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Both
the Arctic and Antarctic seem beyond life: icy, treeless,
hostile places. Yet these polar regions host a surprising
abundance of life, ranging from the microbial to the awe-inspiring,
from bacteria to bowhead whales.
Important differences mark North and South. The North
Pole lies in the middle of an ocean surrounded by land,
while the South Pole rises from the center of a continent
surrounded by an ocean. In the Arctic, human habitation
stretches back for thousands of years. The Inuit and other
indigenous peoples in the Arctic continue to carry out
age-old traditions while adopting modern technology for
subsistence hunting and fishing. The Antarctic has no
"native" human populations but hosts a visiting
population of scientists and support personnel every year.
Human migration and methods of interacting with the environment
form important research topics for NSF-supported social
scientists who work in the Arctic, while the human scientists
in the Antarctic focus on the effects of isolated and
confined environments.
The poles were still poorly understood places when scientists
the world over organized a special effort called the International
Geophysical Year (IGY) to study the Earth and Sun on an
unprecedented scale. The IGY, which ran from July 1957
to December 1958, was modeled on two previous International
Polar Years and brought NSF firmly into the realm of polar
science.
During the First Polar Year (1882-1883), scientists and
explorers journeyed to the icy margins of the Earth to
collect data on weather patterns, the Earth's magnetic
force, and other polar phenomena that affected navigation
and shipping in the era of expanding commerce and industrial
development. By the Second Polar Year (1932-1933), new
fields of science had evolved, such as ionospheric physics,
which peers into the outer layer of Earth's atmosphere.
Data collected during the Second Polar Year contributed
to new meteorological maps for the Northern Hemisphere
and verified the effects of magnetic storms on radio waves.
Still, scientists lacked a complete picture of how ice,
atmosphere, land, and oceans worked together at the poles
as a system of cause and effect.
Technological advancements in
rockets, satellites, and instrumentation during the 1940s
and 1950s allowed more and better measurements in the
remote Arctic and Antarctic. By the time of the 1957-1958
IGY, researchers were free to explore the ocean floor
as well as the upper atmosphere: they could use nuclear-powered
submarines to plunge under the ice cap and discover new
ocean ridges, and launch rocket-powered satellites to
make remote geophysical measurements. For the first time,
the polar regions became year-round research platforms
available for widespread international cooperation. Furthermore,
everyday citizens became involved in scientific observations.
People in the far north and the far south recorded their
own aurora sightings and temperature readings, information
that was funneled to scientists. Sixty-seven countries
participated in the IGY, including the United States and
the Soviet Union. Despite Cold War tensions between east
and west, the world was engaged in cooperative, coordinated
science at the poles and other parts of the world.
The IGY set the stage for polar research at NSF in two
ways. First, scientists came to think of the poles as
natural laboratories in which to capture and integrate
diverse data about "the heavens and the earth."
Second, polar research became a cooperative international
undertaking. Following the IGY, the twelve countries that
had established some sixty research stations in Antarctica
concluded a treaty to use Antarctica for peaceful purposes
only, to freely exchange scientific information, to prohibit
nuclear explosions and disposal of radioactive wastes,
and to maintain free access to any area on the continent.
By 1999, the Antarctic Treaty had forty-four parties,
representing two-thirds of the world's human population;
other agreements were made, too, including a protocol
for improved environmental protection of Antarctica.
The 1990s also saw cooperation blossom up north. In 1996,
the eight Arctic nation-states established the Arctic
Council, the result of a process of negotiations aimed
at protecting the Arctic environment while also allowing
for vital research.
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National Science Foundation -
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