ARCTIC RESOURCES 227 



Grazing Resources 



Since human life depends on plants and animals and all animals 

 depend directly or indirectly on plants, it would seem that the 

 fundamental study most needed in the Arctic would be the study of 

 the relation of the climate and country to the life and growth of plants. 

 This is doubtless true, but it may turn out that one of the customary 

 divisions of this study does not exist in the Arctic, that of the annual 

 or regional variation of plant life with reference to drought. 



Relation of Precipitation to Plant Growth 

 IN THE Arctic 



Assume the maximum Arctic snowfall and you have the ground 

 covered at all times, crowding out all vegetation except bacteria and 

 similar growths in the snow itself. This condition is found nowhere 

 on lowland, except near mountains — unless it be true that there are 

 places in northeastern Siberia where snow does stay on lowland through 

 every month of every year. 



Next below the stage of permanent snow would be a deposit so 

 heavy that it takes the sun most of the year to remove it. This will 

 shorten the growing season of plants. Snow, then, is a powerful influ- 

 ence upon them, but not in any way closely analogous to that of ex- 

 cessive rainfall in lower latitudes. 



But it really makes little difference as regards the length of the 

 growing season how much snow falls in the cold winter. The winds 

 sweep most of it into lees and ravines, where it may persist in com- 

 paratively small drifts far into the summer and in rare cases throughout 

 the year, but on the remaining 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the land 

 the quantity of dry winter snow that sticks depends on the grass or 

 similar things that can hold it, and, as we shall show later on, the 

 quantity of this grass does not depend, in any important sense, on 

 the amount of precipitation. This little snow that clings in the grass 

 disappears like magic in the early summer, but this is not the case 

 with the sticky snow of spring, which largely remains where it falls 

 until it is melted — thus affecting the length of the growing season. 



Apart from the spring snows, then, the flat lands in districts of 

 heavy snowfall start under the same conditions in the spring as those 

 of light snowfall. But the rains of summer may make more difference. 

 Assume it rains one year twice the normal for a given district. The 

 skies then would be unusually overcast, and plant growth would per- 

 haps be thereby somewhat affected. Studies have not yet been made, 

 so far as I am aware, to determine which would produce a deeper 

 thawing of the ground, the faUing of rain from warm clouds or the 

 direct impact of the sun's light. The one producing the deeper 

 thawing would doubtless be the more favorable influence. 



