Man's impact on tundra ecosystems

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Abstract
Current concerns in the Soviet Union as to disruption of the tundra ecosystems focus on several interlinked topics, all of which provide excellent illustration of the author's comparison between these sensitive ecosystems and a resonator that amplifies and intensifies any modifying process. Some of these areas of concern are of long standing, e.g., deterioration of reindeer pastures; others are more recent, e.g., the problem of pollution of Subarctic rivers and lakes by industrial and domestic wastes, aggravated by the accelerating pace of industrial development. A particular concern that straddles the boundary between traditional activities and recent developments involves the rapid deforestation resulting from forest fires and felling of trees along the vulnerable northern margins of the forest tundra, and the resultant retreat of the treeline. Apart from concern as to the exhaustion of this resource, the author argues that there is real danger, as a result of this trend, of a drastic reduction in the self‐purification capacity of the air, and of increased atmospheric pollution in densely populated areas of the Subarctic such as the Kola Peninsula. In connection with the increasing population pressures in the Subarctic, some of the possibilities and difficulties of conversion of tundra to meadows, and of development of agriculture in the Subarctic are explored. Some of the author's views regarding the man‐tundra relationship are controversial in the Soviet Union (see Soviet Geography, December 1976, pp. 703–705, 708–712). (The present translation is by William Ban, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.)

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