Geography

ii iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express deep gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Ray Smith, who gener-ously supported and encouraged me throughout the master's program. His enthusiasm for scientific endeavors is boundless and thoroughly contagious. I would also like to aclrnowledge my other committee members who freely availed themselves to my many questions and offered helpful suggestions in return. Many thanks are due to Steve Miley and Tun Davidson who patiently provided technical support of the com-puting resources at CRSEO. I would also like to thank Kirk Waters who deserves recognition for his unlimited good nature and willingness to answer almost any ques-tion. Aclrnowledgement is made to Jeff Hicke who provided programming assistance during the early stages of Interactive Data Language (IDL) image processing. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (Boulder, Colorado) made available the sea ice data and were always responsive to any inquiries concerning their data products. I would like to especially thank: Claire Hanson and Michelle Holm for their many efforts and support at NSIDC. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Tun Newberger for many stimulating discussions concerning this research and for his helpful edito