"The Vault" is more real than you think - Preserving biodiversity
Bethesda's "Fallout" fictitious advertisement.
It does not look like a vault, it is actually hard to define since it is located in the edge of the world (edge, in a rather spherical shape is also, quite a blurry term).
It is called Svalbard Global Seed Vault located at the Spitsbergen island, Norway: It is a reservoir of vegetal species -with a preference for the ones with agronomic potential- that come from the entire globe.
Scientifically speaking, it is a seed bank (one of the kinds of "gene banks" that exist). Its main objective is: To preserve a backup copy of samples from all around the globe. This way, the project pretends to preserve biodiversity at some level, being a fail-safe precautionary measure for the future.
A backup in the Arctic.
Right there in the Arctic in one of the islands of the Svalbard Archipelago, the building that contains the bank is embedded in a mountain covered in permafrost (permanently frozen soil, rock or sediment... Yes, it is cold!).
Poetically speaking, it is a hole in the ground that can be acceded to by using a tunnel that was sculpted in solid rock. Once inside, after several high security gates: There's "The Vault".
3 chambers that are at -18°C (-0.4°F) holding, mostly, seeds. In the rest of the facilities the temperature is around 5°C (41°F). These particular characteristics protects the collections that reside there in case of a power outage, the cold that prevails in the area can protect the collections for a long time should the calamity happen. The rock, acts as a shielding against external factors and catastrophes. Besides that, that area has nearly no seismic activity.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault - Source in image.
This is not a simple "seed bank": It is a BACKUP for other seed banks around the world, this is -literally- our last line of defense in case of the worst eventualities.
The traditional seed banks are vulnerable, and some disasters have already happened at some. For example Iraq and Afghanistan's banks were lost thanks to the bellicose conflicts. Rwanda and Solomon Island's banks had disasters of their own. Not only "war" is dangerous for seed (gene) banks, bad organization, infrastructure, hardware failure are all permanent threats to our biodiversity.
Climate change, catastrophes & other threats.
Global Crop Diversity Trust claimed that there's 35000 to 40000 varieties of different seeds that we use, many of them are being lost at a constant pace. For instance, in the 1800 in the US there was 7100 varieties of apple; today, 6800 of those are extinct.
We need to consider that climate change is at the gates, we cannot know what traits will our crops need to survive and feed us in the future climate. So, the more variety we have, the more chances of finding an efficient crop to feed from. These banks, are a MUST HAVE and a backup, absolutely necessary.
The vaults in the frozen chambers of Svalbard hold seeds that humankind has used since the Neolithic Revolution, when we learned to domesticate plants and animals: 10000 to 12000 years ago.
nice post
Hope we can work together to a more sustainable world, upped. Good one indeed.
I mentioned you on my post regarding bots, feel free to see it and send in your comment. I wish you more success and hope that we stay in touch.
So scary. Let's hope the seeds will be able to produce plants which are adaptable to climate change. I don't think there is a possibility of turning back.
The key word here is backup seed bank.
As you say, it is not a matter of if but when and we should be prepared for that.
Very interesting piece which I didn´t know about, glad you cite some sources for further reading.
This is the least effort mankind owes to nature first, yet safe guarantee can't be provided as global warming is a potential threat to this bank.
This post has received a 0.93 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @renzoarg.
But who has the keys to the vault?
If only people from........?? South America or Australia survive, and all other seed vaults are destroyed, AND they manage to make it to this one....how do they get inside?
Anyway, it is super sad about industrializing the food supply and loosing so much diversity!!
Thanks for sharing!!
Peace!