Possible Role for Tectonics in the Evolving Stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet

The history of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been influenced by the geodynamic response to ice sheet fluctuations, and this interaction may help explain past deglaciations under modest climate forcing. We hypothesize that when the Iceland hot spot passed beneath northcentral Greenland, it thinned the lithosphere and left anomalous heat likely with partially melted rock; however, it did not break through the crust to supply voluminous flood basalts. Subsequent PlioPleistocene glacialinterglacial cycles caused large and rapidly migrating stresses, driving dike formation and other processes that shifted melted rock toward the surface. The resulting increase in surface geothermal flux favored a thinner, fasterresponding ice sheet that was more prone to deglaciation. If this hypothesis of control through changes in geothermal flux is correct, then the longterm (10 (sup 5) to 10 (sup 6) years) trend now is toward lower geothermal flux, but with higherfrequency (less than or equal to 10( sup 4) to 10 (sup 5) years) oscillations linked to glacialinterglacial cycles. Whether the geothermal flux is increasing or decreasing now is not known but is of societal relevance due to its possible impact on ice flow. We infer that projections of the future of the ice sheet and its effect on sea level must integrate geologic and geophysical data as well as glaciological, atmospheric, oceanic, and paleoclimatic information

Re-Branding Alternative Tourism in the Caribbean: The Case for ‘Slow Tourism’

Slow tourism represents a progressive genre of alternative tourism for remote locales in the Caribbean beyond mass-tourism complexes. We propose this new form of slow tourism as a viable promotional identity for alternative tourist offerings, which are in need of re-branding, through the decentralized medium of information technologies. A further contribution to this new construct\u27s identity is our recognition of the potential for the Caribbean diaspora to participate as stakeholders in slow tourism ventures in under-developed spaces of the Caribbean that lack the requisite resources and bundle of social and economic advantages that mass-tourism relies upon. Thus, the unevenness of tourism-driven development in the Caribbean can be countered progressively, and more inclusively, than in times past. In addition to developing the theoretical construct of slow tourism, we offer several prototype examples to demonstrate quality offerings already in praxis