Today, Tuesday, February 26, 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is scheduled to start operating on the remote island of Spitsbergen, Norway in the Svalbard Archipelago.  The location is only about 1000km (625 miles) from the North Pole.  The Global Seed Vault will house duplicates of seeds from known species of plants from all over the world in case a natural or other disaster destroys the original species. [Editor] Read on for more details. Photo by Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault [/Editor]

The vault consists of three chambers, each able to contain up to 1.5 million seed samples. The three chambers themselves are accessed through a 100m (328-ft) long tunnel with an entrance portal at the outside.  According to the designers, the tunnel will be able to withstand nuclear and missile attacks as well as earthquakes, which was successfully demonstrated last week during a 6.2-magnitude earthquake on the island.  Additional protection is provided by motion sensors and polar bears roaming the area.

Construction began in summer of 2006 to build the vault which is completely funded by the government of Norway.  Its site was carefully selected within the permafrost approximately 130m (425-ft) above sea level within a sandstone/limestone mountainside. This elevation will ensure its safety against flooding even if all the icecaps in the Arctic and Antarctica melt due to climate change. The entire facility has been constructed underground by drilling and blasting techniques. [Editor] (Drawing by Global Crop Diversity Trust) [/Editor]

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rockman said:

Thanks Wolfgang, nice post. Does this remind anyone else of the X-Files Movie? Especially that first picture! And the whole concept of "hey, if somewhere in the world gets razed to the ground by a nuke or some other catastrophe at least we can re-seed."

Tuesday February 26, 2008 01:56PM

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