WASHINGTON (Reuters) - global warming will probably open coastal areas of the Arctic development but close vast areas of the Northern Interior the logging and mining operation in the century as ice and melt the frozen soil under temporary roads in winter, the researchers said.
Higher temperatures have already resulted in decline of levels in the Arctic sea ice and melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourists and developers of oil and natural gas in coastal regions in the coming decades.
Melting has also led to hopes to open shorter shipping routes in the Arctic between China and Europe.
The Arctic is more a region of deep strategic importance for the United States, the Russia and China for its wealth of undiscovered resources and the potential of new waterways. The U.S. Geological Survey says 25 percent of the unknowns of oil and natural gas of the world is located in the Arctic.
But the global warming also probably melt so-called "roads of ice", temporary winter roads developers for the now use to access the resources of Northern far inland as timber, diamonds and minerals, according to a study published Sunday in the journal Nature of climate change.
"This is a frontier of resources where we don't even know what everything is there and I am beginning to think we will ever be" Lawrence Smith, Professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles and co-author of the study, said the Interior of the Arctic.
"These places will become wilder and land will be abandoned and return to the wild."
Ice roads, made famous by the History Channel "Ice road truckers" series, are built on the frozen ground, rivers, lakes and wetland areas, with ice and compacted snow. They cost only two to four per cent of permanent land roads would cost, making it the most profitable resource extraction in these remote areas.
Iron roads, indigenous peoples may well also to insulation increased and higher that certain goods could reach them only via aircraft.
All eight countries bordering the Arctic - Canada, Finland, Greenland, the Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and United States - expected to decrease the accessibility of the lands of the winter road.
Russia will lose the most of land suitable for road construction in winter by region, followed by the Canada and United States, as the modelling in the study, which was supported by the NASA cryosphere program and the National Science Foundation.
DIAMOND ROAD
In the North of the Tibbitt-Contwoyto Canada "diamond road", a winter road was first built in 1982 and would be more lucrative ice road in the world that it serves several diamond mines, is should be among the roads that suffer, according to researchers. A large part of the road about 300 miles runs at the top of the frozen lakes.
By 2020, the road is projected to lose 17 percent of its 10 weeks operating season.
Oil and natural gas developers could lose access to some domestic drilling, but the industry would have access to a coastal drilling and could take advantage of easier navigation routes.
Work wood and metal mines, however, much more would suffer because it would be cost prohibitive to build permanent roads leading to these resources.
A study more is needed to determine the potential economic losses of the melt regions and how they would compare on occasion, the authors say.
(Reported by Timothy Gardner.) (Editing by David Lawder)
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