![]() In 2017, melting permafrost seeped into the vault, and while none of its samples was damaged. “This is supposed to last for eternity,” said Åsmund Asdal at the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, which operates the seed vault, to The Guardian. Norways Doomsday Seed Vault Is Getting a 12.7 Million Makeover After Flood. Right now, they are doing all they can to protect the vault. They have also installed pumps into the seed bank in case the past repeats itself. This includes waterproofing the tunnel into the mountain and digging trenches in order to divert the meltwater. With the climate rapidly changing and the permafrost melting, vault managers must now find a way to protect the world’s largest collection of seeds. Though water did get past the vault’s threshold, none of the seeds had been damaged. “It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that,” Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government that owns the vault, told The Guardian.”It was supposed to without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day.”Īt the end of last year in Spitsbergen, average temperatures warmed by 7☌ (11☏) above normal. However, the event has raised concern among the community tasked with protecting the seed bank, which is supposed to be a lifeline in case of an environmental emergency. This led to higher-than-usual melting and heavy rains, instead of snowfall.īuried deep inside a sandstone mountain in the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, meltwater gushed into the entrance and subsequently froze. Thankfully, no seeds were lost and the ice has since been hacked out. However, the “impenetrable” fortress easily succumbed to the forces of nature, as recorded heat hit the region. ![]() ![]() “It is a fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time – and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters,” reads the website by Crop Trust, the organization tasked with protecting global crop diversity. By: Kristy Hamilton/ IFL Science The fortified Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to protect the world’s seeds from disaster and environmental devastation, has been flooded. The Global Seed Vault, which launched back in 2008, was placed in the permafrost on Spitsbergen, a small Norwegian island, due to its consistently cold temperatures and relative isolation. ![]()
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