The importance of the Arctic in many fields of human activity strongly increased over the past decades. The academic scientific research demonstrates a 3-fold increase in the number of journal articles dealing with "Arctic": from 1,400 in 2000 to 4,200 in 2018. This increase is not fortuitous but certainly stems from double importance of Arctic regions for humanity. The first importance is the role that the Arctic plays in the on-going environmental changes, mostly linked to climate warming and environmental pollution. Here, the first key issues are the Arctic Ocean, ice melt, permafrost thaw, greenhouse gases emission, and organic carbon mobilization from soils to rivers. From the other hand, highly fragile Arctic ecosystems and biota are strongly affected by environmental pollution, be it organic compounds or toxic metals and radionuclides. The rising concern of humanity to the key role of the Arctic in climate regulation on the planetary scale and the extreme fragility of its ecosystem, biota and native population to on-going environmental change can certainly explain an explosive interest of scientific researchers to the Arctic in connection with 'climate change'. The second big issue of the Arctic is its eminent role in problems of natural resources. The Artic shelf contains vast amount of hydrocarbons (gas and oil), whereas the terrestrial polar regions, now liberating from ice, may turn out to be highly important sites of future ore industry. The importance of possibly ice-free Arctic Ocean as future maritime shipping routes will further enhance the accessibility of natural resources in this region. Taken together, this can be the main driving factors of almost exponential increase in the interest to natural resources in the Arctic over past few years. The present book addresses a wide variety of environmental, social and economic issues of the Arctic, in response to rising interest to this region in academic science, sociology and business. The 14 chapters represent state-of-the art reviews written by the experts on problems of native communities, climate change, political issues, implementation of large-scale projects, natural resources and conservation, environmental monitoring and assessment of pollution issues.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Introduction; Learning in the Changing Arctic; Climate Change from the Arctic People's Point of View: Rhythms of Everyday Life, Infrastructures and Landscapes; Warmer Climate of Arctic Cities; A Comparative Study on the Cooperation in the Arctic Ocean and the South China Sea; Developing Environmental Research Capacity in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District within a Global Networking Framework; Vegetation of the Subarctic and Arctic of Siberia: Some Types and Approaches to the Study; Conservation Issues of Migratory Anseriformes in the Arctic: The Experience of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug; Remote Research of Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Thermokarst Lakes Fields in Siberian Permafrost; Groundwater Resources of the White Sea Basin (NW Russia); Estimation of the Condition of Arctic Tundra Landscapes Soil Cover Taking into Account Previous and Current Economic Activities: An Example of the Western Coast of Moller Bay (Archipelago Novaya Zemlya); Radionuclides in Sea Ecosystems of the Western Sector of the Russian Arctic; Seismic Monitoring of the European Arctic and Adjoining Regions; Diamond Deposits of the European Arctic of Russia: Problems of the Kimberlites Exploration, Limits of Conventional Methods and New Approaches; Dispersed Sedimentary Material in the Snow and Ice Cover of the Central Arctic and Its Fluxes to the Bottom; Index.