Modern life in the arc­tic is deman­ding con­sidera­ble resour­ces. Food stuffs are impor­ted over long distances, which is cos­t­ly and burns a lot of fuel. Many visi­tors get a bit ner­vous when they see the pri­ces for food in the high north, and so-cal­led fresh vege­ta­bles are not always as fresh as you might want.

Food was­te is shred­ded and washed straight into the fjord tog­e­ther with was­te water, altog­e­ther a gre­at was­te. Ano­ther solu­ti­on would be high­ly desi­ra­ble, both from an envi­ron­men­tal and an eco­no­mic per­spec­ti­ve.

Thin­king local food in the arc­tic, most peo­p­le would pro­ba­b­ly have reinde­er steaks on their mind, which is obvious­ly not the solu­ti­on. Local vege­ta­bles? Nega­ti­ve. Even the Rus­si­an (Sov­jet, back then) sett­le­ments Barents­burg and Pyra­mi­den were, in a way, more advan­ced, with con­sidera­ble local pro­duc­tion in green­hou­ses and sta­bles for cows, pigs etc., most of which have been aban­do­ned years ago.

But crea­ti­ve peo­p­le are working on solu­ti­ons to grow vege­ta­bles local­ly, fresh and envi­ron­men­tal­ly fri­end­ly. A start up pro­ject cal­led Polar Per­ma­cul­tu­re Solu­ti­ons is deve­lo­ping tech­ni­ques in Lon­gye­ar­by­en for advan­ced green­hou­ses to grow vege­ta­bles in per­ma­frost are­as wit­hout high ener­gy and water con­sump­ti­on. First tests are pro­mi­sing: accor­ding to Polar Per­ma­frost Solu­ti­ons, pars­ley, cori­an­der, basil, papri­ka, sum­mer squash, mini corn, oni­ons, let­tuce, toma­toes, egg­plant, red chi­li pep­pers and more have alre­a­dy been grown suc­cessful­ly. Food was­te is used to pro­du­ce soil and fer­ti­li­zer with bio­lo­gi­cal tech­ni­ques (sounds bet­ter than worms, but that’s what it is)

Fresh, tasty, local pro­duc­tion and envi­ron­men­tal­ly fri­end­ly – we are loo­king for­ward to see the fur­ther deve­lo­p­ment!

Source: Polar Per­ma­cul­tu­re

During this win­ter sea­son 2014/2015 the sea ice in the Arc­tic has exten­ded much less than it usual­ly did.

As the U.S. Natio­nal Snow and Ice Data Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Colo­ra­do reports, this win­ter the ice likely rea­ched its maxi­mum extend as soon as Febru­ary 25th. This is 15 days ear­lier than the avera­ge of the years 1981 to 2010 which ser­ves as the refe­rence peri­od.

More alar­ming is the fact that the ext­ent of sea ice on this date had not pro­cee­ded very far yet. Inde­ed, sin­ce the begin­ning of the satel­li­te record the maxi­mum ext­ent of Arc­tic sea ice has never been as low as in this win­ter. On Febru­ary 25th the ice cover­ed an area of 14.54 mil­li­on squa­re kilo­me­ters. This is 1.1 mil­li­on squa­re kilo­me­ters less than the long term avera­ge and 130.000 squa­re kilo­me­ters less than the for­mer nega­ti­ve record of 2011. All are­as were affec­ted except for the Labra­dor Sea and the Davis Strait bet­ween Green­land and Cana­da. The­re was a remar­kab­ly low ext­ent of ice on the Paci­fic side of the Arc­tic and in the Barents Sea west of Nova­ya Sem­lya and sou­thwest of Spits­ber­gen.

After rea­ching its low maxi­mum on Febru­ary 25th the sea ice ext­ent initi­al­ly decreased signi­fi­cant­ly (with regio­nal varia­ti­ons) and then increased again in the second half of March. Howe­ver, a new maxi­mum could not be rea­ched. Curr­ent­ly the ice is retrea­ting again, accor­ding to the time of the year.

It can be expec­ted that the low ext­ent of sea ice in win­ter will also lead to less ice in the sum­mer sea­son. This sce­na­rio is sup­port­ed by the effect that open water sur­faces are absor­bing more solar ener­gy and are warm­ing up fas­ter than ice sur­faces which reflect most of the sun­light (see also Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com news: Retre­at of Arc­tic sea ice acce­le­ra­tes glo­bal warm­ing from Febru­ary 2014).

Source: Natio­nal Snow and Ice Data Cen­ter