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.

The Swedish North is sometimes described as a resource periphery, while others choose to label it a pleasure periphery. Regardless of the terms used, the region is characterised by problems such as out-migration and demographic issues. This study investigates why there are such different perceptions of the same area, and whether there is any contradiction between extractive resource industries and the tourism industry. This is done by collecting visitor data from mining companies and conducting interviews with a variety of respondents in three mining communities in northern Sweden. Mining tourism is a phenomenon occurring in this region and can be regarded as a context in which the two main narratives meet while being a rather overlooked form of tourism. This is partly due to the low level of knowledge regarding its impacts, but also to a somewhat established idea of mining tourism as a “bad” form of tourism. Individuals’ perceptions of mining tourism as a phenomenon seem to be highly value-related and influenced by both location and occupation. As such, various opinions can be explained by social exchange theory, which proposes that attitudes will be influenced by individuals’ evaluation of outcomes for themselves and their community. In this paper, the emergence of mining tourism is understood as knowledge creation rooted in a regional path dependency on mining and tourism. Hence, mining tourism becomes a new regional tourism product that contributes to tourism, at least in terms of standard technical visits and, at best, a well-developed tourist attraction that appeals to visitors in quantities similar to iconic regional attractions such as the Icehotel. Then again, a tourism industry selling dreams of “untouched nature” argues that this tourism product produces “bad imaging”.

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.

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.

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.

This article takes a normative approach to explore what and how we might learn from existing indigenous governance arrangements in the Arctic and how they may contribute to the larger debates over Arctic governance and who decides. It begins with a brief exploration of the existing literature regarding co-management; particularly what some legal scholars have defined as post-Westphalian resource management as well as engaging ongoing discussions about co-management as it pertains to the Arctic. It then turns to the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) as a case study and possible starting point for governing newly emerging resource management issues in the Arctic. Specifically, this article will look at how the governance framework of the AEWC might be applicable for the current governance discussions regarding Arctic offshore oil and gas development. Lastly, this paper will offer preliminary reflections as to how a post-sovereign resource management approach could contribute to the broader theoretical debates concerning who owns the Arctic and who decides. Specifically it offers one possible way to envisage the future of a strengthened Arctic Council operating in a world where states are not the only actors participating in the governance of the Arctic.

Of 52 Antarctic sites and monuments of historic interest currently listed under Antarctic Treaty recommendations, 26 occur in the Ross Dependency, associated mostly with the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton. Many have recently been visited and a number of further sites, including several dating from Byrd expeditions, have been identified by New Zealand field parties. This article catalogues all Ross Dependency sites recorded to the end of 1987, and the current state of preservation of their artefacts, which are in the care of Antarctic Division, New Zealand DSIR.

The results are presented of the first winter ice navigation demonstration, using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from the Canadian satellite RADARSAT, onboard the nuclear icebreaker Sovetskiy Soyuz in the Kara Sea region in April–May 1998. While ERS SAR data only could cover part of the sea ice in this large area, the demonstration showed that RADARSAT ScanSAR images with 100 m pixel size could be used to map all relevant ice areas with a few 500 × 500 km scenes. SAR images transferred onboard icebreakers in near real time offer an excellent possibility to select optimal sailing routes in difficult ice conditions such as those that were encountered by this expedition. SAR images were also used for planning of operations prior to the expedition. This study compares sub-satellite sea-ice observations with RADARSAT SAR as well as Okean side-looking radar (SLR) signatures of the major ice types and features found in the Kara Sea during winter. Wide-swath SAR images will become available from several new satellites in the near future, such as Envisat, scheduled in 2001, and RADARSAT-2, in 2002. Satellite SAR images will therefore play an increasingly important role in operational ice monitoring both in the Northern Sea Route and in other ice areas.

Four case studies are presented that focus on a joint analysis of AVHRR images with other independently obtained data sets to identify examples of both optically thick and thin polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) over Antarctica. Optically thick PSCs are shown to be readily identifiable by the temperature signatures in AVHRR channel 5 images over the Antarctic Peninsula–Weddell Sea area. A time series of optically thick PSCs as seen in satellite images obtained at Palmer Station, Antarctica, is produced and discussed. Four events are identified and discussed where the areal coverage by cold temperatures indicative of PSCs expands to cover a significant portion of the area sampled. Plans for further research are outlined.

“It was during this month of June, that Drs Mcllroy and Macklin transformed our snuggery into an operating theatre and amputated the frost-bitten toes of our youngest member, Blackborrow, who had been suffering severely and was a chronic cripple. Wild and I acted as hospital orderlies and maintained the temperature of the ‘theatre’ at 50°, by stoking-up the bogie fire with penguin skins. In the dense smoke, by the feeble glimmer of blubber lamps, Macklin administered the chloroform and Mcllroy performed the operation which saved Blackborrow's leg if not indeed his life.”

The origins of the contemporary Newfoundland Harp and Hooded Seal fisheries can be traced back to the 16th and 17th centuries when ‘Biscainers’ (Spanish Basques) hunted whales, walrus and seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence and along the southern coast of Labrador (Prowse, 1895, p 43; Barkham, 1978). Throughout the next 400 years, as the seal fishery developed—both the landsmen and vessel operations—it became a major influence on the spread and character of settlement over a large area of Newfoundland and Labrador. By the middle of the 19th century, the large off-shore vessel operation had assumed the dominant role, and its contribution to the overall economic growth was second only to the cod fishery.

On 16 October 1901 Otto Nordenskjöld departed from Sweden for Antarctica. According to most accounts published during the twentieth century, the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901–03 planned and executed a substantial scientific programme, and made heroic efforts to overcome the adversity faced. This article investigates whether these descriptions are accurate and complete by examining both the long-established reports of Nordenskjöld's expedition and numerous rarely used primary sources, such as diaries and letters. In comparing these primary sources with narratives from various expedition members, competing versions of aspects of the expedition appear. This article particularly focuses on reports concerning sealing and whaling, and on the representation of the human frailties of the expedition members.

Upon the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 there were three coal mines in full production in Svalbard: the Norwegian Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani Aktieselskap at Longyearbyen, and two Russian Arktikugol mines, at Barentsburg and Grumantbyen. In addition the Russians had begun to develop Pyramiden, an old Swedish claim sold to the Russian company Russky-Grumant in 1926 and taken over by Arktikugol when that company was founded in 1931: Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani A/S was investigating and repairing the old Swedish mine at Sveagruva bought from Svenska Stenkols Aktiebolaget in 1934: and another Norwegian company, Norske Kulfelter A/S, was engaged in trial workings at Moskushamn on the east side of Adventfjorden. In all, the population of Svalbard numbered some 2500 miners, and a small number of wireless operators, meteorological observers, and trappers.W. Marlow was Sysselmann.

The spade, or snow shovel, is an item of equipment required by any community living in the snow, particularly in the accumulation area of an ice sheet, where any object placed on the snow is eventually buried beneath a continually rising surface. Roald Amundsen, Alfred Wegener, R. E. Byrd, A. R. Glen and others have described the hours and sometimes days spent by members of their expeditions moving snow by hand. The Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, 1949–52 was no exception. Some shovelling is unavoidable, being a consequence of natural accumulation, but much results from the burial of stores and equipment under snowdrifts caused either by the objects themselves or by their neighbours.

In recent years, radical changes such as rapid warming and ice retreat have become evident in the Arctic region, as recognised by the scientific community, as well as Arctic and non-Arctic states. Against this background, where the Arctic is accumulating economic importance and geopolitical significance for Arctic states and international stakeholders, the main regional actors have engaged in increased cooperation efforts, which is in contrast to the often invoked talk about an imminent conflict or ‘race for resources in the region’. At the same time, modernisation and expansion of military activities and capabilities have been pursued by several Arctic states. While these measures cannot be exclusively attributed to a militarisation of the Arctic and require further discussion, a misperception of such actions may result in the destabilisation of regional cooperation efforts. Furthermore, when considered in a broader context, possible threats to peaceful coexistence in the Arctic are more likely to arise from the present global situation. For example, the invasion of Ukraine has provoked a partial shift in regional cooperation and an uncontrolled spillover effect of the conflict between Russia and Western countries could disrupt regional stability. Drawing on the perspective of International Relations (IR) literature, and considering the absence of a regional institution devoted to security issues, this article highlights the importance of adopting confidence- and security-building measures among all relevant actors in order to create a forum for the discussion of ‘hard’ security topics, to prevent any destabilising effect on Arctic cooperation and security. Such measures may be promoted within existing fora, primarily the Arctic Council.

During the second Chinese National Arctic Research Expedition in summer 2003, sea ice cores and the underlying water were sampled from seven stations in the pack ice zone of the Canada Basin and were examined with a phase contrast microscope. A total of 102 and 78 algal species were identified for the ice cores and the underlying water, respectively, ranking in the middle range among the surveys of the Arctic Ocean up to the present despite seasonal variability. The Shannon-Wiener indices ranged from 1.40 to 4.88 with an average of 3.58 ± 0.68. Diatom species, especially pennate species, dominated in all the samples. A large number of algal spores were contained in every layer (abundance percentage > 1%). The microalgal abundances ranged from 1.4 × 104 to 8.73 × 105 cells L−1 and the biomass ranged from 0.56 to 89.49 μg L−1. They were correlated with the number of algal species (P < 0.05) but not with the diversity index (P > 0.05). Ice algal maxima were observed in various layers (bottom, interior and near the surface of the ice floes). The phytoplankton biomass in the ice-water interface was one order of magnitude lower than that in the bottom ice (P < 0.05). The species number and the diversity index in water samples, with much less biomass (P < 0.01), were comparative with the ice samples (P > 0.05). Spatial heterogeneity in both horizontal and vertical directions was the main characteristic of the algal community structure, which was demonstrated by the cluster analysis result and the distribution patterns.