Living in an oasis: Rapid transformations, resilience, and resistance in the North Water Area societies and ecosystems

Abstract

Based on lake sediment data, archaeological findings, and historical records, we describe rapid transformations, resilience and resistance in societies and ecosystems, and their interactions in the past in the North Water area related to changes in climate and historical events. Examples are the formation of the polynya itself and the early arrival of people, ca. 4500 years ago, and later major human immigrations (different societies, cultural encounters, or abandonment) from other regions in the Arctic. While the early immigrations had relatively modest and localised effect on the ecosystem, the later-incoming culture in the early thirteenth century was marked by extensive migrations into and out of the area and abrupt shifts in hunting technologies. This has had long-lasting consequences for the local lake ecosystems. Large natural transformations in the ecosystems have also occurred over relatively short time periods related to changes in the polynya. Finally, we discuss the future perspectives for the North Water area given the many threats, but also opportunities.

Keywords: Fast transformations; High Arctic; North Water; Regime Shifts; Resilience; Resistance.

Fig. 1

Differences between regime shifts resulting from smooth pressure–status relationships, threshold-like responses, and alternative stable states (bistability) with hysteresis. The two top rows of graphs show time series of driver (e.g., nutrient inputs) and ecosystem state (e.g., phytoplankton biomass), and the lower row of graphs show the relationship between the driver and ecosystem state. a Regime shift in driver is linearly translated to the ecosystem state. Jumps appear only in the time series. b Regime shift in ecosystem state after driver exceeds a threshold (tipping point). This is manifested through a jump in the time series of the ecosystem state. c The hysteresis loop linking the ecosystem state to the environmental driver results in jumps between two alternative states when the driver is first slowly increased and then reduced again. d Regime in drivers leading to changes in ecosystem state that remain (or change slowly back, not shown) when the former driver situation is re-established. e Regime in drivers leading to changes in ecosystem state that change gradually back (with differential resilience illustrated with different symbols) when the former driver situation is re-established. a–c Taken from Andersen et al. (2009)

Fig. 2

Cultural chronology of Eastern Canada (Nunavut) and Greenland (Kalaalliit Nunaat). The second column from left (Pikiliarsuaq) covers the cultural chronology of the North Water area. The processes behind the noticeable discontinuities in human presence in various parts of Greenland are not well understood. The chronological scheme is a modified version of the scheme by Appelt, Friesen, and Grønnow in Raghavan et al. (2014)

Fig. 3

Using a comparative approach to demonstrate the effects of Thule Inuit winter settlers on ponds in Arctic Canada based on algal remains in sediment cores. The profiles represent diatom species composition, δ¹⁵N, %N, and spectrally inferred chlorophyll a from two similar ponds on Bathurst Island, only a few metres apart. However, Pond B-AO (above) had only 5 Thule whalebone houses in its catchment, whilst Pond B-AP (below) had 16 houses. The more affected pond clearly documents the limnological response of the whalers. For example, the diatom Stephanodiscus minutulus is a well-known indicator of elevated nutrient conditions (modified from Hadley et al. 2010a)

Fig. 4

Above: Effects of the Dorset sealing activities on a pond on Baffin Island (Nunavut, Arctic Canada) based on diatom assemblage structure and sedimentary δ¹⁵N. The effects of Dorset sealing activities are recorded near the base of the core. The primary diatom zonation, as determined by CONISS (Grimm 1987), is shown as a dotted line. The radiocarbon date, shown on the leftmost side, was obtained on terrestrial macrofossils (TM) (Modified from Michelutti et al. 2013). Below: The fossil diatom stratigraphy and profile from Juet-1 on Baffin Island (Nunavut, Arctic Canada), a pond adjacent to a Dorset longhouse, believed to be used primarily for periodic seasonal gatherings and ceremonial functions. The relatively complacent profiles indicate no major human impacts at this site, as would be expected. The primary diatom zonation as determined by CONISS (Grimm 1987) is shown as a dotted line. The radiocarbon date, shown on the leftmost side, was obtained from terrestrial macrofossils (TM) (Modified from Michelutti et al. 2013)

Fig. 5

Sediment core collected from the lake within a large bird colony at Salve Ø. It shows the stepwise change in the characteristics of the lake ecosystem. The change was very rapid, showing a total change in sediment chemistry within less than a cm, corresponding to less than 30 years. The stable isotopes of C and N are in permille, organic content is loss of ignition in %, N is percent of organic matter and C:N ratio is calculated by weight (modified from Davidson et al. 2018)