Ivotuk - Background
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Where in the world is Ivotuk Alaska? - Ivotuk, Alaska is about 330 miles north-west from Fairbanks and about 200 miles south of Barrow. I other words in the middle of nowhere. Ivotuk is in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range on the edge of a huge flat plain, known as the North Slope, extending north to the Arctic Ocean.
Maria and Glenn are here in the Alaskan Arctic to study global climate change. Tundra is very sensitive to changes in temperature making it a good place to see the effects of changes in the global climate. The tundra may also play an important roll in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, a greenhouse gas. Plants absorb CO2 as they grow and tundra has the ability to lock this carbon away in the form of dead plants frozen into the permafrost, thus removing carbondioxide from the air. However if the temperatures rise and the permafrost retreats, those stores of dead plants will release cabon back to the atmpsphere through decomposition. |
