14 DAY TRIAL // It's a well known fact that the humanity's general lack of interest for the environment will ultimately be our undoing. We seem to forget that Mother Nature is in pain, and we continue wasting its resources and polluting without giving it a second thought.
But out actions are not without a consequence. The latest visible effect is the reduction of Arctic lakes, which is due to the thinning and melting of the permafrost surrounding them.
First of all, you may ask, what is permafrost? Well, permafrost is a special type of soil found in the northern regions of the world, Siberia and Alaska mostly. Its characteristic is that, due to the low temperature, it remains frozen all year around. Not anymore it seems, though, because the worldwide temperature is rising, due to pollution, and that's why permafrost cannot maintain a below zero temperature. Thus, water from the surrounding lakes tends to seep towards the interior of the soil, reducing the lakes' surface.
This conclusion was presented following a study of researchers from California, Alaska and New York, who compared satellite images spanning 30 years in time of more than 10,000 large lakes over 200,000 square miles in Siberia.
Laurence Smith, an associate professor of geography at the University of California Los Angeles, together wits some of his colleagues in this field, wrote a paper on this subject, called "Disappearing Arctic Lakes," in which he and his co-authors expressed their surprise regarding the overall loss in surface water.
The professor said that "We were expecting the lake area to have grown with climate change,", then adding that "And while it did do so in the north where the permafrost remains intact, lake area did not increase in the south where permafrost is warming."