Time is without doubt a very relative concept. As we all know, sometimes it moves quickly, sometimes it moves slowly and sometimes it seems to be at a standstill, although this cannot be said about the waning Finnish summer. At least it should be waning, but it seems as if it is gathering way at the moment. But irrespective of what time feels like for us individually, and irrespective of this strange 2015 Finnish summer, one thing is certain: time moves inexorably. And with moving time come changes, probably the mere definition of time anyway. Either way, Polar Record is subject to time as well and in order to keep up with time, one needs to adapt.

In a recent interesting contribution to this journal, G.A. Mawer suggested that Antarctica was first so named in 1890 (Mawer 2008). New evidence however reveals that Antarctica first received its modern one-word name as early as 1840 at a congress of Italian scientists. The new name was soon adapted for other languages, and its use in English can be traced from 1849. A hypothesis is advanced as to why alternative French and German names were coined later in the century. The first map to use the new place name was published in 1843, and the first map to show a complete outline of the continent, estimated from expedition reports, was produced in 1844. But nothing could become the settled name of the south polar continent until its existence was confirmed at the turn of the twentieth century.

This paper summarises the first 25 years of data on hydrological work carried out each summer on the Onyx River, Wright Valley, by summer teams of field hydrologists of the New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme. The assignment expanded from the single water-level recording weir site near Lake Vanda to a second site near the Wright Lower Glacier together with a number of tributary stream measurements that were installed as the programme progressed. This work was carried out together with Dry Valleys lake level and glacial measurements and is as of much historical as of scientific interest as it contains much inaugural Antarctic hydrology work.

This article addresses knowledge management in governing vulnerable polar areas and tourism. Since the 1870s, Svalbard has been a cruise tourism destination. Due to less ice during the summer period, the number of tourists visiting the remote northeast corner of the archipelago has increased significantly, and the potential negative impact on this vulnerable natural environment has become an issue. The standard modes of managing these areas have either been to apply the precautionary principle or measures based on scientific evidence. As management models, however, both principles are contested for a number of reasons. This paper argues for a third model that is partly based on a form of monitoring knowledge that has circulated in ‘communities of practice’ and that has been developed over time. This form of knowledge constitutes viable expertise for the governing and management of the environment-tourism nexus in the area, but it needs to be acknowledged as a complementary management platform. This article demonstrates how such monitoring can be done, and it suggests some principles for the development of monitoring knowledge for administrative and management purposes.

In 2013, partial skeletal remains from three members of the 1845 John Franklin expedition were recovered from an archaeological site at Erebus Bay, King William Island, Nunavut. The remains included three crania, two of which were sufficiently intact to allow craniofacial reconstructions. Identifications are not proposed for either reconstruction; however, tentative identifications are being explored through DNA analyses currently underway that include samples obtained from both crania.

The Arctic and nearby remote areas are attracting more attention than ever before, because of their abundance of physical natural resources as well their wilderness environments which have become a major attraction for tourists. But use of land for tourism practices can lead to conflicts with other industries that utilise natural resources. Tourism in Iceland has grown rapidly in recent decades and nature and the wilderness is the main attraction. As well as being an important resource for the tourism industry, wilderness and natural areas are also very valuable for hydro–electric and geothermal power production. During the latter half of the last century several glacier–fed rivers in the highlands were dammed and hydropower plants built. Now there are plans for further exploitation of the natural resources which creates challenges and conflicts as many of the proposed power plants are located in natural areas, some of which are defined as wilderness. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the development of tourism in the Icelandic highlands and power production development and the challenges created by the changing idea of natural resources. It discusses a governmental project which is intended to solve the challenging conflicts about the use of natural areas. The project exposed the fact that the energy resources in the country are a far more limited resource than has previously been assumed. The power production industry now has to share the limited natural resources with the tourism industry. Thereby the ideas about natural resources and their utilisation are being re–defined by Icelandic society, depending on technology, global influences and other social trends.

Before Shackleton arrived at South Georgia aboard Endurance on 5 November 1914 he was aware that the vessel might meet bad pack-ice in the Weddell Sea. This had been forecast on the basis of climate analysis by Robert Mossman, the meteorologist on the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902–1904), who was currently working at the Argentine Meteorological Office. Mossman was interested in teleconnections linking meteorological and oceanic conditions in widely separated places and had studied the links between the Weddell Sea and South America. Mossman's Antarctic data were mainly records from the Orcadas station in the South Orkneys which had operated continuously from 1903. He found a correlation between extensive pack-ice in the Weddell Sea and plentiful rain in a belt across South America that included Buenos Aires. The experiences of Endurance supported this. Modern studies of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) broadly confirm Mossman's conclusions.

Releases of diesel fuel in the Arctic tundra are a common occurrence. Response to such releases in this region typically involves excavating the contaminated soil and backfilling the excavation with clean material. Owing to the lack of clean stockpiled native soils, coarse-grained soil (aggregate) used for the construction of roads and foundation pads may be the only backfill material available. Backfilling the excavated zone with soil that has different characteristics than the surrounding native soil, combined with the removal of natural vegetation, may drastically change the maximum thaw depth reached during the thawing season, altering the underlying permafrost condition. At the extreme, such measures in areas of ground ice can result in the creation of thermokarsting. We measured maximum thaw depths in aggregate backfill at a diesel spill site located in northwestern Alaska. Using an analytic solution, we investigated the reduction in maximum thaw depth by placing a relatively thin layer (0.5 m) of fine-grained native soil over the aggregate backfill. Such a practice reduces the maximum thaw depth by as much as 1.4 m over backfilling with aggregate only.

The pair of paperweights illustrated on the front cover of this issue of Polar Record and reproduced as Fig. 1 were made in 1889 at the Burslem pottery of James Macintyre & Co. (best known for employing William Moorcroft a few years later) using maps engraved by the Edinburgh firm of J.G. Bartholomew (JGB). Macintyre produced other paperweights with Bartholomew maps of Central Africa, India, British South Africa and the rarest, Australasia, to a pottery design 9.9cm in diameter, weight 333gm, registered as No.141265. The correspondence shows that the hemispheres came first, and were intended to feature the British Empire worldwide, although that political appellation does not appear.

Environmental management had its early stages in the early years of the 20th century. This note contrasts the different regimes that emerged with regard to the management of seals and the seal hunt: the well-researched Bering Sea regime and the little known regimes between Finland and the Soviet Union. While the former shaped and already embedded principles of modern environmental law and has the seal population as its primary focus, the latter agreements did not make reference to the environmental dimension of the seal hunt, but must be read against the backdrop of the difficult border situations between the two countries.

An 18-strong international team is hard at work in South Georgia, undertaking the final phase of the world's largest rodent eradication project, run by the South Georgia Heritage Trust. Known collectively as ‘Team Rat’, its departure for South Georgia in January coincided with the discovery of a nest of five South Georgia pipit chicks (Fig. 1) in an area overrun with rats before being baited by the trust in 2013. The pipit is the world's most southerly songbird.

Melt ponds are common on the surface of ice floes in the Arctic Ocean during spring and summer. Few studies on melt pond algae communities have been accomplished. These studies have shown that these melt ponds were ultra-oligotrophic, and contribute little to overall productivity. However, during the 6th Chinese Arctic Cruise in the Arctic Ocean in summer 2014, a closed coloured melt pond with a chlorophyll a concentration of 15.32 μg/L was observed on Arctic pack ice in the Canada Basin. The bloom was caused by the chlorophyte Carteria lunzensis at an abundance of 15.49×106 cells/L and biomass of 5.07 mg C/L. Primary production within surface melt ponds may need more attention along with Arctic warming.