The Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) has conducted long-term meteorological studies over the Arctic basin and adjacent Siberian seas. Standard measurements of precipitation and snow geophysical properties were made, consistent with methods recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). An extensive set of snow and precipitation data has been collected during the last 40 years and has been assembled into a digital database. These data are now kept at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and World Data Center A for Glaciology. The geophysical properties of snow and sea ice together affect the conductive, turbulent, and radiative energy exchanges between the ocean and atmosphere. The spatial and temporal variations in these exchanges have an impact on virtually all the physical processes operating across this interface. This paper describes some of the basic characteristics of these snow and precipitation data, including seasonal and interannual variability.

Increases in the number of people travelling to Antarctica has led to more frequent interactions between people and Antarctic wildlife, yet the effects of visitation on the animals has received limited scientific assessment. This study conducted experiments to measure the responses of incubating Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) to controlled human approaches to determine which approach distances and approach styles caused the least disturbance to the birds. Three minimum approach distances were tested: 30, 15, and 5 m. Approaching penguins to 30 m had no measurable effect on either their behaviour or heart rate, while approaching as close as 15 m significantly elevated their heart rates above resting, undisturbed levels even though there was no behavioural indication of this response. Approaching penguins to 5 m significantly interrupted the penguins' incubation behaviour, with the potential to cause egg-cooling. Approaches to 5 m elevated heart rates above those measured when birds were undisturbed, approached to either 15 or 30 m, or exposed to ‘natural’ disturbances (that is, other penguins or south polar skuas, Catheracta maccormicki). The study also identified certain Adelie penguin behaviours that may be indicative of disturbance in response to human visitation. People visiting breeding penguins could learn to identify these behaviours, so they can monitor and modify any effects of their visit.

An ongoing programme of tourist survey research, conducted since the 1990/91 summer season, is summarised. While focusing initially on the nature reserves of the New Zealand sub-Antarctic islands, the programme was subsequently extended to encompass related tourist visits to Macquarie Island (Australia) and the Ross Sea region of Antarctica. In accordance with expressed management information needs, the research objectives and the methodology, based on questionnaires distributed by national representatives aboard tour vessels, have evolved from general descriptive visitor surveys to more site-specific visitor assessments. Research findings emphasised that these tourists constitute a distinctive activity group. The impact issues they reported were mainly related to trampling and some site-specific wildlife disturbance, with other impact issues not being prominent. No notable dissatisfactions were apparent or visit improvements demanded, and strong support was indicated for most of the management restrictions applied to onshore visits. Methodological lessons from conducting this survey programme are briefly summarised, and suggestions for future research directions are made, with more emphasis on post-voyage evaluation surveys and assessments of physical impacts related to tourist visits.

The speed with which tracks form as a result of trampling on exposed ground surfaces in Antarctica was investigated in the McMurdo Sound and Dry Valleys regions, by a simple treading experiment. Distinct tracks formed with fewer than 20 foot passes — as measured by stone cover, surface soil exposure, and track width — and they continued to develop with increasing traffic levels. Track development was rapid and most obvious on sandy gravel soils with a pebbly desert pavement, but slower and less distinct on soils with an extensive cover of surface boulders.

The persistence of human impact from ground disturbances, which occurred up to 30 years previously, when pits were dug during field science investigations, was assessed using a range of previously defined criteria. Recently disturbed sites, where some action had been taken to restore the site immediately after disturbance, showed the least overall impact. Impacts persisted longer at sites where no restoration had been undertaken, but the remaining impact varied with factors such as exposure to wind and the age of the land surface. These results demonstrate the fragility of Antarctic soil surfaces and the terrestrial environment, as well as the long time-scales for recovery of Antarctic ground-surface disturbances.

Exploratory activities of Norwegians, particularly those directed by Lars Christensen, off eastern Antarctica are discussed briefly in relation to contemporary Antarctic investigations and politics. The interests of Norway there and Christensen's role in establishing an understanding of the local coastline are indicated. Particular attention is paid to the landing made by Klarius Mikkelsen in the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica, on 20 February 1935. Note is taken of the site's recent re-discovery, and the symbolic role of the landing in the national aspirations of Norway, Britain, and Australia is discussed. Mikkelsen operated under commercial and scientific interests promoted by Christensen, and his landing was, at least in published material, seen as an extension of them. However, there is a suggestion that not only had a new Norwegian land been discovered, and a landing made, but that a claim to it was at least considered. Such a claim was not appropriate given previous agreements between Norway and Britain. The site's location and environs are discussed, as are subsequent flights over it and visits made there by Australian expeditioners. The ambiguity associated with claims that Caroline Mikkelsen was the first woman to land on the Antarctic mainland is also examined. Since Mikkelsen's site was on an island within the Tryne Group, to the north of Davis station, if a mainland location is required to establish such an event, then an alternative (Scullin Monolith) is proposed; however, on this occasion four women were involved, but who was first ashore remains uncertain.

A single chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarctica), which had moulted at the South Shetland Islands, was subsequently tracked during 120 days at sea in the austral winter using a global location system (geolocation) based on light intensity. The bird moved east along the Scotia Ridge to a point approximately 300 km west of the South Sandwich Islands and approximately 1600 km away from the colony in which it had moulted. It spent more than 60% of its time in open water north of the edge of the pack ice.

Polar tourism is a quickly growing, little-studied industry. Understanding tourism's current effects and forecasting future ones is increasingly important. This paper investigates the applicability and usefulness of predictive tourism models for polar environments, by focusing upon Arctic Ship Tourism (AST). R.W. Butler's evolutionary tourism model is presented, with emphasis upon Stanley Plog's version. The strong fit of AST within the framework of these models is established, with emphasis on likely future developments. Usefulness of models in the polar context is limited by several factors, including their origins, their lack of a price/demand element, their deterministic cycle, and vagueness. Still, identifying likely future trends, such as growth levels, passenger characteristics, regulatory mechanisms, and environmental impacts, can result in practical advice for polar resource managers and tour operators.

In the autumn of 1852, convinced that a successful search for her husband's missing expedition via Bering Strait could only be guaranteed by using a steam vessel, Jane, Lady Franklin, decided to dispatch such a vessel herself (this was the third such expedition she mounted). Her choice of vessel fell on the screw schooner Isabel, which Captain E.A. Inglefield had just brought back from his search of Smith Sound and Jones Sound. The captain she selected was William Kennedy, who, with Enseigne-de-vaisseau Joseph-René Bellot as second-in-command, had just returned from an expedition to the eastern Arctic in Prince Albert. After a few brief months of hectic preparations, in which Lady Franklin and her niece Sophia Cracroft played an unusually active role, Isabel sailed from the Thames on 1 April 1853, bound for Bering Strait via the Strait of Magellan. Despite warnings not to do so (largely due to the danger of losing his crew to the lure of the Californian and Australian gold rushes), Kennedy put into Valparaiso on 26 August 1853. Almost all his officers and crew jumped ship. After more than two years of frustration, during which he generated some revenue by several coastal voyages off Chile, at Lady Franklin's request Kennedy brought Isabel back to England in early December 1855. Isabel was found to have dry rot and was sold. Kennedy fell out with Lady Franklin and did not participate in any further Arctic searches.

Polar research teams often spend extended periods of time away from base stations, living and working in remote field camps of portable tents. This article reports results of a survey study conducted in 1996 of polar researchers from the United States. The study was about the design and use of portable field tents being deployed in polar areas with regard to safety, health, and well-being from the user's perspective. Preliminary analysis indicates that there existed a number of areas in design and use of the shelters that contributed to concerns of safety, health, and well-being among a considerable number of tent users. The article concludes with suggestions for designing and manufacturing portable field tents.

The regulation of tourism in polar areas is increasingly of concern to scientists, policy makers, tourists, and tourist operators who wish to control negative impacts and promote positive ones. Given the growing emphasis on finding and using appropriate ways to control visitors to the polar regions, it is important to examine issues related to the effectiveness of individual measures of regulation and the broader strategies that are in effect in these places. This paper examines the effectiveness of visitor-regulation strategies by outlining a two-step approach to evaluation. The initial step should involve determining the nature and attributes of the measures that make up the strategy. Commonalities, differences, constraints, and complementarity in these measures must be assessed. Particular attributes outlined in the paper, such as scale of jurisdiction and degree of restrictiveness, can be examined to assess the compatibility and consistency of the measures, which have implications for overall strategy effectiveness. While it may be appropriate to evaluate individual measures further using a goal-achievement approach, the paper recommends evaluating strategies through a conceptual approach based on criteria related to the characteristics of an effective strategy. Four are described in the paper: comprehensiveness, enforceability, outcomes, and appropriateness.

Increasing attention has been given to the protection of the polar marine environment throughout the 1990s. In the case of the Antarctic Treaty System, in addition to a number of recommendations and measures adopted at Antarctic Treaty Meetings, the 1991 Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty contains a number of measures that will enhance marine environmental protection in the Southern Ocean. In the case of the Arctic, the 1991 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy identified marine pollution as being one of the major environmental issues in the Arctic, and a number of initiatives have since been developed to encourage the Arctic states to deal with the problem collectively and individually. However, while the collective responses of the polar states have been helpful in giving prominence to the importance of marine environmental protection in polar waters, it is the coastal states of the polar regions that need to take responsibility to give effect to these initiatives. Australia and Canada are two of the most prominent polar states in Antarctica and the Arctic, respectively. Both have large maritime claims and have also developed a range of domestic legal and policy responses to enhance marine environmental protection in the polar regions. A review is undertaken of the respective global and regional marine environmental protection regimes that apply in the polar regions, followed by a comparative analysis of the Australian and Canadian initiatives.

In 1903 Jack London (1876–1916) wrote The call of the wild. This deceptively complex adventure novel concealed the author's vision and critique of a ‘Southland’ society ensnared in a system of capitalism. To reveal the limits of capitalist constructions of knowledge and power, London took his readers from the civilised Southland of California to the frozen uncivilised ‘Northland’ of the Klondike. In this primitive Northland setting, the legacy of a Southland society that valued an individual according to economic mastery was to impede a successful response to London's exacting call of the wild. To investigate London's premise, this paper draws upon the insights of the philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault argued that knowledge and power can be analysed in terms of region, domain, territory, and field, and his work described how institutions ‘inscribe themselves both on a material soil and within forms of discourse.’ He reasoned that ‘one is able to capture the process by which knowledge functions as a form of power and disseminates the effects of power’ through the critical apparatus of the ‘heterotopia.’ Unlike the idealised space of the Utopia, the heterotopia is a ‘real’ social and cultural space that represents, contests, or inverts other sites found within a culture. Foucault recognised the ‘ship’ as the heterotopia par excellence: ‘a floating piece of space…that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself.’ This paper argues that in London's novel the central heterotopia is the Northland sled.

This article gives an overview of tourism on Svalbard. Tourism to this archipelago, which is under the jurisdiction of Norway, started more than 100 years ago. As a modern industry, however, the end of 1980s can be seen as the starting period. Since 1990, tourism development has been given priority by the Norwegian government, and there has been a significant increase both in commercial activities and in the number of tourists. Early and recent tourism developments are presented. In 1996 tourism accounted for almost 200 jobs, 48,000 commercial overnights, around 12,000 airborne tourists, and between 15,000 and 20,000 cruise-ship passengers. The article then describes the most frequent types of tourists, and discusses tourism's impact on the environment. So far, tourism has not produced many documented problems on biota and heritage. Tourism regulation on Svalbard is also described, showing a multitude of means and arrangements, including a proactive self-regulation by the tourism industry. The future challenges, particularly the questions connected to the limits of volume, are discussed. There is a broad understanding of the need of an active policy from the authorities to cope with these questions. The article concludes by referring to the increased emphasis on environmental questions in the Norwegian politics concerning Svalbard, which probably also indicates a willingness to intervene with tourism development.

1997 was an important year for Russia's Northern Sea Route (NSR) in terms of foreign interest. The first full transits of the NSR by western merchant ships were made. The International Northern Sea Route Programme (INSROP) continued into phase 2 of its research projects, and planning proceeded for a European Union-sponsored demonstration voyage to the Ob' River. The nuclear icebreaker Arktika returned to Arctic operations, while two icebreakers were removed from polar service. Information about the NSR became more widely available with the distribution of an English translation of a navigation guide. Winter operations continued in the Kara Sea, albeit reduced, and a limited number of summer voyages to Russian Arctic ports originated from the Pacific rim. RADARS AT synthetic aperture radar images of sea ice along the NSR were used for the first time during several demonstration voyages.

There is strong contemporary interest in the application of traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) of physical environments and land-use patterns in northern Canada. This interest relates to land claims, land-use planning, cultural preservation, resource management, and environmental monitoring. The application of TEK to land and resource management is critically examined and a typology relating scale, user group, and the transformation of knowledge is developed. Of the many challenges facing the incorporation of TEK in resource-management initiatives, perhaps the greatest is the recognition of the appropriateness of scale. The conclusions reached in this paper reaffirm the notion that scale and context are key components in maintaining the validity and integrity of TEK. The primary role of TEK appears to be with providing the most valid and intelligible interpretations of local geographies and prescribing locally appropriate resource-management strategies.

Sir Ernest Shackleton bought the Norwegian sealer Foca 7 in 1921 for his third Antarctic expedition and renamed it Quest. He died aboard the ship in South Georgia in January 1922, but Frank Wild took over the leadership and completed the expedition after the delayed start. The vessel returned to Norwegian ownership in 1923 but kept the name Quest. In the 1920s and 1930s, in-between sealing voyages, she was chartered out for various scientific or hunting expeditions, mostly to S valbard or the east coast of Greenland, during which many well-known explorers trod her decks, including Gunnar Isachsen, Gino Watkins, Augustine Courtauld, John Rymill, Count Eigil Knuth, Lawrence Wager, H.W. Ahlmann, Gaston Micard, Paul-Emile Victor, and John Giaever. Vital assistance was given in rescuing the survivors of the Italian airship Italia in 1928, of the Danish ship Teddy in 1924, and of several sealers at different times. Many sailors owed their lives to this little ship, which was owned by the Schjelderup family and for most years captained by Ludolf Schjelderup, who gained international fame as an expert ice pilot. On one occasion, 1936–37, the vessel overwintered at Loch Fyne in northeast Greenland. In April 1940, when the Germans invaded Norway, Quest was sealing off Newfoundland. Allied naval forces took possession of her and she was used in various capacities in Canada, Bermuda, and UK coastal waters for the rest of the war. After the war, she once again returned to the sealing business under Norwegian ownership until finally coming to grief in the ice just north of Newfoundland and sinking on 5 May 1962.

Azorella Peninsula on Heard Island in the sub-Antarctic comprises basaltic scoria that is overlain by basalt flows. Typical tube-fed pahoehoe flows characteristic of some Hawaiian-type volcanoes occur. The volcanic landforms of the peninsula include highly degraded volcano remnants and undissected scoria cones, pahoehoe flows, lava rises, tumuli, open vertical volcanic conduits, and lava tubes. Features produced by lava inflation are widespread but are generally of low topographic relief. Many detailed lava-flow features are preserved in dramatically fresh condition within the protected environment of lava tubes. They highlight the efficacy of the lava tubes in maintaining high temperatures and low viscosity of the flowing lava. The lava tubes on Heard Island are the only features of their kind hitherto recorded from Antarctic and sub-Antarctic latitudes.

The thirteenth UN session on the ‘Question of Antarctica,’ held at the close of 1996, saw the reaffirmation of the consensus approach restored in 1994. One brief session of the First Committee, followed by the General Assembly's adoption of resolution A51/56 without a vote, signified the continued acceptance by UN members, including Antarctic Treaty Parties (ATPs), of the benefits of an agreed approach towards the ‘Question of Antarctica.’ Resolution A51/56, acknowledging the broader international community's interest in the continent, marked the ATPs' willingness to allow a limited UN role in Antarctica. UN members, identifying the merits of further research on environmental and scientific questions, pressed the case for a comprehensive report on the state of the Antarctic environment, as discussed at recent Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings. The ‘Question of Antarctica,’ having moved from annual to biennial UN discussions in 1994, has now been put on a three-year cycle; thus, it will not be placed on the UN agenda again until the close of 1999.

This paper describes a preliminary investigation of the extent to which the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), derived from satellite optical imagery, can indicate the extent of damage to upland tundra (fruticose lichen and dwarf shrub) vegetation. We combine the results of a previously reported classification of Landsat multispectral scanner imagery from Kol'skiy Poluostrov, Russia, with field measurements of the biomass and spectral reflectance of tundra vegetation. The results show that the NDVI is not strongly influenced by biomass, but that differences in species composition and ground cover are significant. Other workers have concluded that vegetation indices are not useful for boreal forests. It is therefore suggested that the use of the NDVI by itself as an indicator of the state of disturbed vegetation in Arctic regions is not recommended.