Enormous biological diversity, still feels like tundra.

It’s surprising, but true: One wintry island in the Arctic Circle contains 2,911 different species of plants. Well its seeds anyways. The island of Spitzbergen in the Norwegian Archipelago of Svalbard is home to a very unique facility, a complex called the SGSV: Svalbard Global Seed Vault. This vault, aptly nicknamed the “Doomsday Vault” by main media sources, is a new initiative to preserve the biological diversity of the world’s plant life in the case of major natural disaster, disease, resource mismanagement, or biological warfare disaster. A second chance, so to speak, in case we as a species really make a mess of things; A wise choice, more likely than not.

How did it get there?

In the 1980s, the idea had emerged for a global seed bank but it wasn’t until an important international set of legal guidelines were established, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, that the idea could feasibly be pursued. The idea was then spearheaded by the Norwegian Government, who footed the bill of NOK 45 million, roughly 9 million US Dollars. On June 19th, 2006, the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark flew to the frozen island chain for the “laying of the first stone” ceremony, and the project had formally begun. Finished in September of 2007, the facility was opened for use on February 26th of 2008.

The nuts and bolts of the whole operation

The facility is very well considered in its construction. Built into a mountainside on Spitzbergen, the natural sandstone of the rock face is both stable to build into and low in radiation. The limited access to oxygen will help delay the aging of the seeds, as to stay viable much longer. In addition, the whole archipelago is affected by permafrost, also helping the seeds to last longer. Cooling units will be installed to keep the seeds at a steady –18 degrees Celsius (0 degrees F). Even if the cooling units fail, it’s projected to take several weeks before the seeds would rise to the natural –3 degrees Celsius (30 degrees F).

Even global warming has been taken into consideration when choosing Svalbard as a location, as due to the altitude and how deep the bank was built into the mountain, even the rising of sea level or the melting of permafrost will affect the functionality of the bank.

How many seeds could a seed-bank bank?

The SGSV has a capacity of 4.5 million different seed samples. Each sample usually consists of 500 seeds. This means the total number of seeds able to be contained in Svalbard is around 2.25 billion seeds. Currently the number of species contained is 2,911, with the total seed count at 288,897 seeds. Countries from all around the world are participating in stocking the seed banks, with a special emphasis on developing countries. The seed-bank is universal, meaning that although it was built and resides in Norway, all countries are able to contribute to the facility. In addition, each country retains the rights to the seeds they contribute, allowing the government of each country to decide if and when they’ll remove seeds from the bank. One of the first major contribution to the bank came from 36 African nations, numbering 7000 seed samples.

The government of Norway has done all of this as a service to the world community, and hope that through this project, we can avert any major loss of biodiversity, human-caused or otherwise.