Antarctica
Maria Stenzel
National Geographic
Antarctica is a land of extremes. It is the driest, coldest, and most isolated continent in the world. With temperatures reaching -89 C (-128 F), and less than 5cm of rainfall a year, Antarctica’s vast expanse – twice the size of Australia – supports one of the simplest ecosystems on earth. Only invertebrates can live year round, and the largest permanent inhabitant is a midge, just 10 mm in length. Almost entirely covered by an ice sheet, 70 percent of the world’s fresh water is frozen here in the form of ice, and yet Antarctica is as dry as the Sahara Desert. There is no indigenous human population.
Nevertheless, Antarctica is home to a summertime population of 8,000 people – mostly scientists, drawn to its polar plateau as well as the very rich marine environment along its coasts – and a wintertime population of 1,200. Now more tourists than scientists visit Antarctica – 15,000 per year.
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Seven nations -- Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, France, United Kingdom, and Norway have territorial claims to Antarctica, but these claims were put on hold by the passage of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. The treaty ensures that the continent be used for "peaceful purposes" by any member of the United Nations committed to conducting scientific research. In the 1980s, a flood of nations rushed to establish bases in Antarctica, anticipating a mining agreement -- while Greenpeace and other environmental groups fought to have Antarctica established as a World Park. Public opinion swung against mining with the wreck of the Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska, and the cruise ship Bahia Paraiso on the Antarctic Peninsula. A fifty year moratorium on mining was signed in 1991. Ironically, not much is known about mineral resources here because so much of the continent is covered by the ice sheet.
Seal hunters began exploitation of marine life in the 19th century, driving fur and elephant seals to near extinction. Whalers arrived in the 20th century after depleting the Arctic. Although protected now, four whale species almost went extinct. Today illegal fishing of Patagonian toothfish not only threatens the fish with extinction, it also kills more than 100,000 sea birds a year. Some species of albatross may go extinct. There are other threats too, whose impacts are more difficult to predict, such as the depletion of atmospheric ozone. For four months each year, an "ozone hole" forms over Antarctica, covering an area equivalent to the size of the United States.
Here, on the coldest place on earth, the greatest rate of global warming on earth is taking place. In the past fifty years, the 800 mile long Antarctic Peninsula has warmed about four degrees Fahrenheit and in winter is a staggering ten degrees warmer. Winter sea ice at its northern reaches has been so reduced that krill populations -- which feed on the algae in the ice -- are in danger of crashing. As krill are the basis of almost the entire Antarctic food web, penguin, seal, and whale, populations could follow.
Antarctica is not as isolated as we would like to think it is.
