
Christian Streib/CNN Behind a heavy metal door. Amongst the seeds being protected this way by The Crop Trust currently are 200,000 varieties of rice and 125,000 varieties of wheat. The ongoing civil war in Syria has led to the first-ever withdrawal from the Svalbard 'doomsday' Global Seed Vault, a giant storage unit for plant seeds thats. Svalbard, midway between Norway and the North Pole, was chosen as the location because it is geologically stable, and remote but accessible.
#Doomsday vault svalbard norway for free
They can then request to withdraw the seeds – also for free – if and when they need them.

Hotter summers are melting the permafrost that surrounds the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a vast facility that keeps the world’s seeds safe. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway acts as an insurer to other seed collections: this free global service allows organizations to store their seeds once they are already placed in both their own collections and another seed bank, as a final back up. There's a heatwave in Norway’s Svalbard, home to the Doomsday Vault that houses nearly 900,000 seeds for research, breeding and educational purposes. Find and collect seeds and return them to the safety of the Vault. Indeed, the way humans farm and the way cities and industries have grown has damaged the diversity of crops, reducing options for future crops. In your robotic suit navigate a flooded city, break into an underground lair and explore ancient pyramids. It exists, in the words of its executive director Åslaug Haga, to “safeguard one of the most important natural resources” – plants. Safely burrowed into the mountain rock, deep enough to protect it from air temperature rihigh enough to avoid potential sea level rises, the Vault, which opened in 2008, is designed to last a thousand years, and to withstand a wide range of potential doomsday scenarios, including climate change, nuclear war, and even an asteroid strike. The vault, which has been described as Noahs. Nestled into the rocky waste of Plataberget Mountain, amongst the snow, Svalbard is the seed bank of seed banks, designed as a back-up for others. Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed as a safety net for the worlds crop diversity, is seen in Longyearbyen, Norway, Sunday, Feb. The Norwegian government built the Svalbard Global. Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located on a remote Norwegian archipelago for seeds to be stored deep within the permafrost. Norway has announced it will spend 100 million Norwegian crowns, or 13 million, to make improvements to a special seed vault in the Arctic. Soderman MNAL of Barlindhaug Consult) is marked by a concrete prow jutting from the mountain. While it may sound like bad news that seeds have been removed from the so-called doomsday vault, the withdrawal actually serves as proof that such a vault is necessary, Brian Lainoff, a spokesman for the Crop Trust, told The WorldPost.In May 2016, Magnum’s Jonas Bendiksen witnessed the deposit of more than 8,000 varieties of crops – from sheep food to chilli peppers – from Germany, Thailand, New Zealand, and the World Vegetable Center into the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which only opens 2-3 times a year. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map). The vault itself (the architectural design is by Peter W. Related: Syria War Forces First Withdrawal from Svalbard Global Seed Vault The vault was built in 2008 to withstand man-made and natural disasters and is part of an international effort to ensure the preservation of a wide variety of plant seeds. After the war damaged its facility in Syria, ICARDA moved its headquarters to the Lebanese capital of Beirut. The three main industries on Svalbard are coal mining, tourism, and research. Show more Show more Exploring the Arctic's. Svalbard, where the vault is located, is situated in the Arctic Ocean. The reclaimed seeds included varieties of wheat, barley, grass pea and other important food crops that are maintained by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), a nonprofit research organization that aims to improve the livelihoods of people in resource-poor areas across the Near East and North Africa. CNN's Arwa Damon gives a behind the scenes tour of the 'Doomsday' seed vault in Norway, that many believe to be the key to mankind's survival. The Global Seed Vault opened in 2008 on Svalbard, Norway, above the Arctic Circle. The withdrawn seeds were needed to replace plant material stored in a gene bank (a facility that stores genetic material) near the war-torn city of Aleppo in Syria.


But this week, researchers in the Middle East asked to withdraw seeds that they had previously deposited into the seed bank, according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the international organization that manages the doomsday vault in cooperation with the Norwegian government. So far, seeds have only gone into the vault for storage, not come out.
