Russian Expansion on the Pacific, 1641-1850; an Account of the Earliest and Later Expeditions made by the Russians along the Pacific Coast and Asia and North Am4erica; including some related Expeditions to the Arctic Regions

1915 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 626
Author(s):  
F. A. Golder
1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Butler

Several elements have interacted to influence the course and pattern of the boundaries and the regime of Soviet territorial waters. The foremost of these is national security. All of the seas bordering the U.S.S.R. have narrow entrances which can be commanded easily by hostile foreign Powers. During the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, German vessels and, after the War, Allied vessels in the Baltic and the Dardanelles restricted to an uncomfortable extent the freedom of action of the Soviet Government. Soviet weakness in the Baltic theater was a major factor in determining Soviet policy towards Finland and the Baltic states during the 1939-1941 period, and the proximity of NATO naval forces to the Baltic continues to provoke Soviet proposals to close the sea to noncoastal Powers. Similarly, the U.S.S.R. was compelled to endure Turkish violations of the Montreux Convention on the Turkish Straits during World War II while its Black Sea fleet was immobilized. The Pacific coast seas and the Atlantic and Pacific approaches to the Arctic seas are also susceptible to a blockade by hostile Powers. Even the Arctic seas themselves, once regarded as an unguarded but impregnable frozen boundary, have become unexpectedly vulnerable with the development of nuclear submarines.


AMBIO ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (12) ◽  
pp. 1447-1469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Rawn Wyllie de Echeverria ◽  
Thomas F. Thornton

Abstract We investigate the perceptions and impacts of climate change on 11 Indigenous communities in Northern British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. This coastal region constitutes an extremely dynamic and resilient social-ecological system where Indigenous Peoples have been adjusting to changing climate and biodiversity for millennia. The region is a bellwether for biodiversity changes in coastal, forest, and montane environments that link the arctic to more southerly latitudes on the Pacific coast. Ninety-six Elders and resource users were interviewed to record Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and observations regarding weather, landscape, and resource changes, especially as concerns what we term Cultural Keystone Indicator Species (CKIS), which provide a unique lens into the effects of environmental change. Our findings show that Indigenous residents of these communities are aware of significant environmental changes over their lifetimes, and an acceleration in changes over the last 15–20 years, not only in weather patterns, but also in the behaviour, distributions, and availability of important plants and animals. Within a broader ecological and social context of dwelling, we suggest ways this knowledge can assist communities in responding to future environmental changes using a range of place-based adaptation modes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie A. Hall ◽  
Susan E. W. De La Cruz ◽  
Isa Woo ◽  
Tomohiro Kuwae ◽  
David M. Nelson ◽  
...  

Shorebirds wade in shallow waters along shorelines searching for food. More than a million shorebirds visit the San Francisco Estuary each year during their migration to feast on the insects, worms, clams, and crabs that live on or under the surface of the sand or mud. The abundant food in the Estuary provides shorebirds with the energy they need to migrate thousands of kilometers, between their breeding areas in the Arctic and their wintering areas along the Pacific coast of North and South America. Scientists have discovered that, during migration, small species of shorebirds eat a green slime called biofilm that grows on the surface of the mud. Larger shorebirds do not eat biofilm. This article describes how the bills and tongues of small shorebirds help them eat biofilm, what biofilm is, and why biofilm is an important food for those birds during migration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 1259-1278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew A. Rosenow ◽  
Robert M. Rauber ◽  
Brian F. Jewett ◽  
Greg M. McFarquhar ◽  
Jason M. Keeler

The development of elevated potential instability within the comma head of a continental winter cyclone over the north-central United States is examined using a 63-h Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model simulation. The simulation is first compared to the observed cyclone. The distribution of most unstable convective available potential energy (MUCAPE) within the comma head is then analyzed. The region with positive MUCAPE was based from 2- to 4-km altitude with MUCAPE values up to 93 J kg−1. Backward trajectories from five sublayers within the region of elevated convection in the comma head were calculated to investigate how elevated potential instability developed. Air in the lowest sublayer, the source air for convective cells, originated 63 h earlier near Baja California at elevations between 2.25- and 2.75-km altitude. Air atop the layer where convection occurred originated at altitudes between 9.25 and 9.75 km in the Arctic, 5000 km away from the origin of air in the lowest sublayer. All air in the layer in which convection occurred originated over the Pacific coast of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, or arctic regions of Canada. Diabatic processes strongly influenced air properties during transit to the comma head. Air underwent radiative cooling, was affected by mixing during passage over mountains, and underwent interactions with clouds and precipitation. Notably, no trajectory followed an isentropic surface during the transit. The changes in thermodynamic properties along the trajectories led to an arrangement of air masses in the comma head that promoted the development of potential instability and elevated convection.


Polar Record ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (120) ◽  
pp. 217-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita McConnell

Investigations into conditions in Arctic and Antarctic seas were carried out during the late 18th and 19th centuries by private as well as government-sponsored expeditions. While the French occupied themselves with exploration mainly within tropical and temperate waters, Britishinterests lay in the Arctic regions, where a possible route through to the Pacific might be found, and as the location for whaling and sealing operations. It was to the advantage of these industries to discover how deep the polar seas were, to determine the water temperature and quality, and to understand the tides and currents flowing round their shores. But for a long time scientists failed to grasp that the key to water quality and movement lay in elucidating thetemperature profile from surface to sea bed. The instruments available before 1874 were not capable of resolving this profile and it was not until the end of the 19th century that measurements were made of sufficient accuracy to enable the various water masses and their consequent movements to be calculated theoretically from intensive temperature studies. By this time initiative for such work had passed into the hands of Norwegian scientists and Britain was represented only as a member of the International Commission for Exploration of the Sea (ICES), established in 1902.


PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1373-1374

The thirty-seventh annual meeting of the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast was held at Stanford University, California, on November 29 and 30, 1935.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document