Svalbard Global Seed Vault

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Entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (2012). Above the entrance is a work of art , as it should receive every new building according to Norwegian building law. This is an abstract work by Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne made of reflective triangles of various sizes that symbolize diversity and life.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault to German Global Seed Vault in Svalbard , is a project of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (English Global Crop Diversity Trust , GCDT) for long-term storage of seeds for the preservation and protection of the species - and varieties - diversity of crops . It is located on Platåberget ( Eng . "Plateauberg") near the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen, which is part of the Svalbard archipelago .

The official name of the seed vault is Globalt sikkerhetshvelv for frø på Svalbard ("Worldwide seed safe on Svalbard"). This seed store is the largest of 1,400 seed storage facilities worldwide, but the only one without a research contract. Its most important task is the storage of a minimum number of seeds of the food important for nutrition such as rice , corn , wheat , potatoes , fruits , nuts and root vegetables , which can be delivered and bred in the event of a disaster. The supplier countries pay nothing for the storage, the costs incurred by the Norwegian state.

history

The groundbreaking ceremony was held on June 19, 2006 by the Norwegian Minister of State, Jens Stoltenberg, in the presence of his Nordic colleagues from Finland , Denmark , Iceland and Sweden . The seed bank started its work in November 2007 , the ceremonial opening of the seed bank took place on February 26, 2008 in the presence of international representatives. Up to 4.5 million seed samples (one sample contains 500 seeds, which corresponds to 2.25 billion seeds) are to be stored in the bunker, which will be monitored remotely from Norway after the work has been completed without staff on site .

In the opening year 2008, serious problems arose on the buildings, caused by the slow thawing of the permafrost at the entrance area, the statics were endangered and the steel jacket began to deform. It was structurally retrofitted.

The return of seed samples from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was first requested by the International Center for Agricultural Research in Arid Areas ( ICARDA ) in Aleppo , Syria , on September 21, 2015 .

At the end of 2016, the local average temperature was 7 ° C and thus above the previous annual average. Condensation from the permafrost around the 100-meter-long entrance tunnel penetrated it and froze there. As a result of this effect not considered in the planning, drainage chutes were installed outside the system and pumps and drainage grids were installed inside the system . The storage racks were additionally secured by watertight protective walls.

building

The choice of location for the plant had to take into account that there are no tectonic activities in the area , that the infrastructure is well developed and thus quick accessibility is guaranteed, that there is a frost environment that lasts all year round, that an efficient local power plant reliably secures the energy supply can. (A separate emergency power generator was also planned for emergencies .)

The structure resembles an underground bunker . It extends 120 meters into an old coal mine , only the entrance is above the ground. Inside it consists of a corridor, at the end of which three halls, each 27 meters long, ten meters wide and six meters high, were built into the ground. The warehouses are 130 meters above the current sea level, so they should remain intact even in the event of a drastic rise in sea level due to climate change. They are equipped with reinforced concrete and two thick steel doors and should therefore withstand a nuclear war or a plane crash. There are five firmly locked doors between the tunnel entrance and the chamber doors, for which the employees have keys, but not all of them are allowed into all rooms. A refrigeration compressor is installed in separate rooms between the tunnel and the chambers , in which compressors cool the already cold air to a constant level of −18 degrees Celsius .

An inventory of deliveries is also carried out in these workrooms .

The construction costs amounted to around 45 million Norwegian kroner (9 million US dollars ), which was borne by the Norwegian government, the retrofitting in 2018 was as much again. The Global Crop Diversity Trust bears the costs of ongoing operations.

business

Interior of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The GCDT takes care of the operation of the seed bank. The declared aim of the initiative is to keep the 21 most important crops such as rice, maize, wheat, potatoes, apples, cassava , taro or coconut and their diversity in trust as complete as possible . The genetic diversity that is kept in the seed bank forms valuable material for plant breeding and many areas of basic biological research .

The facility is only intended for the safe storage of copies of seeds, so unlike most other seed banks, the seeds are not processed. International seed banks supply the seeds to be stored here, but they remain their property. It is only removed on behalf of the owner if the seeds are lost there.

After the well-packed seed boxes arrive at the Svalbard airfield, they are checked on site using an X-ray scanner to ensure that no foreign materials are smuggled in. The still tightly sealed boxes are reloaded onto small transport devices, trolleys , and then brought to the safe by employees of Nordgen , the gene bank of the Nordic Council .

The seeds are stored refrigerated at −18 ° C. Should the cooling system fail, the permafrost ensures that the temperature does not rise above −3.5 ° C. According to scientific estimates, the shelf life of the seeds at these temperatures is around 55 years (sunflower seeds) to over 10,000 years (pea seeds). Aged seeds are constantly being replaced.

On February 26, 2018, the one million mark in collected semen samples was reached after the first of two annual deliveries for the 10th anniversary of the SGSV. “Almost every country” is a user of the seed bank.

Global warming hazard

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was originally designed in such a way that the seeds stored in it could withstand a long period of time without being impaired even in the event of a total failure of the cooling systems and without human supervision. When, however, in 2017, as a result of a warm spring, condensation penetrated through the walls of the entrance tunnel, a reorganization was necessary: ​​The foreseeable problems caused by the global climate crisis were implemented by a group of experts in specific orders for technical and structural innovations of the safe system: To the plans This included the construction of a concrete access tunnel with watertight walls, drainage slits in the vicinity of the Seed Vault and the relocation of heat-producing technical units from the area of ​​the entrance tunnel to a new technical building. Over ten million euros were built in to counter the forecast increase in the annual mean temperature of over eight degrees Celsius over the next 80 years.

media

Web links

Commons : Svalbard Global Seed Vault  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Isabella Galanty: Noah's Ark in the Arctic , In: Berliner Zeitung , 24./25. February 2018, p. 4/5.
  2. ↑ 'Doomsday vault' gets large shipment of rice
  3. ↑ Foundation stone laid for global Noah's Ark of seeds
  4. ↑ SGSV press release
  5. ↑ Arctic Seed Vault opens its doors to 100 million seeds . EurekAlert !. February 26, 2008. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
  6. ↑ Croptrust article ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.croptrust.org
  7. ^ Report of the SVT
  8. ↑ Press release of the Global Crop Diversity Trust: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault: Securing the Future of Agriculture (Wayback Machine)
  9. ↑ Christoph Seidler ( Longyearbyen ): Arctic mountain too warm for Noah's Ark of Plants. In: Spiegel Online . September 6, 2008, accessed September 6, 2008 .
  10. ↑ https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article146730647/Fuer-den-globalen-Saatgut-Tresor-ist-der-Ernstfall-da.html
  11. ↑ Damian Carrington: Arctic stronghold of world's seeds flooded after permafrost melts. In: theguardian.com. May 19, 2017, accessed May 19, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Damian Carrington: Arctic stronghold of world's seeds flooded after permafrost melts. In: The Guardian . May 19, 2017, accessed May 20, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Norway to spend $ 13 million to upgrade 'doomsday' Arctic seed vault , reuters.com , February 23, 2018, accessed February 26, 2018
  14. ↑ Noah's Ark in the Eternal Ice derstandard.at, accessed on May 1, 2015
  15. ^ Svalbard Global Seed Vault. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Statsbygg, archived from the original on September 25, 2015 ; accessed on September 24, 2015 : “The seed vault in Svalbard will not be an active gene bank, but will contain a collection of duplicates, which will only be used if the seed stored in the gene banks is lost. The physical storage facility will remain in Norwegian hands, but the seeds will not in any sense be Norwegian property. The depositing of seeds will be regulated by an agreement. The seeds will not be passed on to any third party, but only returned to the sender when the need arises. “ Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.statsbygg.no
  16. ↑ Report at T-Online ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nachrichten.t-online.de
  17. ↑ Helen Briggs: Frozen seed vault reaches one million mark . In: BBC News . February 26, 2018 ( bbc.com [accessed February 26, 2018]).
  18. ↑ Seeds of salvation , abc.net.au, March 7, 2016, with a picture of the boxes from North Korea
  19. ↑ Improvements on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault , statsbygg.no , May 20, 2017, accessed February 26, 2018.
  20. ↑ The seed depot is being converted due to climate change , on www.zeit.de, February 25, 2018; accessed on February 27, 2018.
  21. ↑ Doomsday Vault needs to plug leak caused by climate change , abc.net.au, September 22, 2018

Coordinates: 78 ° 14 ′ 9.1 ″  N , 15 ° 29 ′ 28.9 ″  E