barely managing to breed and feed in the face of a shrinking ice presence on the polar seas. Photographs of those noble beasts became an easily identifiable icon of the natural world disrupted by the ceaseless misuse of nature's resources by a disrespectful human population the world over. Of late, aboriginal peoples, Inuit of the Far North, have reported an abundance of polar bears.

And how could this be in a warming atmosphere slowly destroying their habitat? Perhaps in the news out of Antarctica that the sea ice has established record growth, extending over a greater area than any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first came into use. As for the Arctic, the melting of the entire polar ice cap prophesied by Al Gore five years ago, has fizzled. Into a reality that has seen a 50% increase over 2012, in a succession of sea-ice growth year after year.

U.S. weather stations have reported over two thousand record cold and snow days. And so far this year nearly 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, at a rate doubling last year's snow events.  Canada has been experiencing similar snow events. Snow has descended in astonishing volumes across the Middle East with Egypt covered in snow for the first time in a century. Jerusalem was covered by between sixteen inches and three feet of snow.

Global warming, it appears, has come to a halt. Not a sudden, thudding halt, but a gradual one, over the past 17 years. Scientific predictions are now of global cooling. Businesses that took advantage of the threats issued by global warming resulting from the burning of fossil fuels causing carbon dioxide emissions overloading the atmosphere leading to the steady warming that would threaten us all are now themselves being threatened by extinction.

European and North American producers of solar panels and wind turbines are filing for bankruptcies, after laying off their worker forces. China's Suntech, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world, has also filed for bankruptcy. As has China's largest manufacturers of wind turbines; Sinovel is in the process of closing its production plants in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

The once-reviled coal, despised as the dirtiest source of energy production, sending clouds of particulate effluent and carbon into the atmosphere is returning to its dominant role as an energy provider, particularly in developing economies. But the next-generation fuels, shale gas and shale oil, with their fracking extraction methods that have sent environmentalists into spasms of gloom and furious accusation are rising in prevalence and providence into a new energy era.

The Kyoto Protocol has now been abandoned by energy-producing countries, leaving it to cover a mere 15% of global emissions. Australia has elected a new government that promptly scrapped carbon tax and discharged into oblivion its climate change ministry as well. The public, relieved from the weight of the scenarios described by climate change advocates, has abandoned its previous concerns.

Another hellish prediction of the Earth, failing nicely out of the way. A word to the wise everywhere might remind that energy and resource extraction and conservation on the other hand, is a prudent course reflective of common sense. Nothing is limitless, not the means to achieve an end, and nor should our limitless desire to achieve new ends be without restraint. That ages-old prescription of moderation in all things is never misplaced.

Innovative Building Techniques

"Thirty seconds went by and then the whole top was up in flames. It seemed kind of out of control at that point, by the time the first fire truck got there."
"He [the crane operator] had to sit on the edge of the crane, and about fifteen minutes later the flames were so big they were going up above the crane."
"Especially when the helicopter guy was rescuing him from the crane, everyone was like, 'Oh my God! I can't believe this is happening. It's just so surreal."
John Ashie, Kingston, Ontario

Photo Lars Hagberg/Canadian Press

One assumes that the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, under the Building Code Act dating from 1992, felt that it was entirely feasible and appropriate that a five-story, city-block wide multiple-dwelling structure be built entirely of wood. Steel be damned. Canada has an abundance of wood stock from our magnificent forests and there is no reason, it might seem, not to use that lumber for the bones of large, multiple-purpose buildings with platform-frame construction.

Wood is a highly volatile building material. A simple fact known to anyone who might give it second thought. John Ashie, 22, stepped outside his family's car dealership in response to his father's remark about black smoke rising nearby. He was just in time to witness an amazing and frightening sight as huge orange flames licked through the roof of the five-storey apartment complex taking up an entire city block being constructed on Princess Street, Kingston.

That was at 2:15 p.m. Fire fighters were on the scene quite expeditiously, and the from among the gathering crowd of onlookers it was noticed that there was someone sitting atop a construction crane reaching up and out of the burning complex. "He actually had to get out of the little booth he was in and walk across the entire length of the crane, which would have been frightening enough", Ashie related after the event of the crane operator's rescue.

"As the flames started to get bigger and bigger and bigger, it started to get pretty worrisome. He must have been going through hell up there." In fact it was a full hour and twenty minutes after the fire began when a Griffon helicopter flying out from CFB Trenton managed to rescue the crane operator and deliver him to a waiting ambulance. Police were satisfied that all the other workers at the construction site were accounted for.

A search and rescue helicopter rescues a crane operator during a fire in downtown Kingston, Ont., on Dec.17, 2013. (Lars Hagberg / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

But that didn't end the situation; the flames leaped to one home close by and caught fire there. Police walked door-to-door in the area to inform residents of a general evacuation. The crane had sustained burn damages, and it wasn't clear whether it might soon collapse. Another crane would have to be brought in in an attempt to disassemble the damaged crane, in an effort to forestall an eventual collapse.

Kingston's mayor, for one, felt unease, he said, every time he walked by the building site, observing its wood construction, fearing the potential of a fire and the devastation that would ensue. Well, that fire did eventuate, and perhaps it's just as well it happened before the apartment building was completed and being lived in.

As an alternative to steel girder construction of large buildings, it doesn't seem very intelligent to imagine wood replacement to be reasonable.

Canada's Winter Travel

Travelling anywhere in Canada during the winter months can be fraught with concern over whether the trip will be trouble free from weather concerns interrupting efficient, swift and safe passage whatever the means of travel, from air to rail to highway vehicle. Winter storms erupt without too much warning, often enough; nature is indifferent to the problems her frequent weather systems cause to mere humans and their puny infrastructures.

There is news of recent vintage that a trainload of people in Northern Quebec left Schefferville at eight in the morning to embark on a Christmas shopping expedition that would see them spending the weekend at that great shopping mecca in Sept-Iles, Quebec. A happy diversion in peoples' daily lives, anticipating the drawing nigh of Christmas and the joyful family scenes of gift exchanges.

From that news item the reader was made privy to some interesting facts. That, for example, a rail line, called the Tshiuetin Rail Transportation system, in operation since 2005 and owned by three First Nations, covering over 200 kilometres, connecting remote communities in Northeastern Quebec, beyond the reach of the national VIA Rail service is a going concern. And good for them!

tshiuetin.net

 

The only fly in that ointment is that on this particular occasion, as temperatures dropped below minus-30-degrees Centigrade, the train with its 270 passengers and plenty of children accompanying their mothers, suddenly came to a stop in virtually the middle of nowhere. They were two hours out from their start at Schefferville when the train crew reported generator problems.

The result of which, while the company and its employees were trying to figure out what the next mov -- concerning rolling stock that dated from the 1950s -- might be to rescue the passengers, the train and the company's reputation, let alone the plans of so many people looking forward to this pre-Christmas expedition to round out their gift-giving plans.

In later interviews, Annie Nattawappio, a passenger on the train with her three young children, expressed her concerns about others; her children were well dressed for the trip, their mother fully aware of the weather and the need to ensure they were adequately prepared to face it, with outer garments consistent with plans for young children to play outside in the snow.

They were not intended on this occasion, to play outside in the snow, but their mother's cautious preparations were certainly not misplaced; even with their snowsuits the children were huddling for warmth in the train under blankets. "I was more worried about the elders and the pregnant women" on board under the circumstances, said Ms. Nattawappio of the Friday ordeal they all shared.

And then the train was fired up to move a short distance, bringing the passengers close by a small trailer used as a makeshift train station with four 'rooms' available to accommodate the hundreds of stranded passengers who quickly lined up to use the functioning bathroom facilities, for those on the train had frozen solid.



As the sun began to set, officials in nearby Labrador City, Newfoundland, were informed of plans underway to bring the passengers away from their dilemma. Within 20 minutes of being informed, the city and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary had put in place their emergency response plan, sending out a fleet of buses to the rail siding, where the stalled train sat.

There were children crying with the misery of being cold and hungry. Arriving at a local high school gymnasium for registration with the Canadian Red Cross, the passengers were met with pizza and chicken wings to restore confidence and comfort. Passengers were divided between two mining camps at Labrador City, with a network of trailers to function as dormitories for an overnight stay.

The next day the rail company arranged for all its stranded passengers to be flown to Sept-Iles. And to be assured that when their week-end of shopping had finally concluded to their satisfaction the train would be there, in good shape, and prepared to confidently and expeditiously return them to their homes in Schefferville

Heritage Colliding With Rude Power

The use of wind turbines, a modern, technologically advanced version of the windmill used so commonly on farms and villages in the 18th and 19th Century to produce power, seemed like a brilliant idea whose time had come. Environmentalists fell all over themselves in their enthusiasm at this re-discovered source of energy used in the past to such good effect. For milling grain and wood products, for irrigation and a range of other industrial purposes throughout Europe.

What was a painting of Holland without the depiction of a windmill? Now giant wind turbines with immense blades have proliferated on landscapes everywhere, from Europe to Asia, North America to the Middle East, generating power with their awesome ability to harness the wind. The initial euphoria has however, given way to disappointment; that the power cannot be stored for later use, and that the wind is not always amenable in its appearance to be harnessed.

Photobucket

Moreover, people have gotten over their original feelings of awe at the other-wordly appearance of the giant turbines marching across the landscape. Suddenly, what once appeared to be a wonder, and a partial response to the prayers of governments and environmentalists to find new sources of renewable energy, to leave the burning of fossil fuels behind, has become a blot on the landscape. People living nearby these giant windmills cite noise pollution and spoiled aesthetics.

The bucolic beauty of nature has been despoiled by the presence of giant revolving arms in their now-macabre dance with the wind. Birds die in their thousands, hitting the revolving arms. People claim that their health has been negatively impacted by the proximity of the windmills, the noise drives them insane, the vision of the revolving arms disturbing to their sense of peace and security. They have become a liability, not a brilliant solution as once heralded.

But while people complain, it's mostly farmers, or country dwellers with little political clout. The manufacturers of wind turbines do have clout. Governments desperately seeking alternate sources of power to combat ongoing carbon dioxide polluting the atmosphere, are reluctant to admit that the wind turbines are adding to their woes, not detracting from them.

And, as yet another indication that the moneyed and the aristocratic do have the ear of the courts, a couple in northern France has successfully managed to challenge turbine operator LA Compagnie du Vent (The Wind Company), subsidiary of energy giant GDF Suez in a court of law. "Every day we have to suffer the visual and noise pollution. I can see the turbines from everywhere in the castle, from every room", said Erik Wallecan.

Castle? Yes, indeed. The couple, Erik and Ingrid Wallecan bought their dream home, the Chateau de Flers in the Pas-de-Calais area in 1996, and it took them a decade to restore the building with its 42 acres of land to its former, sumptuous state. And they continued, to transform it into a guest house. And a decade later they were horrified to discover the view of their magnificent property was blighted.

Chatea de Flers, Pas-de-Calais/Flickr

"The first evening when we arrived in the chateau (from Anvers in Belgium) after their construction, it was a firework display; we wondered where these lights were coming from. We were not even aware that these (wind) projects existed", complained Ingrid Wallecan. For three of those monstrous turbines are now visible looking across the park from the bay windows in the grand salon of the chateau.

Judges were sympathetic to their blight-plight. Ruling from Montpellier that the turbines' location caused the "total disfigurement of a bucolic and rustic landscape". Furthermore, apart from "spoiling the view", the incessant "groaning and whistling", along with the "unsightliness of white and red flashing lights", impelled the judges to find for the complainants.

The Wallecans were granted a handsome $53,000 in damages, and the company ordered to remove the wind farm or face a fine of $700 daily for each of the turbines. An appeal is pending. "People are often too scared to take action and suffer in silence", said Philippe Bodereau, the Wallecans' lawyer.

"Today we are saying no: justice has been done and this shows all those who suffer wind farms with a sense of powerlessness that the fight is not in vain, that one can have one's life respected - one's right to peace."

All it takes is indignation, perseverance, and money, lots of it.

Chateau de Flers, Pas-de-Calais, France -- www.leuropevueduciel.com

Predicting Fish Habitats Months In Advance With New Ocean Forecast

August 31, 2013

Image Credit: Thinkstock.com

 

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
As meteorological science advances, we have all become used to long-term weather forecasts, such as predicting what the coming winter might bring. A new study from the University of Washington and federal scientists, however, has developed the first long-term forecast of conditions that matter for Pacific Northwest fisheries.

“Being able to predict future phytoplankton blooms, ocean temperatures and low-oxygen events could help fisheries managers,” said Samantha Siedlecki, a research scientist at the UW-based Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean.

“This is an experiment to produce the first seasonal prediction system for the ocean ecosystem. We are excited about the initial results, but there is more to learn and explore about this tool – not only in terms of the science, but also in terms of its application,” she said.

The prototype was launched in January of this year. When it immediately predicted low oxygen this summer off the Olympic coast, people scoffed. However, some skeptics began to take the new tool more seriously when an unusual low-oxygen patch developed off the Washington coast in July. The prototype has predicted the low-oxygen trend will continue, becoming worse in the coming months.
“We’re taking the global climate model simulations and applying them to our coastal waters,” said Nick Bond, a UW research meteorologist and Washington’s state climatologist. “What’s cutting edge is how the tool connects the ocean chemistry and biology.”

Typically, Bond’s research concerns predicting ocean conditions decades in advance. The forecasts he distributes in his job as state climatologist, however, are quarterly weather predictions. He decided to combine the two with this project, creating a season approach to marine forecasts.

“Simply knowing if things are likely to get better, or worse, or stay the same, would be really useful,” said collaborator Phil Levin, a biologist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
For example, if fisheries had early warning of negative trends, it could help them set quotas.

“Once you overharvest, a lot of regulations kick in,” Levin said. “By avoiding overfishing you don’t get penalized, you keep the stock healthier and you’re able to maintain fishing at a sustainable level.”
The new tool is called the JISAO Seasonal Coastal Ocean Prediction of the Ecosystem, which the scientist dubbed J-SCOPE. J-SCOPE is still in the testing stages and it remains to be seen whether the initial low-oxygen prediction was beginner’s luck or proof it can predict regions where strong phytoplankton blooms will end up causing low-oxygen conditions.

Global climate models that can predict elements of the weather up to nine months in advance are used by J-SCOPE, which feeds those results into a regional coastal ocean model – created by the UW Coastal Modeling Group. This ocean model simulates the intricate subsea canyons, shelf breaks and river plumes of the Pacific Northwest coastline. This is combined with a new UW oxygen model developed by Siedlecki that calculates where currents and chemistry promote the growth of marine plants, or phytoplankton, and where those plants will decompose and, in turn, affect oxygen levels and other properties of the ocean water.

All of these calculations allow J-SCOPE to create a nine month forecast for Washington and Oregon sea surface temperatures, oxygen at various depths, acidity, and chlorophyll, a measure of the marine plants that feed most fish. This fall, the researchers plan to add sardine habitat maps. The team eventually hopes to publish forecasts specific to other fish, such as tuna and salmon.

The model was fine-tuned by comparing its results for past seasons to actual measurements collected by the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS), a UW based group that hosts the forecasts as a forward-looking complement to its growing archive of Pacific Northwest ocean observations.

The new tool should be able to predict elements of the ocean ecosystem up to six months in advance, according to Siedlecki’s analyses. If the forecasts prove as reliable as the researchers hope, they could become part of a new management approach that requires knowing and predicting how different parts of the ocean ecosystem interact.

“The climate predictions have gotten to the point where they have six-month predictability globally, and the physics of the regional model and observational network are at the point where we’re able to do this project,” Siedlecki said. The project will be presented to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the regulatory body for West Coast fisheries, this year. The researchers will work with NANOOS to reach tribal, state, and local fisheries managers.

Source: April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online