Antarctica

Arguing that Antarctica is the most mediated place on earth and thus an ideal location for testing the limits of bio-political management of population and place, this book remaps national and postcolonial methods and offers a new look on a 'forgotten' continent now the focus of ecological concern.

Take students in grades 5–8 on a field trip without leaving the classroom using Exploring Antarctica! This 48-page book features reading selections and assessments that utilize a variety of questioning strategies, such as matching, true or false, critical thinking, and constructed response. Map projects and hands-on activities engage students in learning about the physical, political, and human geography of Antarctica. For struggling readers, the book includes a downloadable version of the reading selections at a fourth- to fifth-grade reading level. This book aligns with state, national, and Canadian provincial standards.

By the 1930s, no one had yet crossed Antarctica, and its vast interior remained a mystery frozen in time. Hoping to write his name in the history books, wealthy American Lincoln Ellsworth announced he would fly across the unexplored continent. The main obstacles to Ellsworth’s ambition were numerous: he didn’t like the cold, he avoided physical work, and he couldn’t navigate. Consequently, he hired the experienced Australian explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, to organize the expedition on his behalf. While Ellsworth battled depression and struggled to conceal his homosexuality, Wilkins purchased a ship, hired a crew, and ordered a revolutionary new airplane constructed. The Ellsworth Trans-Antarctic Expeditions became epics of misadventure, as competitors plotted to beat Ellsworth, crews mutinied, and the ship was repeatedly trapped in the ice. A few hours after taking off in 1935, radio contact with Ellsworth was lost and the world gave him up for dead. Antarctica’s Lost Aviator brings alive one of the strangest episodes in polar history, using previously unpublished diaries, correspondence, photographs, and film to reveal the amazing true story of the first crossing of Antarctica and how, against all odds, it was achieved by the unlikeliest of heroes.

Antarctica is our southernmost continent. It is nearly double the size of Australia. Antarctica is covered almost entirely by land ice called the Antarctic Ice Sheet and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean influences climate by taking up heat and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in deep waters. The cloud processes and aerosols over the Southern Ocean are complex and are important challenges for climate models. To understand the climate of the past, polar scientists drill ice cores through the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice core is a powerful tool that we can use to determine how the Earth's climate has changed and the information provided by historical ice cores has become extremely valuable for predicting the future scenarios of our planet. This ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth. The Antarctic Ice Sheet flows down into the Southern Ocean where parts of it start to float. These large floating platforms of ice are called ice shelves. Knowledge of the sensitivity and interaction of ice shelves to changes in atmosphere and ocean is important to understand the contribution of Antarctica to global sea level rise and the Southern Ocean, and global marine ecosystems. If melted, the Antarctic Ice Sheet would be a major contributor to global sea level rise. In winter, the surface of the ocean around Antarctica freezes and sea ice forms. At the height of winter, the area of sea ice that forms is as large as Antarctica itself but it melts back to the continent every summer. The amount of sea ice that forms in winter and melts back each summer is different. We examine this annual fluctuation of sea ice area around Antarctica for indications of climate change. Sea ice provides important habitats for primary producers, such as sea ice algae, and Antarctic krill, a keystone species of the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Sea ice is also an important habitat for penguins and seals. This collection aims to inform young readers about fundamental knowledge and digested cutting-edge science that will help increase their understanding of Antarctica and its central role as a global climate driver. In addition to the Editors hosting, we would acknowledge the coordination and organization efforts of Pat Wongpan .

This book provides a diplomatic history of a turning point in Antarctic governance: the 1991 adoption of comprehensive environmental protection obligations for an entire continent, which prohibited mining. Solving the mining issue became a symbol of finding diplomatic consensus. The book combines historiographic concepts of contingency, conjuncture and accidental events with theories of structural, entrepreneurial and intellectual leadership. Drawing on archival documents, it shows that Antarctic governance is more adaptive than some imagine, and policy success depends on the interplay of normative practices, serendipitous events, public engagement and influential players able to exploit those circumstances. Ultimately, the events revealed in this book show that the protection of the Antarctic Treaty itself remains as important as protecting the Antarctic environment.

Account of Swedish South Polar Expedition, 1901-1903, which was led by Nordenskjöld.

This stunning and powerfully relevant book tells the history of Antarctica through 100 varied and fascinating objects drawn from collections around the world. Retracing the history of Antarctica through 100 varied and fascinating objects drawn from collections across the world, this beautiful and absorbing book is published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the first crossing into the Antarctic Circle by James Cook aboard Resolution, on 17th January 1773. It presents a gloriously visual history of Antarctica, from Terra Incognita to the legendary expeditions of Shackleton and Scott, to the frontline of climate change. One of the wildest and most beautiful places on the planet, Antarctica has no indigenous population or proprietor. Its awe-inspiring landscapes – unknown until just two centuries ago – have been the backdrop to feats of human endurance and tragedy, scientific discovery, and environmental research. Sourced from polar institutions and collections around the world, the objects that tell the story of this remarkable continent range from the iconic to the exotic, from the refreshingly mundane to the indispensable: - snow goggles adopted from Inuit technology by Amundsen - the lifeboat used by Shackleton and his crew - a bust of Lenin installed by the 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition - the Polar Star aircraft used in the first trans-Antarctic flight - a sealing club made from the penis bone of an elephant seal - the frozen beard as a symbol of Antarctic heroism and masculinity - ice cores containing up to 800,000 years of climate history This stunning book is both endlessly fascinating and a powerful demonstration of the extent to which Antarctic history is human history, and human future too.

Explore Antarctica--the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on Earth--in this adventure-filled title in the Who HQ series. Antarctica, the earth's southernmost continent, was virtually untouched by humans until the nineteenth century. Many famous explorers journeyed (and often died) there in the hope of discovering a land that always seemed out of reach. This book introduces readers to this desert--yes, desert!--continent that holds about 90 percent of the world's ice; showcases some of the 200 species that call Antarctica home, including the emperor penguin; and discusses environmental dangers to the continent, underscoring how what happens to Antarctica affects the entire world.

How does the human mind transform space into place, or land into landscape? For more than three decades, William L. Fox has looked at empty landscapes and the role of the arts to investigate the way humans make sense of space. In Terra Antarctica, Fox continues this line of inquiry as he travels to the Antarctic, the “largest and most extreme desert on earth.” This contemporary travel narrative interweaves artistic, cartographic, and scientific images with anecdotes from the author's three-month journey in the Antarctic to create an absorbing and readable narrative of the remote continent. Through its images, history, and firsthand experiences—snowmobile trips through whiteouts and his icy solo hikes past the edge of the mapped world—Fox brings to life a place that few have seen and offers us a look into both the nature of landscape and ourselves.