Concentration levels of various organochlorine pesticides and their derivatives — namely, hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCH) and the DDT compounds pp'-DDT, op'-DDT, pp'-DDE, op'-DDE, pp'-DDD, and op'-DDD — were determined in the sediments from eight different lakes of the Schirmacher Oasis, near Dakshin Gangotri, the Indian station (70° 45'S, 11° 44'E) during the Sixth Indian scientific expedition to Antarctica (December 1986 to February 1987). Concentration levels of HCHs (α, β, γ)and t-DDT (pp'-DDT + op'-DDT + pp'-DDE + op'-DDE + pp'-DDD + op'-DDD) in sediments of these lakes were found to be in the ranges of 37.7–155 pg/gand 512.9–1131 pg/g, respectively. Among the isomers of HCH, gamma-HCH was most prominent, followed by alpha-HCH, whereas in the case of metabolites of DDT and its isomers, pp'-DDT was found to be dominant over others. However, all the other compounds of the DDT family were present in considerable amounts in all the lakes. There was no significant change in the monthly variation of the concentration levels of HCHs and DDTs in the lakes.

Great improvements have taken place in the last few years in the dressing of hair seal pelts for furs and the market for these furs has diversified and expanded.Consequently, the catching of hair seals of all species has intensified and the stocks of Harp Seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus)and Hood Seals (Cystophora cristata) of the North Atlantic, particularly, are under heavy pressure

The Svalbard Treaty established Norway’s full and absolute sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. At the same time, it also established special territorial status for the archipelago, providing nationals of all signatory nations equal access to its resources. During fieldwork in Longyearbyen, conducted as part of a bottom-up exploration of place in 2018, several recurring issues came up in the analysis of interviews with residents using grounded theory methodology. Two of these issues, sometimes linked and sometimes seen as separate, were a questioning of the legitimacy of the community and a sense of geopolitical vulnerability. These emerging categories led to a series of focus groups, conducted between December 2018 and November 2019, that was designed to explore the impacts and implications of the Svalbard Treaty through the articulation of residents’ lived experiences in Longyearbyen. This paper examines the findings that emerged within an Identity of Place framing that point to an inherent conflict between the Svalbard Treaty’s special territorial status and the possibility of establishing a fully functioning local democracy in Longyearbyen.

During an intense period of only 14 months, from June 2010 to August 2011, six major cooperation agreements between oil companies were announced in Russia. Almost all of these partnerships involved offshore projects, with an international oil company as one of the partners and Rosneft as the other. The agreements were concentrated along Russia's Arctic petroleum frontier, and the three that survived the longest involved oil or gas extraction in the Arctic. This article analyses and compares the contents and contexts of the agreements, to ascertain what they have to tell about access for international companies to Russia's offshore petroleum resources and the influence of competing Russian political actors over the country's petroleum sector. The article argues that the new partnerships did represent an intention to open up the Russian continental shelf, and that the agreements were driven and shaped by a series of needs: to secure foreign capital and competence, to reduce exploration risk, to lobby for a better tax framework, to show the government that necessary action was being taken to launch exploration activities, to improve Rosneft's image abroad, and either to avert or prepare for future privatisation of state companies such as Rosneft.

Research on the demographic impacts of mining in sparsely populated areas has focused primarily on relatively large towns. Less attention has been paid to smaller villages, which may experience different impacts because of their highly concentrated economies and their small populations, making them more vulnerable to demographic “boom and bust” effects. This paper examines demographic change in four small villages in northern Sweden, which are located close to several mining projects but have evolved through different degrees of integration with or separation from mining. Using a longitudinal “resource cycle” perspective, the demographic trajectories of the villages are compared to understand how different types of settlement and engagement with mining have led to different demographic outcomes in the long term. While the four villages experienced similar trajectories in terms of overall population growth and decline, their experiences in relation to more nuanced indicators, including age and gender distributions and population mobilities, were different, and potential reasons for this are discussed. Due to data limitations, however, the long-term demographic consequences of mining for local Sami people remain unclear. The paper problematises this research gap in light of general concerns about mining impacts on traditional Sami livelihoods.

This is a follow-up to the article ‘Could Captain Scott have been saved? Revisiting Scott's last expedition’, published in this journal in January 2012. Additional research in the expedition's primary documents reveals that there was a clear opportunity for One Ton depot to have been re-stocked with dog food in January 1912, preparatory to the final relief journey to meet the polar party that February, and that the dog driver Cecil Meares failed to follow Scott's relevant orders. The consequences will be examined in this article. All distances are given in geographical miles.

Henry Grinnell (1799–1874), a retired New York shipping magnate, maintained for 20 years a correspondence with Jane Franklin, wife of the British explorer Sir John Franklin whose ships Erebus and Terror were lost in the Arctic some time after 1845. Grinnell financed two United States expeditions and two searches by Charles Francis Hall to the Arctic to collect information on the fate of the Franklin expedition. Grinnell's letters, now held in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute, form the basis of this article.

In November 2005, the first comprehensive survey for Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) breeding sites in the Robinson Group of islands, situated 25 to 55 km east of Australia's Mawson station (67.602°S, 62.879°E) was conducted. Breeding Adélie penguins were found on 30 of the 149 islands, with the number of nests on each island ranging from fewer than 10 to several thousand. With the exception of those islands in the southeast, nesting Adélie penguins were found throughout the Robinson Group. In this paper, the spatial coordinates and presence/absence of breeding penguins for all 149 islands are reported so that researchers may interpret the results in relation to possible future survey work. All locations reported in this paper are in decimal degrees.

The Arctic Circle Assembly has established itself as a forum for stakeholders from all around the globe to discuss Arctic affairs. This includes discussion about the future of the Arctic, impacts of climate change on local inhabitants and indigenous peoples, the natural environment and wildlife, geopolitical issues, international treaties, research projects, business-related risks and opportunities, etc. At this international conference, the interests of stakeholders vary greatly. Some want to reap the economic and strategic benefits of melting glacial and sea ice, while others want to reduce the negative impacts of climate change. It is therefore important to analyse the conference discourse in order to understand the main emphases of stakeholders, and if some express their views more loudly than others. Through greater weight of voice in the Assembly and beyond, some stakeholders have more impact on the development of a region that is of economic, geopolitical and environmental importance, not only for the northern hemisphere but globally.

The methodology of socially-oriented observations (SOO) started to be developed within the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008 PPS Arctic project. The main objective of SOO is to increase knowledge and observation of changes in quality of life conditions and to reveal trends in human capital and capacities. SOO are needed also to assess and monitor trends in resilience and sustainability of coupled socio-ecological systems and to predict changes. Moreover they should help to identify and monitor the implementation of local plans and adaptation strategies that will stimulate human capital improvement and act not only as the agent of economic modernisation, but as important directions for building resilient socio-ecological systems. The first experiments to implement SOO methodology were carried out in the municipal regions of the Russian north in different biomes (from coastal tundra to southern taiga zone) of Murmansk, Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Republic of Komi. SOO approaches, based both on local people's perceptions and statistics, help to identify the main issues and targets for life quality, human capital and environment improvement and thus to distinguish the most important changes and trends for further monitoring. Key issues were identified in the state of human capital and quality of life conditions: depopulation, increasing unemployment, aging, declining physical and mental health, quality of education, loss of traditional knowledge, marginalisation etc. Human induced disturbances such as uncontrolled forests cuttings and poaching are increasing while observed changes in climate and biota have become additional factors influencing land use and overall sustainability. The main aim of this paper is to show how the methodology of SOO may help to delineate main thresholds arising within socio-ecological systems for their resilience assessment.

After loading stores at Göteborg and Oslo, the expedition sailed from London on 23 November 1949 in the chartered Norwegian sealing vessel Norsel, G. Jakobsen, master. After calling at Cape Town, where P. G. Law of the Australian Department of External Affairs and J. A. King of the Union Weather Bureau of South Africa joined the vessel as observers, the Norsel headed south on 27 December to meet the Norwegian whaling factory Thorshovdi, which was carrying an advanced party of five men, with sixty dogs and some heavy equipment. An unexpectedly wide detour had to be made across the South Atlantic as the Thorshevdi was at that time in the Scotia Sea.

The search for Sir John Franklin (1847–59) coincided with a growing interest in mesmerism and modern spiritualism in Britain. Several clairvoyants, claiming to ‘see’ Franklin's ships and crews in the Arctic, made statements about the status and location of the overdue expedition, and at least three mediums described communications with Franklin’s spirit. Although the Admiralty provided assistance to Dr Haddock, the mesmerist of Emma, the Bolton clairvoyant, they did not take any action on the basis of her statements, probably because the various accounts were contradictory and could not be verified, and because the Admiralty Lords were sceptical of paranormal phenomena. Lady Franklin, on the other hand, visited clairvoyants and altered the plans for her search expeditions under Forsyth and Kennedy on the basis of a revelation. Recently, an American medium has described more than two dozen conversations with the spirits of Sir John and Lady Franklin.

After World War II (WWII), the USSR acquired a whaling flotilla as war reparations from the Germans. This event was the beginning of Soviet whaling in the Antarctic. It also motivated the USSR to sign the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and to use its whaling operations to exercise leverage with regard to political advantage in any future discussions on an international regime for the Antarctic.

In July 1945, the Secretary of State for the Colonies appointed me leader of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey for two years, an appointment which brought a prospect of a free existence in the wide open spaces as compared with routine office life. I soon found this prospect fading over the horizon. For months I was tied to an office, early and late, surrounded by scores of papers, insistent questioners and a ceaseless telephone bell. All this was necessary before the stores were ordered, packed and dispatched and the staff appointed.

The early explorer and scientist Otto Nordenskjöld, leader of the Swedish South Polar Expedition of 1901–1903, was the first to collect Antarctic penguin fossils. The site is situated in the northeastern region of Seymour Island and constitutes one of the most important localities in the study of fossilised penguins. The task of describing these specimens together with fossilised whale remains was given to Professor Carl Wiman (1867–1944) at Uppsala University, Sweden. Although the paradigm for the systematic study of penguins has changed considerably over recent years, Wiman's contributions are still remarkable. His establishment of grouping by size as a basis for classification was a novel approach that allowed them to deal with an unexpectedly high morphological diversity and limited knowledge of penguin skeletal anatomy. In the past, it was useful to provide a basic framework for the group that today could be used as ‘taxon free’ categories. First, it was important to define new species, and then to establish a classification based on size and robustness. This laid the foundation for the first attempts to use morphometric parameters for the classification of isolated penguin bones. The Nordenskjöld materials constitute an invaluable collection for comparative purposes, and every year researchers from different countries visit this collection.

Today the north is no longer remote and insulated from the demands of modern society, and northern Quebec is no exception. Principal threats to the environment come from mining, pipeline construction and hydro-electric developments. In the negotiations that are going on today between the native peoples, who are trying to protect what is left of their culture, and the developers from the south, there is a large divergence of opinion about what is important. When the native peoples are asked to document their use of natural resources in the courts they find themselves at a great disadvantage due to the lack of written history about their activities. The value of renewable natural resources that have sustained indigenous populations for thousands of years is difficult to quantify and can easily be made to look insignificant in comparison to the often exaggerated benefits of development proposals. For this reason it is important to make available whatever factual information there is and to present it in an unbiased manner.

In 1950–1958 Ahiarmiut were relocated, in three stages from Ennadai Lake to Nueltin Lake, from Ennadai Lake to Henik Lake and from Henik Lake to Arviat (Eskimo Point). This paper presents the results of a workshop conducted with elders and youths in Arviat, in May 2006, on these events. The participants in the workshop were Job and Eva Muqyunnik, Mary Anautalik, John Aulatjut, Silas Ilungijajuk, Geena Aulatjut from Arviat, Andrew Alikashuak, from Whale Cove, and Mary Whitmore from Churchill. The workshop was set up from an anthropological perspective and focused on Ahiarmiut perspectives of the first three relocations. Comparing archival and oral materials, the paper confronts the strategies, choices and decisions of the administration of the Canadian federal government with the experiences and views of the Ahiarmiut participants. The paper explores the causes of the failure of the relocations, notably the discrepancies between the values of the administration and those of the Ahiarmiut as well as the lack of communication between those parties. The paper concludes that there is no convincing evidence of any agreement between the Ahiarmiut and the administration so the relocation effectively became a deportation causing great economic and cultural distress as well as loss of life to the Ahiarmiut.

World War I has often been said to mark the end of the ‘Age of Imperialism’—the close of ‘that final surge of land hunger’ (Landes 1969) from 1880 to 1914 when much of the world's land surface, especially in Africa and the Pacific, was acquired by the major powers. Britain's large share was demonstrated by the predominance of red on pre-1914 maps, though in fact the British Empire achieved its greatest area after 1918; ‘… including India’, reported the 1920 Colonial Office List, ‘the Empire now extends over 11 million of square miles, or 91 times the area of the Mother Country’ (Mercer 1920). This study examines one specific part of British imperial policy in the immediate post-war years—one which, had it been fully implemented, would have increased the area by a further 40 per cent. In the view of L. S. Amery, Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office and one of Britain's leading politicians of the time, it was desirable that:

… the whole of the Antarctic should ultimately be included within the British Empire, and that, while the time has not yet arrived that a claim to all the continental territories should be put forward publicly, a definite and consistent policy should be followed of extending and asserting British control with the object of ultimately making it complete.