Glacierized fjords are dynamic regions, with variable oceanographic conditions and complex ice−ocean interactions, which are still poorly understood. Recent studies have shown that passive underwater acoustics offers new promising tools in this branch of polar research. Here, we present results from two field campaigns, conducted in summer 2013 and spring 2014. Several recordings with a bespoke two−hydrophone acoustic buoy were made in different parts of Hornsund Fjord, Spitsbergen in the vicinity of tidewater glaciers to study the directionality of underwater ambient noise. Representative segments of the data are used to illustrate the analyses, and determine the directions of sound sources by using the time differences of arrivals between two horizontally aligned, broadband hydrophones. The results reveal that low frequency noise (< 3 kHz) is radiated mostly from the ice cliffs, while high−frequency (> 3 kHz) noise directionality strongly depends on the distribution of floating glacial ice throughout the fjord. Changing rates of iceberg production as seen for example in field photographs and logs are, in turn, most likely linked to signal amplitudes for relevant directions. These findings demonstrate the potential offered by passive acoustics to study the dynamics of individual tidewater glaciers.

A section of a gravel−dominated coast in Isbjørnhamna (Hornsund, Svalbard) was analysed to calculate the rate of shoreline changes and explain processes controlling coastal zone development over last 50 years. Between 1960 and 2011, coastal landscape of Isbjørnhamna experienced a significant shift from dominated by influence of tide−water glacier and protected by prolonged sea−ice conditions towards storm−affected and rapidly changing coast. Information derived from analyses of aerial images and geomorphological mapping shows that the Isbjørnhamna coastal zone is dominated by coastal erosion resulting in a shore area reduction of more than 31,600 m 2 . With ~3,500 m 2 of local aggradation, the general balance of changes in the study area of the shore is negative, and amounts to a loss of more than 28,000 m 2 . Mean shoreline change is −13.1 m (−0.26 m a −1 ). Erosional processes threaten the Polish Polar Station infrastructure and may damage of one of the storage buildings in nearby future.

Marine mammal identification and classification for passive acoustic monitoring remain a challenging task. Mainly the interspecific and intraspecific variations in calls within species and among different individuals of single species make it more challenging. Varieties of species along with geographical diversity induce more complications towards an accurate analysis of marine mammal classification using acoustic signatures. Prior methods for classification focused on spectral features which result in increasing bias for contour base classifiers in automatic detection algorithms. In this study, acoustic marine mammal classification is performed through the fusion of 1D Local Binary Pattern (1D-LBP) and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) based features. Multi-class Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifier is employed to identify different classes of mammal sounds. Classification of six species named Tursiops truncatus, Delphinus delphis, Peponocephala electra, Grampus griseus, Stenella longirostris, and Stenella attenuate are targeted in this research. The proposed model achieved 90.4% accuracy on 70–30% training testing and 89.6% on 5-fold cross-validation experiments.