Page 24 - An-introduction-to-Svalbard

ECOLOGY

The close links between land and marine ecology are very obvious on Svalbard. Svalbard's
ecology is partly determined by its climate, the bright summers and the dark winters. The ice
plays a dominant role, and the land is young in the sense that it was completely covered by
ice not so long ago. The sparse vegetation has to cope with very limited access to essential
nutrients, and the marine life – in one of the World's most productive seas – is predominant.
Seabirds dominate the bird life, but they play a very important role in the land ecology, as
they bring a lot of nutrients from the sea onto land. Under the bird cliffs is where you find
Svalbard’s richest flower meadows, almost overflowing with guano.
Glacial meltwater provides the ocean with necessary minerals for algae and plankton. Ocean
food chains begin with single-celled plants, phytoplankton and icealgae, which feed zooplankton
like copepodes and other crustaceans. Some birds – as well as the minke whales – feed on these
zooplankton, other birds feed on the fish that have crustaceans as their food source. Fish, in turn,
is the main food for many species of seals, even if molluscs are also part of their diet. The polar
bear is at the top of the food chain, and seal is the bear’s favourite food.

SEASONS IN SVALBARD

Simply put, you can divide the year in Svalbard into two parts: The dark and the light season.
In mid-February the first rays of the sun appear over the mountain peaks, and the midnight sun
period in Longyearbyen is between 20 April and 22 August. The daylight completely disappears
again in early November. The number of snowmobiles parked everywhere in Longyearbyen
testify that the bare ground of the summer is only a brief interruption in an otherwise long
winter landscape.

CLIMATE

Svalbard lies only some 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, but in spite of its northerly loca-
tion the climate is milder here than in the corresponding northern regions of Russia, Canada and
Greenland. The average temperature is +6°C in summer and -14°C in winter, but a record low of
- 46°C has been measured in Longyearbyen. The Svalbard inland is considered an Arctic desert
and the average rainfall is low, but varies between different areas.

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