The existence of an icy continent around the South Pole is known to everybody today. But it is common to ascribe this kind of modern knowledge to navigators sailing in southern polar waters in the 19th century. A good illustration of this is the Russian Antarctic expedition (1819–1821) under the conduct of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (Russian version Faddej Faddeevich Bellinsgauzen), the reception of which in Russian society of the 19th and 20th centuries is analysed in this article. During the cold war, beginning at the end of the 1940s, the question of who discovered Antarctica turned from being a scientific problem into a subject of political struggle between the United States of America, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. This article provides an analysis of the Russian discovery in the area, while at the same time, attempting to give an answer to the main question of the history of Antarctic exploration which is: is it well-justified to establish the first discoverer of Antarctica? All the dates in the text are according to the Gregorian calendar.

Wildlife plays a significant role in the development of tourism in Nunavut. A certain amount of tourism in the Canadian Arctic depends on the wealth and uniqueness of the wildlife in the polar region. Two different forms of tourism based on Arctic wildlife can be distinguished: wildlife viewing and sport hunting. Both of these forms of tourism question the link between the different uses of the resource and the perceptions of wildlife. Based on an analysis of multiple information sources (literature review, newspaper analysis and semi-structured interviews), this article examines the emergence of wildlife as a tourism resource for Inuit communities and questions the issues linked to the emergence of this resource use. Using the example of polar bears, the article focuses on tourism dynamics. The article concludes that the polar bear sport hunting resource has evolved along with the changing environment. This tourism resource could be reinvented, with investments targeting other forms of tourism, such as wildlife viewing, which seems to better fit Westerners’ expectations, but is not necessarily a more environmentally friendly type of tourism.

The distribution of mean annual windspeeds at the stations on the coast, and the near coastal plateau, of Antarctica presents a problem of interpretation which apart from its intrinsic interest, is of practical importance in the use of observations for surface synoptic analysis and forecasting. Further, the mean windspeed pattern may throw light on both the gross features of high-latitude Southern Hemisphere circulation and on local peculiarities of topography adjacent to the station.

The results of a monitoring study of three Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) rookeries at Cape Bird (77° 13'S, 166°28'E), Antarctica, are presented. Occupied nests were counted immediately after egg laying in most years between 1965 and 1970, and annually from 1974 to 1987. The population has not shown the degree of stability that might be expected of a long-lived species with a low reproductive rate, twice deviating significantly from a mean value of about 37,500 pairs. In the censused rookeries numbers dropped by about 16% in 1967 and a further 30% in 1968. The 1968 decline was attributed to extensive fast ice, but numbers were unaffected in two subsequent years with similar ice conditions. After eight years of relative stability around the pre-1967 level, a period of rapid growth began in 1982 and 1983. The total of 54,000 pairs in 1987, the last year for which numbers are available, was the highest ever counted at Cape Bird. These results stress the need for caution when using bird populations to detect man-induced changes in the marine environment.

Frederick Gustavus Schwatka was one of America's most important Arctic explorers. While honoured in his time, he is only a footnote in the search for Sir John Franklin. He commanded, in 1878–1880, an expedition of the American Geographical Society of New York which had the aim of retrieving records from King William Island. Although none were found, he did discover a number of expedition relics and remains. His extensive sledge journey during this expedition was one of the longest recorded by a European-North American expedition, over 5232 km (3,251 statute miles). Moreover it was conducted under some of the coldest conditions ever endured in polar exploration. Schwatka's party included three Europeans, William H. Gilder, a journalist from The New York Herald, Henry Klutschak, a naturalist, and Frank E. Melms, an experienced seaman, and ‘Eskimo Joe’ Ebierbing, an Inuit who had served on previous expeditions in search of Franklin. ‘Schwatka's search’, as it was known, concluded efforts to discover the fate of the Franklin expedition in the nineteenth century. It laid the groundwork for the important expeditions in the twentieth century that revealed new information concerning the fate of Franklin's men. Schwatka's expedition was without death or deprivation. Much of his success was based on a clearly defined plan and on adopting Inuit practices including living off the land, lessons he learned from his experiences with American Indians as part of his military assignments. Born in Illinois, he was educated at West Point, the United States Military Academy, acquitted himself well in the Indian Wars and then went on to qualify for the bar and secured a medical degree during his military service. He died an early and unfortunate death at the age of 43. The research reported in this article provides an understanding of the factors that shaped Schwatka and the skills that he used in this expedition.

The study of glaciers may be divided into two branches: (1) the study of the physical properties of glacier ice, firn, and snow; (2) the investigation of the glacier's regime and its meteorological causes. The first branch comprises the thermal and crystallographic conditions of the ice, firn and snow of glaciers, and their transitional forms; also the plasticity, movement, erosion, etc. of glaciers. The second branch is concerned with quantitative determinations of accumulation, ablation and the total regime of glaciers, and with the meteorological causes affecting them. This second branch also includes the reactions of different types of glaciers to changes in their regime.

Richard E. Byrd's record of the 9 May 1926 flight on which he claimed to have reached the North Pole was unsealed several years ago by the archives of Ohio State University. A close examination of Byrd's writings, calculations, and erasures in this diary shows clearly that, although he and Floyd Bennett achieved a farthest-north-seen and made a heroic attempt to attain the Pole, they never reached that destination. Despite efforts by some organisations and individuals to pretend that there is still a serious controversy, Byrd's own diary data variously confirm the belief long held by most polar experts: that the expedition on the dirigible Norge—led by Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth, and piloted by Umberto Nobile — was the first to attain the Pole, on 12 May 1926.

Supporting Antarctic scientific investigation is the job of the national Antarctic programmes, the government entities charged with delivering their countries’ Antarctic research strategies. This requires sustained investment in people, innovative technologies, Antarctic infrastructures, and vessels with icebreaking capabilities. The recent endorsement of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Polar Code (2015) means that countries must address challenges related to an ageing icebreaking vessel fleet. Many countries have recently invested in and begun, or completed, builds on new icebreaking Polar research vessels. These vessels incorporate innovative technologies to increase fuel efficiency, to reduce noise output, and to address ways to protect the Antarctic environment in their design. This paper is a result of a Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (COMNAP) project on new vessel builds which began in 2018. It considers the recent vessel builds of Australia’s RSV Nuyina, China’s MV Xue Long 2, France’s L’Astrolabe, Norway’s RV Kronprins Haakon, Peru’s BAP Carrasco, and the United Kingdom’s RRS Sir David Attenborough. The paper provides examples of purposeful consideration of science support requirements and environmental sustainability in vessel designs and operations.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the British Antarctic Survey have built a transportable laboratory facility, named the Dirck Gerritsz Laboratory, to accommodate new scientific research on and from the western Antarctic Peninsula. The design provides a flexible, modular, plug-and-play, innovative and sustainable laboratory setup. The docking station houses four 20-foot ISO standard high-cube containers, each of which contains a different laboratory. Special technological features were used to minimise the environmental impact. The four laboratory containers are flexible and can be installed and used as required, and renewed or removed when necessary. The container laboratories have provided, since opening in 2013, enhanced facilities for global climate change research through studying the community composition of phytoplankton; the ecological impact of virus-induced mortality in different phytoplankton groups; dimethylsulphide and brominated compound fluxes; and CO2 concentrations and trace elements in sea water. Transportable research laboratory facilities provide an effective and efficient approach for undertaking scientific research in challenging environments and might be the start of a new way of undertaking research, including exchanging laboratory modules between research stations in Antarctica.

Development during approximately 200 years of agricultural activity in Alaska has been varied and generally inadequate. Four stages are here identified. During the period from Russian and early American colonization to the late 1880s production was largely for personal consumption. From 1898 to World War II federal intervention stimulated local commercial agriculture, and from the late 1940s to the late 1960s commercial production expanded. Since then a state- supported strategy to develop an export-based agriculture has been tried, but implementation has not been completed. Alaska remains a frontier which has yet to find a workable manner in which to implement a strategy for its agriculture.

Differing conceptions of the relationship between humans and the environment shape policies regarding Arctic development and protection. From the fifteenth century to the early twentieth century, conquest and colonization perspectives prevailed. While vestiges of these views still color Arctic policy, the dominant approach of governments today is balanced development. On the horizon, alternative conceptions are gradually changing both policy decisions and decision-making processes in the Arctic. These include sustainable and regenerative development, rational ecology, ecofeminism, and indigenous perspectives.

A bowhead whale mother and calf pair was recorded off the northeast Greenland coast in July 2009. This is apparently the first calf observed in the Spitsbergen stock of the bowhead whale since 1981.

Much of the information given in the following description of techniques of glacier tunnelling is fundamental engineering knowledge and is included specifically for the benefit of glaciologists. Numerical results and their interpretation are omitted; a preliminary report concerning them has been published (McCall, 1952).

Eduard Dallmann, of Blumenthal on the lower Weser, went to sea at the age of 15 in 1845. He took command of his first ship, the whaling vessel Planet, in 1859 on a whaling voyage to the sperm whaling grounds in the Pacific and to the Sea of Okhotsk. Over the period 1864–66 he commanded the Hawaiian vessel W.C. Talbot on trading voyages to the Alaskan and Chukotka shores of the Bering and Chukchi seas. On 17 August 1866 he sighted and landed on Ostrov Vrangelya (Wrangel Island), a year prior to its sighting by Thomas Long, credited by many with the first sighting. For the following three years he commanded the whaling ship Count Bismarck on a whaling cruise to the tropics, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Bering and Chukchi seas. In 1873–74 he made the first Antarctic whaling voyage aboard Groenland, and discovered and charted the west coasts of Anvers, Brabant, and Liège islands, as well as many smaller islands and straits including Bismarck Strait. He spent the 1875 whaling season as expert consultant, still aboard Groenland, on the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay whaling grounds. Then, to complete his career in polar waters, from 1877 to 1883 he made annual attempts to haul freight to the mouth of the Yenisey River, to be exchanged for grain cargoes brought down that river by barge. Of the seven attempts, only four were successful, the rest being foiled by ice conditions in the Kara Sea, and on the basis of this record, Baron von Knoop, the Russian entrepreneur who was financing the operation, decided to cut his losses. This ended Dallmann's career in polar waters.

Publication of the Composite gazetteer of Antarctica by the SCAR Working Group on Geodesy and Geographic Information is a major milestone in the evolution of Antarctic toponymy. It has taken six years to produce, and contains 21,552 names representing 16,563 geographic features, sourced from 20 national Antarctic gazetteers and one international agency. The Gazetteer has been designed to avoid any value judgement regarding precedence or form of the various place-names. The contents of the two volumes are described, and the results of an analysis of the names data are presented. It is noted that 476 geographic features have two or more completely different names, whereas 3377 features have multiple names due to translation or transliteration. The limited progress towards development of toponymic guidelines for the Antarctic is described, along with plans for further development of the Gazetteer. An immediate benefit of the publication is that national Antarctic geographic names authorities will now be able to avoid approving new names for geographic features that are already named.

Global change poses challenges for remote Arctic Russian indigenous communities in the Republic of Sakha. On the basis of interviews from the village of Khara Tumul (Oymyakonskiy ulus) and city of Yakutsk, we illustrate the manners in which sharing networks may be used to enhance resilience in remote conditions as these communities confront climate change, industrial development and limited support from authorities. We identified the main carriers (givers and recipients), location, relationships and mediators, objects, and social and cultural meanings of sharing practices both in daily life and in the case of extreme events. The circulation of goods, money, information and people between cities and remote communities ultimately combines traditional values and modern technologies.

The lands discovered in the Antarctic regions, by Captain Smith, of Blythe, in the brig Williams, have been the subject of various papers in the different periodical works which pay attention to such subjects. The Literary Gazette furnished the first notice of this discovery, and, not long after, one of the Edinburgh Magazines supplied some farther particulars, which we copied into our pages. There has not yet, however, appeared any full and regular history of the new land, of which maps and charts are now selling in all the principal shops in London.

The responses of Betula pubescens Ehr. (European white birch), B. pendula Roth (silver birch) and two provenances of Pinus sylvestris L. (Scots pine) to solar ultraviolet (UV < 400 nm) radiation were investigated in a UV-exclusion field experiment during the 1997–99 growing seasons in Finnish Lapland (68°N). The seedlings were grown from seed under UV-B exclusion (a clear polyester filter) and UV-B/UV-A exclusion (a clear acrylic plate) as compared to control treatment (a polyethene filter) and ambient plants (no plastic filter). The mean daily maximum solar biologically effective UV-B irradiance (UV-BE) was 88 mW m-2, 68 mW m-2, and 91 mW m-2 for 1997, 1998, and 1999. A number of growth and biomass variables, PSII (Photosystem II) efficiency, and total concentration of nitrogen were recorded during and/or at the end of the experiment. Exposure (191 d) to solar UV radiation over three growing seasons did not cause many statistically significant UV effects in the growth or biomass of the seedlings. The only significant impacts of UV exclusion were found in P. sylvestris provenance Enontekiö. During the first growing season, the UVB/ UV-A exclusion treatment significantly accelerated the height increment (18–20%) off. sylvestris, and in the same seedlings, the UV-B exclusion treatment resulted in significantly increased dry weight of one-year-old needles (45–57%) after the second growing season. These UV impacts could not be seen at the end of the experiment or in any other species. The low concentration of N in current foliage was related to increased dry weight, but not to solar UV radiation (control vs UV exclusion). The present study indicated that solar UV radiation had limited, but sometimes transient, impacts on the growth of tree seedlings in the sub-Arctic. Longer-term field studies are needed, however, in order to detect the cumulative characteristics of the UV responses.