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Svalbard - an icy beauty
Svalbard archipelago is the northernmost tip of Europe and its settlements are the northernmost permanently inhabited spots on the planet. Svalbard is located between Norway and Greenland.
The islands cover a total of 62,050km², the largest of which are Spitsbergen, Nordaustlandet and Edgeøya. The combined permanent population is less than 3000, nearly all of which is concentrated in the main settlements of Longyearbyen and Barentsburg on Spitsbergen.
The islands were allegedly first discovered by Viking explorers in the 12th century. However the first recorded voyage here was by the Dutch in 1596, landing on the northwest of Spitsbergen. This coast served as an international whaling base during the 17th and 18th centuries. Norway's sovereignty was recognized in 1905; five years later it officially took over the territory. However, the Svalbard Treaty gives "absolute equality" to other nations wishing to exploit mineral deposits, and Russia continues to maintain a significant population on the island.
But - The Polar Bears are in danger!
Topographic map
Photos from Svalbard
Taking by Franco Pacelli
- Franco Pacellis photos
- He has captured the wildest, most fantastic sceneries.
Svenskhuset - Now we know what happened
for years it was a mystery.
In 1879 plans for an international polar year 1882-83' were made. Eight nations co-operated to establish fourteen different research stations during The Polar Year. Twelve of these stations were situated in the Arctic. Sweden undertook responsibility for the station on Spitsbergen. This was established at Kapp Thordsen on the northern side of Isfjorden, where A.E. Nordenskiöld had already put up a house ten years earlier. Today the building is known as 'Svenskhuset'. The house was expanded and equipped as an adequate research station for overwintering and making scientific observations. The engineer Salomon August Andrèe led the rebuilding work. The expedition consisted of six scientists under the leadership of the meteorologist Nils Gustav Ekholm. Three Swedish and three Norwegian workers also took part.
Already 1872 a tragedy took place in this house. 17 scientists were found dead. Some burried and others in their beds. There have been theories why they died and nobody knew for sure until now, 135 years later. The graves were opened and Doctor Ulf Aasebø and historian Kjell Kjær found that the cans of food they had been eating were full of lead. They died from lead poisening. Some of the cans were so full of lead they had little drops inside. The lids had been closed with lead as the custom was in those early days.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center
These data have been collected from an Arctic desert site (latitude 78o57'29N, longitude 12o27'42E), Broeggerhalvoya in western Spitsbergen, 10 km NW from Ny Alesund, 45 m above sea level, 2 km from the shore. This is a low relief tip of a bedrock peninsula covered with several meters of glacial drift and reworked raised beach ridges.
- N S I D C
- Latest news about the Ice and the climate changes. This effects Svalbard and Arctis a lot. The ice is rapidly disapearing and the Ice Bears have no hunting ground any more.
A lens about our earth, our home - Tellus
This lens is about the situation on our planet. But also facts about the solar system, the moon and the tide and the seven wonders of the world.There are serious problems to face also and working with this lens I realized that time is running out.
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Planet Earth - our home in space
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Atmosphere is the huge blanket of gas that circles the entire Earth. Without it, life as we know it could not exist. The atmosphere This blanket of gas starts at ground level and stretches 600 miles into the sky. However, most of this life-supporting...
Polar Bears are in danger
- Watch videos about Polar Bears
- Twin polar bear cubs Lia and Lutik, born and bred in St. Petersburg zoo, are about to be moved to the opposite end of... Read more
- Danger from Global warming
- Global warming, a scientifically documented phenomenon wherein the global temperature is steadily rising, has a profound impact on species all over the world. Polar bears and other Arctic species are particularly at risk because their habitat is increasingly threatened by global warming. Numerous scientific agencies have shown that polar bear numbers are on the decline, and that if action is not taken quickly, polar bears may vanish from the Earth, deprived of habitat, food, and shelter. The disappearance of these picturesque animals would be a great tragedy.
Serious Conference about the life of Polar Bears
Polar Bear in Danger: Senate EPW Hearing
4.2.2008 - www.nwf.org - National Wildlife Federation's Senior Scientist Dr. Doug Inkley testified before the Senate Environment & Public Works Cmte. regarding the unfortunate delay in listing the polar bear as a threatened species.
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Planet Earth
about the Polar bear
![Planet Earth: The Complete Series [HD DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/6147%2Bk8mfuL._SL160_.jpg)
Planet Earth: The Complete Series [HD DVD]
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Planet Earth is quite simply the greatest nature/wildlife series ever produced.
Accompanied by majestic orchestral scores by George Fenton, every episode is packed with images so beautiful or so forcefully impressive (and so perfectly photographed by the BBC's tenacious high-definition camera crews) that you'll be rendered speechless by the splendor of it all.
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Photo from Planet Earth
News about the global warming
- Aircraft Vapor Trails Responsible for 15-20% of Arctic Warming
- The situation in the Arctic is more extreme. Research showed that between 15 to 20 percent of warming in this region was caused by the vapor trails of ...
- The choices global warming forces upon us
- I worry about the ice in the Arctic, about the permafrost, the methane and the warming up there. I don't take this lightly--even the accumulation of ice in ...
- Future Arctic Battleground
- Global warming is rapidly changing the Arctic landscape. In the summer of 2008, for the first time in recorded history, the polar icecap retreated far ...
- Melting permafrost adding to global warming
- While the spotlight has been on the role of CO 2 in global warming, some scientists are very worried about current methane levels. Methane levels have risen ...
What YOU can do about the Global Warming
GO GREEN!
Act now and make a difference!
Reduce Reuse and Recycle
Bring your straw to the anthill - our earth
Simple daily little things
It is very frustrating to watch the Global Warming just get worse and worse. Here are some of the things you can do to help our planet:Change a light, and you help change the world. In EU it is a new law to do that this fall! Replace the conventional bulbs in your 5 most frequently used light fixtures with bulbs that have the ENERGY STAR and you will help the environment while saving money on energy bills. If every household in the U.S. took this one simple action we would prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from nearly 10 million cars.
If there is a recycling program in your community, recycle your newspapers, beverage containers, paper and other goods. Use products in containers that can be recycled and items that can be repaired or reused. In addition, support recycling markets by buying products made from recycled materials. Reducing, reusing, and recycling in your home helps conserve energy and reduces pollution and greenhouse gases from resource extraction, manufacturing, and disposal.
Saving water around the home is simple. Municipal water systems require a lot of energy to purify and distribute water to households, and saving water, especially hot water, can lower greenhouse gas emissions. Look for products with EPA's WaterSense label; these products save water and perform as well or better than their less efficient counterparts. There are also simple actions you can take to save water: Be smart when irrigating your lawn or landscape; only water when needed and do it during the coolest part of the day, early morning is best. Turn the water off while shaving or brushing teeth. Do not use your toilet as a waste basket - water is wasted with each flush. And did you know a leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons of water per day? Repair all toilet and faucet leaks right away. See EPA's WaterSense site for more water saving tips.
There is much more to read on the site I got this information from:
climatechange
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Products that earn the ENERGY STAR prevent greenhouse gas emissions by meeting strict energy-efficiency guidelines set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. ENERGY STAR makes it easy for you to choose products that not only save you money, but help the environment by preventing greenhouse gases associated with global warming--all this without sacrificing the quality that you expect from these products.
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Panasonic DECT 6.0-Series 3-Handset Cordless Phone System with Answering System (KX-TG1033S)
To learn more, visit www.energystar.gov or take a room-by-room tour of ENERGY STAR @ home and learn what you can do to save energy, save money, and help protect our environment in your own home.
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Vanishing World - The Endangered Arctic
A lovely beautiful book
Vanishing World: The Endangered Arctic
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Nature photographer Mireille de la Lez and cowriter Fredrik Granath have spent years working in the high Arctic and specialize in photography and films of the polar regions. They live in Stockholm, Sweden.
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There is a new Zoo opened in Orsa Sweden - to help the Polar bears
Links to information about the global warming
That is a fact in this case. The Global warming is also a fact because of us.
Act now and tell others to do so also!
- National Geographic shockwave presentation
- We call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It's changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon.
- The Discovery of global warming
- This Website created by Spencer Weart supplements his much shorter book, which tells the history of climate change research as a single story. On this Website you will find a more complete history in dozens of essays on separate topics, updated annually.
- Discover
- Global atmospheric temperatures are measured at multiple levels from the lower troposphere to the stratosphere. The image above shows temperatures at the 600 MB level using data combined from the AMSU-A instruments on NOAA-15 and NOAA-16.
- Global warming - what we can do
- Climate Change is the most serious problem we face in the 21st century. Future generations are depending on us to do whatever we can to turn things around.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group of over two thousand scientists, has concluded that global warming is beyond dispute, and already changing our climate. The last 30 years have seen the warmest surface temperatures in recorded history, and the NOAA has recently predicted 2007 will be the warmest year on record.
Another Important thing
That is being done
"Noah´s ark" with seeds this time
A safety-storage for preservation of duplicate collections of seeds on behalf of genebanks.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault At was opened by the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday 26. th of February 2008.The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is being constructed as a cave excavated into the permafrost just outside Longyearbyen. The SGS is intended to ensure genetic variety for the world's food plants by storing duplicates of seed collections from gene banks all over the world, and will have storage capacity for over four million different seed samples. If a seed is lost somewhere in the world due to natural disasters, war or resource shortages, it can be re-established with seeds from Svalbard.
The Seed Vault has the capacity to store 4,5 million different seed samples.
Many developing countries are rich in biodiversity. The Svalbard vault will be an extra security for plant diversity.
The gene bank is a facility for maintaining crop diversity in the form of seeds, stored and conserved in a frozen state. The ideal temperature is between minus 10 and minus 20 degrees Celsius. Each different type of seed is stored in its own container, such as a bottle, can, or in sealed a aluminium foil package. Genebanks may also contain living plants and parts of plants in those cases where it is difficult to store the crop in the form of seeds.
Scroll down for more information in the link list.
Svalbard Seed Vault
Links to facts about the seed vault
- Video of opening ceremony
- The seed vault homepage
- Where is Svalbard?
- Site with maps and info
- Pictures from Svalbard
- It is very beautiful in Svalbard
- Information about Svalbard
- Tourism and visitors
- Wikipedia about Svalbard
- More information and facts
- Spitsbergen in English
- Travel information
- Huskies on Svalbard
- Svalbard Huskies offers guided tours and dog sledding excursions in the beautiful surroundings of the Spitsbergen arctic archipelago. Experience the grandness of the arctic nature with your own eyes when piloting your own dog sled. Witness reindeers, foxes and if you are really lucky you might even see polar bears in their natural habitat. An experience that you will treasure for a long time!
- News and blogs
- Here are comments both in Norweigan and English
Svalbard Blog Posts from Google
- Svalbard GNOME-Look.org
- Svalbard GNOME-Look.org Community Portal for Gnome Themes Wallpapers Icons Sounds Screenshots Schemes Skins Skinz Screensavers Splash Screens News Forum GUI Polls Links Downloads GTK Look News Mouse X11 Linux.
- Svalbard Seed Bank | , Norway | Atlas Obscura
- Cold storage for agricultural biodiversity. Svalbard Seed Bank is located in , Norway.
- Unique Places – Svalbard
- Continuing our look at unique places around the world, today's focus is Svalbard, an island archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole. This is the northernmost part of Norway and was discovered most likely in the 12th ...
- PUDDERSNØ
- Powder alarm in Svalbard. Not that common, so there was just one option. Out of the bed again at 1 in the morning, starting the scooter, up to Nybyen and on the glacier. It was a true pleasure, to wash the 15 cm of powder off the hard ...
Pliosaurus found at Svalbard
Reptile from the past
Gigantic Pliosaurus discovered on Norwegian soilNorwegian palaeontologists have made a sensational discovery, currently drawing much international attention. A complete skeleton of a Pliosaurus, one of the largest-ever marine predators, has been discovered on Svalbard. These gigantic creatures, comparable in many respects to the Tyrannosaurus Rex, lived in the ocean 150 million years ago.
Palaeontologists from the University of Oslo, led by Dr. Jørn Hurum and Hans Arne Nakrem, made the discovery in August this year. The remains, which are very well preserved as well as being unique in their completeness, are the first complete skeleton of a Pliosaurus ever discovered, although parts of pliosaurs have earlier been found in England, Russia and Argentina.
During the two-week field period the palaeontologists documented a remarkable 28 skeletons, ranging from two to ten meters in length. The discovery ranks Svalbard as one of the world's four most productive sites for the remains of marine reptiles.
Pliosaurus, one of the largest-ever marine predators, lived in the ocean and hunted other smaller marine reptiles.
The University of Oslo has launched a website for information about the Svalbard discoveries
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Keep your photo memories out where you can see them!
Digital photo frames and cameras
Read about Svalbard - Spetsbergen
Before you go - find out about the islands
The Svalbard Archipelago: American Military and Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941-1950
Norway's Spitsbergen Archipelago, known as Svalbard to the Norwegians, is of increasing interest to Arctic scholars and geographers, as well as to military historians and analysts of strategy.
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The Svalbard Passage
The Svalbard Passage is a masterful novel set in the US and Norway. The intensity of the story, combined with the authors' knowledge of political reality, result in one of the best Cold War novels ever written. Readers of LeCarre, Follet, Condon and Ludlum will find it irresistible.
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Spitsbergen: Svalbard, Franz Josef, Jan Mayen, 3rd: The Bradt Travel Guide
The original wilderness encompassing the archipelago of Svalbard (commonly known as Spitsbergen) is a vast region of ice and snow where you can travel for weeks without meeting a soul. Lying as close to the North Pole as can easily be reached, its climate and wildlife are unique in Europe; this is the home of the arctic fox, the reindeer and the polar bear.
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CIA factbook
- CIA factbook
- Svalbard -
First discovered by the Norwegians in the 12th century, the islands served as an international whaling base during the 17th and 18th centuries. Norway's sovereignty was recognized in 1920; five years later it officially took over the territory.
Population increese?
Svalbard authorities are expecting a population increase of 10 to 20 percent for the next five to ten years in the archipelago.
The leader of Longyearbyen local municipality Kjell Mork told the Norwegian radio NRK that many more people will move to Svalbard for the next years.
Both UNIS, the university at Svalbard, and the tourism in the archipelago will expand. There are also plans to open a new coal mine to ensure further production to the Norwegian mining company SNSK - Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani.
Mining plays a major role in the community. SNSK runs two coal mines in Longyearbyen and Svea, and coal mining employs about half the residents.
Svalbard videos
Svalbard news from Google
- Twilight of the Ice Bear
- By BRUCE BARCOTT Not long ago I strolled through Longyearbyen, in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The place was bear crazy. ...
- 50 000 seed samples Svalbard Seed Vault
- As world leaders meet to tackle climate change in Copenhagen, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has received a major seed shipment, and by now more than 50 000 ...
- Con: Roosevelt would be shocked by the stampede to despoil the environment
- On a recent trip to Svalbard, Albert II said the same glacier has retreated more than 4 miles since 1906. The supporters of unrestricted offshore oil and ...
- Hot and Cold Mountain
- ... that detects infrared radiation, researchers recorded the surface temperature of mountains in the Swiss Alps, North Sweden, North Norway, and Svalbard. ...
New Weather Widget
Go to Svalbard for vacation!
Dress warmly...
These boots are made for walking on Svalbard
Perfect when you want to keep warm
Gloves made for snow
Warm hands is a must
Your head is the chimney of your body
Dont let the heat out!
Ski-ing is a must
Bring them!
Pictures of The seed bunker and Svalbard
The North Pole
Go to Norway and then to Svalbard
Huskies and snow
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand by
What do you have to say about this lens?
Just tell me - good or bad
Svalbard is the most exiting place on earth
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- enslavedbyfaeries enslavedbyfaeries Aug 7, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
- Congratulations! This lens was a winner on the Squid's Choice Awards lens.
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- kirie kirie Jul 22, 2008 @ 12:44 am
- FANTASTIC site. Thanks for tuning us in to the real lives at the top of the world. Travesty about the ice and polar bears, etc.
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- KimGiancaterino KimGiancaterino Jun 18, 2008 @ 8:27 pm
- Very interesting about the seed vault. Beautifully done! Welcome to All Things Travel.
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- GramaBarb GramaBarb Feb 29, 2008 @ 11:10 am
- The 'seed vault' made the news here in Canada and then when I saw your lens on the subject I was especially keen to read more about it. Thanks for sharing so much good information.
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