The Svalbard Islands are located in the Arctic Ocean, halfway between Norway and the North Pole. Here you will find one of the world’s largest areas of untouched nature. The largest islands are Spitsbergen, Nordaustlandet, Barentøya, Edgeøya, and Prins Karls Forland. The archipelago is governed by Norway and regulated by the Svalbard Treaty. There are multiple settlements on Spitsbergen and Longyearbyen is the Norwegian administrative centre.
Svalbard, the realm of the polar bear, has long fascinated travellers. Unique wildlife, wild nature and old mining towns are all found on the islands. The name Svalbard means "cold coasts" and was first mentioned in Icelandic texts in the 12th century. On Svalbard, you will find wild nature, old mines and polar bears. The islands are located between 74° ~ 81° N and 10° ~ 35° E. They cover 63,000 square kilometres. Nearly 65 per cent of the surface of Svalbard consists of protected areas, including three nature reserves, six national parks, 15 bird sanctuaries and one geo-topical protected area. Norway's largest glacier, Austfonna, is located on Svalbard. Austfonna is the world's third-largest ice cap after Antarctic and Greenland, with a glacier front of 200 kilometres.
History-
1596: Willem Barentsz discovers Svalbard
1600 - 1750: International whaling activities
1800 - 1900: Norwegian all-winter hunting and trapping
1906: John M. Longyear establishes the first mine on Svalbard
1920: The Svalbard Treaty is signed
1925: Norway is given sovereignty over Svalbard
Longyearbyen has 2,040 inhabitants. This is the seat of local government and Norway’s main administrative centre on Svalbard. The small colourful community has developed from being a typical village town into a modern community with different kinds of businesses and industries, and with a wide range of cultural activities and opportunities.
Other settlements are:
· Barentsburg (Russian mining community) 500 inhabitants
· Ny-Ålesund (Norwegian international research centre) 25 inhabitants
· Svea Gruva (Norwegian mining community) 240 commuters
· Hornsund (Polish research station) 11 inhabitants
Global warming reaches the far north
Being located at the margin of the rapidly declining sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, Svalbard is among the fastest-warming regions on Earth. And this warming is testing the limits of the firn layer’s capacity to store meltwater.
Rising air temperature in the mid-1980s considerably increased the amount of water that was melting across the glaciers and rapidly filled the air pockets in the firn, progressively weakening its buffer capacity. To make matters worse, the firn layer retreated fast inland to reach the elevation of 450 metres – a critical point that left more than half of the archipelago’s glacier area unprotected.
The disappearance of firn leaves glaciers without their protective buffer, exposing the underlying dark bare ice at the surface. As dark ice absorbs more sunlight than the brighter firn, melt increased even further.
Being located among the fastest-warming regions on Earth, Svalbard glaciers are the canary in the coal mine. They can be seen as thermometers monitoring the devastating impacts of the climate crisis. It may not be too late to save part of Svalbard’s glacial landscape and the fragile ecosystems it supports, but time is quickly running out.
Seed Vault-
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault has often been dubbed as the “doomsday” vault. It is a secure facility located inside a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago. Svalbard is a geologically stable area where humidity levels are also low. The Seed Vault is located well above sea level and protected from flooding. Apart from artificial cooling systems, the permafrost also offers natural freezing, providing a cost-effective and fail-safe method to conserve seeds.
Norway established and owns the Seed Vault, which is managed and operated through a partnership between the Norwegian Ministry of agriculture and food, the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, also known as NordGen, and the international organization Crop Trust.
In total, five genebanks are depositing almost 6,500 seed samples at the Seed Vault: AfricaRice in Côte d’Ivoire, ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in India, the Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI) in Germany, SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Zambia and the national genebank in Mali.
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