Buried in the side of a mountain in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the Global Seed Vault stores virtually every kind of seed.
Cary Fowler, the man considered the "father" of the seed vault and a former executive director of the international nonprofit organization Crop Trust, compares it to a safety deposit box: the point of the vault is not for apocalyptic scenarios, but serves more as a sort of back-up drive.
Fowler, whose book "Seeds On Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault" is out now, explained that the vault is used to store duplicates of existing seed banks that have been collecting seeds for 100 years. That way, if a regional seed vault loses something, the Svalbard collection can replace the sample, as they did when part of a seed collection was damaged in the Syrian War.
Take a look inside the vault that already holds 860,000 samples, with more getting added all the time.
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The vault is located in Svalbard, an archipelago that's part of Norway. It's a cold area filled with polar bears and snow scooters, along with brightly colored houses.
The archipelago is located in the Arctic Ocean, midway between the North Pole and Norway, where the warmest temperature this year was 58 degrees Fahrenheit. The winters remain below 0 and -1 degrees Fahrenheit.
Source: Norwegian Meteorological Institute
The entrance to the vault sticks out of a mountain, illuminated with a light installation by Dyveke Sanne. Fowler told Business Insider that at first, he had no intention to write a book about the vault. In the end, he decided he needed to document how the seed vault came to be, including photos from the construction, striking photos of the Svalbard landscape, and initial design sketches.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider