Arctic Dreams, Part II

Follows on 2009 Part I here, 2011 follow-on here.

As the Arctic comes under more scrutiny in the news, I'm reminded of my visit up there 25 years ago when we actually thought of global cooling! But the issues of access and exploitation are certainly not new... And I posted a few polar maps for fun here and here, though the best rendition can be found here.

Today's BBC Worlds News The World Debate The Arctic: Resource or Reserve? (website is stale-dated) followed the Arctic Council recent meeting critiqued here - both wonderful resources for Arctic lore - a first step toward circumpolar cooperation through a Search&Rescue treaty. There's a document crying out for a map, I've never seen so many coordinates posted in one document! In their defense they did post a few nice ones...

click to enlarge

Figure 1: Arctic marine area boundary, based on the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) with local indigenous peoples according to language families. Source: Arctic Council, online originally here but no longer, now available here.

[May 22 update: This post was featured on TeachStreet as a featured blogpost, click on their badge to the right]