Traduzione “Svalbard”

What is the Global Seed Vault?

In the depths of a frozen mountain, on an island

between Norway and the North Pole, there is a
resource of vital importance for the future of the
humankind.
I’m not talking about coal, oil or precious minerals,
but seeds.

Million and millions of tiny seeds from more than

930,000 species of food crop are kept in Global Seed
Vault on Spitsbergen, an island in the Norwegian
archipelago of Svalbard.
The facility is basically a huge safe, containing the
world’s largest collection of agriculture biodiversity.
It develops underground, with three 27 by 10-meter
rooms, with 6 meter-6 high ceilings, inside a
sandstone Mountain.

But why the Svalbard islands?

As reported on Wikipedia, Spitsbergen Island is

considered ideal because exempt from tectonic
activity and it is completely covered by a thick layer of
permafrost, which protect the seeds.

The location, that is 130 metres above the sea level,

guarantees the site to be dry in case of dissolution of
Artic ice.

The auxiliary units of refrigeration would keep the

temperature under -20 degrees in the unlikely event
the external temperature rises suddenly .
If even this system wouldn’t work, a lot of weeks
should pass before the temperature had risen till it
reach the temperature of the external rocks (*).
In any case, the frozen ground wouldn’t allow the
temperature to rise beyond *3.5 degrees, that is
enough to let the seeds live for 50 years.

How many species of seeds are contained in the

Global Seed Vault?

On the earth, we think that exist about 1,500,000

different types of seeds of food crop.
The facility was built to host till 4 million of different
seeds, therefore more than double species
recognised today.
In the February of 2018, the number of seeds hosted
by the structure passed the million, thanks to that the
facility became the largest deposit in the world.

The structure is managed by the Nordic Genetic

Resource centre and it doesn’t expect the
permanently presence of staff on site.

A facility that can resist to an atomic bomb and a

world war.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built to resist to

nearly everything: plane crashes, nuclear wars and
bombs, even thou the major threats come from the
climate change.
In 2017, following the dissolutions of the permafrost,
because of the extreme temperatures, to was decide
to make the structure waterproof.