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.
And on Wednesday, that seed vault got even more seeds — almost 50,000 new samples — to help preserve biodiversity. Those returning samples include the ones sent out in 2015 to replace a collection that had been damaged by the Syrian civil war.
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 told Business Insider in October 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.
Take a look inside the vault:
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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.
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