The world is changing.

But that change isn't just the result of human actions and impacts on the natural environment. Mother Nature, herself, is sending the world into a series of 'rapid landscape' changes that can be harmful to the environment, ecosystems and human societies.

That's the argument being made by 75 Canadian and international scientists at this week's Rapid Landscape Change conference being held at Yukon College.

The conference is part of a two-year series of international meetings entitled Dark Nature Rapid Natural Change and Human Responses.

'Dark Nature refers to the potential for the natural environment to inflict harmful damage on people and ecosystems,' said a press release put out by conference administrators.

Past meetings have taken place in Mauritania, Mozambique and Argentina. They have discussed such issues as change of farm land to desert, mega floods and changing saline lake levels.

The stop in Whitehorse is the fifth conference. It's focusing on the changing landscape in northern and Arctic areas around the world over the last 11,500 years.

The three-day conference, followed by a weekend of science-related field trips to various locations in the Kluane area, is enabling scientists to do presentations on topics ranging from permafrost to forest fires to lake sediments and oxygen levels.

This is not the first time the Earth has undergone significant, natural environmental changes, the conference argued.

Part of the purpose of the conference series is to come to a better understanding of how past human communities were able to adapt and recover from landscape changes.

'This is likely to be the most remarkable and challenging period of environmental change that has taken place in the past millennium,' said the organizers' press release.

On Wednesday, Lesleigh Anderson, from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, presented research on the oxygen isotope composition of Jellybean and Marcella lakes.

An isotope is any two or more chemical elements which have closely-related chemical properties but different atomic weights.

Anderson's measurement of the oxygen isotope levels in the two lakes has demonstrated that there are multi-decade shifts in the levels which can provide information regarding century or millennial trends related to changes in the environment.

The research is hoped to provide a framework to better evaluate the human response to climate change in the North, Anderson said in an abstract on her research.

David Fisher, science leader with the Geological Survey of Canada, presented similar information on oxygen isotopes collected from ice cores at various elevations of Mt. Logan in southwest Yukon.

The research showed changes in the isotopes on the mountain that closely matched the information collected from the lake waters by Anderson.

Fisher's research shows over the last 2,000 years, there have been shifts in the flow of water vapour from the Pacific North West. The changes can be related to the beginning and end of the Little Ice Age of 1840 and the European Medieval Warmth of 800.

Fisher said the changes in zonal water vapour flows are very abrupt and usually only last a few years.

The research is important because it demonstrates the changes of water flows over the course of the several thousand years, said Fisher.

The climate present in the Yukon is related to changes and flows in the Pacific, he said.

'It effects the climate people live in day to day,' Fisher told the Star.

Chris Burn, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, presented information regarding permafrost in the Takhini Valley.

His research examined what could happen to frozen ground as a result of changes in the environment.

The study showed that despite climate changes, for permafrost to completely disappear in the Takhini Valley, it would take more than a millennia.

'The permafrost that is around here is going to be around for a very, very long time,' he said.

However, he added that the top layer of permafrost may be affected and that if it is, it will not likely be able to re-establish itself.

'If you want to keep the permafrost, you have to take care of it,' he said.

Sites with and without permafrost will respond differently to climate change, his study's abstract argued. Because of this, human communities must be conscious of other changes to the natural environment that may occur as a result.

The conference continues today and Friday with discussions on issues, including atmospheric circulation in Scandinavia and human impacts on the Alaskan boreal forest.

The final conference of the international series will take place in Italy in September.