Accelerating retreat and high-elevation thinning of glaciers in central Spitsbergen

Svalbard is a heavily glacier-covered archipelago in the Arctic. Dickson Land (DL), in the central part of the largest island, Spitsbergen, is relatively arid, and as a result, glaciers there are relatively small and restricted mostly to valleys and cirques. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of glacier changes in DL based on inventories compiled from topographic maps and digital elevation models for the Little Ice Age maximum (LIA), the 1960s, 1990 and 2009/11. Total glacier area decreased by ~38 % since the LIA maximum, and front retreat has increased over the study period. Recently, most of the local glaciers have been consistently thinning in all elevation bands, in contrast to larger Svalbard ice masses which remain closer to balance. The mean 1990–2009/11 geodetic mass balance of glaciers in DL is among the most negative from the Svalbard regional means known from the literature.

Submarine landform assemblages and sedimentary processes related to glacier surging in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard

High-resolution swath-bathymetry data from inner Kongsfjorden, Svalbard, reveal characteristic landform assemblages formed during and after surges of tidewater glaciers, and provide new insights into the dynamics of surging glaciers. Glacier front oscillations and overriding related to surge activity lead to the formation of overridden moraines, glacial lineations of two types, terminal moraines, associated debris lobes and De Geer moraines. In contrast to submarine landform assemblages from other Svalbard fjords, the occurrence of two kinds of glacial lineations and the presence of De Geer moraines suggest variability in the landforms produced by surge-type tidewater glaciers. All the landforms in inner Kongsfjorden were deposited during the last c. 150 years. Lithological and acoustic data from the innermost fjord reveal that suspension settling from meltwater plumes as well as ice rafting are dominant sedimentary processes in the fjord, leading to the deposition of stratified glacimarine muds with variable numbers of clasts. Reworking of sediments by glacier surging results in the deposition of sediment lobes containing massive glacimarine muds. Two sediment cores reveal minimum sediment accumulation rates related to the Kongsvegen surge from 1948; these were 30 cm a-1 approximately 2.5 km beyond the glacier front shortly after surge termination, and rapidly dropped to an average rate of 1.8 cm a-1 in ∼1950, during glacier retreat.

Odwrót od rozwoju: kontrowersyjna czy obiecująca zmiana paradygmatu wczesnej edukacji

The article presents three approaches to the conceptualisation of development as a category which describes the dynamics of the biography of man, which the author defines as: universalisation, contextualisation / relativism, and problematisation / negation. Emphasis is laid on a shift in thinking about the child and childhood, to be observed in the post-structural analyses contingent on the thought of Michel Foucault and a critique of developmental psychology which is developing in the world, but has been absent from Poland so far. The strongest critique of both these perspectives is directed against the standardisation measures for which individuality, specificity and diversity become a deviation from the norm. The article shows how strong arguments showing the controversy of development perceived in this way have been collected and how debatable the category of development as such is.