![]() ![]() collection with 464,000 different samples. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations lists 1400 seed banks worldwide, ranging in size from a single seed to a U.S. So, anyone going up there to do something untoward to the seed vault will have to take that into consideration." "Polar bears are ubiquitous in this part of Svalbard. He jokes that wildlife will help out with security. The vault, situated 130 meters above sea level, is safely above the seven-meter rise in sea level predicted should the Greenland ice sheet melt and even the 61-meter rise that could accompany the unlikely meltdown of Antarctica.įowler says the remote vault will have workers on site, but will also be electronically monitored. "If the refrigeration units fail, it will take months, maybe years for the temperature to rise even to minus 6 degrees level, which is just fine for most seeds."ĭesigners have also accounted for potential effects of global warming. Fowler says the site was chosen in part because it is covered by permafrost, a perpetually frozen layer of earth. The chambers can accommodate 3 million seed samples, which must be carefully frozen to remain viable for long periods of time. There will be shelves and boxes and in each box about 400 or 500 samples of seeds." ![]() And it's really going to look quite a lot like a bank vault. "There will be about a 120 meter long corridor or tunnel leading through solid rock back to the vaults themselves. He says fail-safe measures are built into the seed bank design. sponsored organization that has promoted the project and will help run the arctic vault. ![]() The Svalbard International Seed Vault is named for the Norwegian islands where the mountain is located, nearly 1,000 kilometers north of mainland Norway.Ĭary Fowler heads the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a U.N. The so-called doomsday vault will be the ultimate safeguard for the world's agricultural heritage. Early next month, construction crews will begin carving out a mountain near the North Pole to make way for a unique underground seed storage facility. ![]()
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