Another species named after Professor Coulson.Extended application deadline for autumn courses.Melt down of the Arctic Ocean: Dead end or new opportunities?.27 when 750 potato seeds samples, as well as other wild potato relatives, were deposited by representatives of indigenous Andean communities from Peru, scientists from Costa Rica, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and Norwegian officials.ĭownload PDF (18.9MB) by clicking cover image The vault now contains about 860,000 seed varieties from crops found in every country of the world. He said the plan is to move the gene bank to sites in Morocco and Lebanon, and then return the seeds from the Svalbard vault to those sites.Ībout 110,000 duplicate seed samples out of 750,000 samples stored in Syria, including species such as chick peas and fava beans, are in the Svalbard vault after deposits on the first and fourth anniversary of the facility, which opened in February of 2008. “We don’t think that seed collection has been lost…but that could come any day now.”Įven if the seeds remain safe, getting them from the Syrian facility to farmers safely would also be difficult with the current fighting, Fowler said. “It’s on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, and Aleppo is in deep trouble right now, with a huge amount of fighting going on. “(This center) had one of the biggest and best collections of wheat, barley, chickpeas, and lentils,” said Cary Fowler, an official with the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the vault’s manager, in an interview with ABC News Australia. The country’s crops and a major gene research facility have been targeted by rebels, and the hope is to return the seeds to the facility after it is relocated. The first “withdrawal” from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will likely be made by Syria, which has been engaged in a civil war since 2011. We are doing this for the world.”Īdded Åsmund Asdal at the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, which runs the vault: “This is supposed to last for eternity.In one small part of the world, doomsday has arrived. It is a big responsibility and we take it very seriously. “The question is whether this is just happening now, or will it escalate?” asked Aschim. “We have to find solutions. But with climate change seemingly only accelerating, it isn't yet known whether more might need to be done. In addition, they have installed pumps inside the vault itself, which would protect the seeds in the event of a more severe flood. Managers of the vault are now taking precautions to waterproof the entrance tunnel and create better drainage around the entrance. But as the world experiences increasingly extreme temperature changes-with areas near the poles more dramatically affected-that permafrost is no longer as reliable as it was just 10 years ago. “It was supposed to without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day,” Hege Njaa Aschim, a member of the Norwegian Government, told The Guardian. The vault is buried into a hillside on Spitsbergen Island, as the permafrost in the ground at this location helps to reduce the mechanical cooling needed to keep the seeds at a safe -18 degrees celsius. However, this year the security of Svalbard as a location for the doomsday vault has been called into question. The importance of this logic was demonstrated in 2015, when Syria made the first ever withdrawal from the bank to replace parts of their own archive which were lost as a result of the Syrian civil war. While many countries maintain their own seed vaults, the Svalbard vault was intended as a failsafe, in a place that is rarely affected by world events. The vault was opened in 2008 as part of a worldwide initiative to preserve global biodiversity-in particular, to preserve the seeds of important food crops worldwide to serve as a backup in case of any disaster which might wipe out existing crops. However, the incident has raised questions about whether the building will be able to fulfill its purpose in the long term. Fortunately, the vault itself was not breached, meaning no harm came to the building's precious contents. The building's entrance tunnel was flooded and then froze to create conditions "like a glacier" for those trying to enter. Sustainability and Performance in ArchitectureĮarlier this year, the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard was flooded after record high temperatures over the winter caused some of the permafrost surrounding the vault to melt, reports The Guardian. The Future of Architectural Visualization
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