Human Impacts on Antarctica and Threats to the Environment - Overview

For more than a hundred years people have travelled to Antarctica and most parts have now been visited. More than just footprints have been left and more than just photographs have been taken.

Some species of Antarctic animals have been taken to the verge of extinction for economic benefit. Others have been killed incidentally or disturbed, soils have been contaminated, untreated sewage has been discharged into the sea and rubbish that will not decompose or break down for hundreds of years has been left behind in even the remotest parts.

Recently attitudes have changed as we begin to realise that there are few untouched and unvisited places left on earth and that they are tremendously important to humanity.

Antarctica's clean air, water and ice of are of importance to science for understanding how the Earth's environment is changing both naturally and as a result of human activity. Tour operators are tapping a huge and ever increasing demand to visit the Earth's last great wilderness.

Both science and tourism have the potential to damage the very qualities that draw them to Antarctica.

The concern for the environmental management of Antarctica is how to make good past damage and how to reduce the current and future impacts.

 

Global Impacts

Antarctica is an important laboratory for research into the global impacts of the industrialized world.

Lakes on Signy Island in the Maritime Antarctic for instance have shown possibly the fastest local response to regional climate found anywhere on Earth. Average lake temperatures having risen by 0.9°C in 15 years while temperatures in the surrounding seas have stayed constant.

Global changes may have effects that impact directly on the Antarctic environment and its fauna and flora. Global warming may contribute to break-up ice-shelves causing loss of habitat for animals dependent on the ice-shelf as well as the effect of increasing sea level on low-lying regions in the rest of the world.

Increasing Ultra Violet (UV) radiation due to the ozone hole may cause changes to phytoplankton communities and could have effects further up the food chain.

Antarctica is a sensitive indicator of global change. The polar ice cap holds within it a record of past atmospheres that go back tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, allowing study of the earth's natural climate cycles against which the significance of recent changes can be judged.