Historical Perspective and Relevance
It appears Charles Darwin speculated in 1855 about the possibility that icebergs could gouge the seabed as they drifted across isobaths (Weeks 2010, p. 391). Some discussion on the involvement of sea ice was brought up in the 1920s, but overall this phenomenon remained poorly studied by the scientific community up to the 1970s. At that time, ship-born sidescan sonar surveys in the Canadian Beaufort Sea began to gather actual evidence of this mechanism. Seabed gouges were subsequently observed further north, in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and in the Russian Arctic as well (Wadhams 2000, p. 72). Throughout that decade, seabed gouging by ice was investigated extensively. What sparked the sudden interest for this phenomenon was the discovery of oil near Alaska’s northern coastlines, and two related factors (Weeks 2010, p. 391): 1) the prospect that oilfields could abound in these waters, and 2) a consideration that pipelines would be involved in future production developments, as this appeared to be the most practical approach to bring this resource to the land. Since then, means of protecting subsea pipelines against ice action became an important concern (King 2011, Barrette 2011). An oil spill in this environment would be problematic in terms of detection and clean-up (McHale et al. 2000).
Scientists in fields of research other than offshore engineering have also addressed seabed gouging. For instance, biologists have linked regions of the seabed reshaped by seabed gouging by ice to the formation of black pools, seabed depressions filled with anoxic high-salinity water which are death traps for small marine organisms (Kvitek et al. 1998). However, because of the costs involved in gouging-related data production, the bulk of that work was financed by the oil & gas industry, and much of it was documented from an offshore engineering perspective.
Read more about this topic: Ice Scour
Famous quotes containing the words historical, perspective and/or relevance:
“Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody’s mom in that she knows what’s best for us. But if you look at the historical record—Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages—you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“All things being equal, I would choose a woman over a man in order to even the balance of power, to insinuate a different perspective into the process, to give young women something to shoot for and someone to look up to. But all things are rarely equal.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance—due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author’s attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful—and possibly the only—help that can be given.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)