The selection of sites that comprise the existing network of Antarctic protected areas has been largely ad hoc, driven by national interests rather than concerted efforts to ensure systematic and representative coverage of the Antarctic environment. Consequently there are gaps in coverage of all major ecosystems, in particular areas kept inviolate from human activity, inland lakes, and marine protected areas. Annex V of the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty provides a list of values to be protected within a network of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs), but provides no quantitative methods for site identification and prioritisation. The Antarctic Important Bird Area (IBA) Inventory is a joint initiative of BirdLife International and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Group of Experts on Birds (formerly the Bird Biology Subcommittee). The Antarctic IBA Inventory has identified 119 candidate IBAs, 97 of which are not currently protected as ASPAs. The IBA Inventory can improve the Antarctic Protected Area System (PAS) in that it provides a method by which to identify and prioritise sites for their potential inclusion in the Antarctic PAS.

The remains of the Greenland Norse provide unique biological anthropological material for the investigation of human and environmental interaction. As a population, they were generally secluded from most of the contemporary European medieval society, and land suitable for their way of life was limited in Greenland. The archaeological and historical record is excellent, clearly establishing the 500-year period of colonisation. In other words, the Greenland Norse represent a relatively isolated population, constrained in both space and time.

Living in an environment with very little buffering capacity, ecological changes immediately had repercussions. Ten years of research have shown a direct climatic impact on the humans as well as changing subsistence patterns. It seems that the Norse in Greenland responded to these changes, although inside ‘cultural’ limits. Demographic modelling indicates that emigration may have accounted for the final abandonment of the settlements. A changing ecology thus seems to have pushed the Greenland Norse out of Greenland, because their sedentary way of life, relying on animal husbandry, and probably with a strong cultural sense of identity focused on farmsteads and domestication, became unsustainable. A further step will be clarifying the genetic history of the Norse as well as of the Thule Culture Inuit. These analyses have commenced by examining mtDNA variation and Y-chromosomal diversity among present-day Greenlandic Inuit, and preliminary results appear to provide some information as to the fate of the Norse people.

Evidence is provided from the joint application of tephrochronology and palynology in two Icelandic locations — the island of Papey off the east coast and Seljaland in the south. The Papey study relates to vegetation change around the time of volcanic ash deposition from the eruption of Katla in 1755. This produced various hypotheses concerning volcanic impacts and land-use activities, including changes in nutrient inputs, grazing activity, and climate. Similar data have been obtained from Seljaland, where a group of farms was affected by fall-out from the 1947 eruption of Hekla. The patterns of pollen-based vegetational change were similar at both locations, enabling a fuller exploration of floristic and anthropogenic responses to ash deposition. The Seljaland data are influenced by the known removal of livestock in order to guard against the effects of fluorosis. The resultant cessation of grazing was probably responsible for much of the vegetational change apparent in the pollen record, and this represents a credible recent analogue for processes that may have taken place in Papey in 1755.

Greenland and Iceland are described with unusual scientific accuracy in the King's Mirror. However this thirteenth-century manuscript contains a few ‘wonders’ that appear more mythological than rational. They include the hafstramb and the margygr, commonly translated respectively as merman and mermaid. The mermaid has a long history in western civilisation. The commonly accepted theory that it evolved from the classical Greek siren is critically examined here. The margygr is shown to be a distinct creature based on independent observation in northern Europe. The characteristics of these observations actually modified the siren of the Physiologus, a bird-woman, into the fish-woman known today. Observations of hafstramb and margygr are explained as superior mirages. These are caused by atmospheric refraction, which distorts and magnifies distant objects. Computer simulations and photographs show that mirages of an orca, a walrus, or even a boulder match almost point for point the descriptions in the King's Mirror. Thus the apparently mythical components in the Greenland account are in fact careful scientific observations.

The Arctic Council has often been described as a formal advisory body established by the Admiralty to help direct the search for Sir John Franklin (1847–59), but no such organization existed. The source of the erroneous and misleading notion appears to be a well-known composite portrait painted by Stephen Pearce in 1851. Frequent repetition in publications on Arctic history has perpetuated the error, with imaginative embellishments.

Early explorers to Antarctica built wooden huts and brought huge quantities of supplies and equipment to support their geographical and scientific studies for several years. When the expeditions ended and relief ships arrived, a rapid exodus frequently allowed only essential items to be taken north. The huts and thousands of items were left behind. Fuel depots with unused containers of petroleum products, asbestos materials, and diverse chemicals were also left at the huts. This investigation found high concentrations of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in soils under and around the historic fuel depots, including anthracene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, benzo[k]fluoranthene, chrysene, fluorene, and pyrene, as well as benzo[a]anthracene, benzo[a]pyrene, and fluoranthene, which are recognized carcinogens. Asbestos materials within the huts have been identified and extensive amounts of fragmented asbestos were found littering the ground around the Cape Evans hut. These materials are continually abraded and fragmented as tourists walk over them and the coarse scoria breaks and grinds down the materials. A chemical spill, within the Cape Evans hut, apparently from caustic substances from one of the scientific experiments, has caused an unusual deterioration and defibration on affected woods. Although these areas are important historic sites protected by international treaties, the hazardous waste materials left by the early explorers should be removed and remedial action taken to restore the site to as pristine a condition as possible. Recommendations are discussed for international efforts to study and clean up these areas, where the earliest environmental pollution in Antarctica was produced.

The article discusses how organisational structure and culture affected the preparations for sledging in three Antarctic expeditions between 1901 and 1904. The central focus is how expedition leaders sought tacit knowledge, ‘the knowledge of how we do things.’ Two organisational types were derived from a study of 36 major polar expeditions. These – the industrial organisation and the innovative organisation – were used to analyse how sledging practices evolved in the British National Antarctic Expedition, German South Polar Expedition, and Scottish National Antarctic Expedition. Robert Falcon Scott, in great part as a result of his naval heritage, did not fully understand the need for and the methods required to gain the operational knowledge required for sledging in Antarctica. He applied the traditional command-and-control system based on naval tradition. Erich von Drygalski and William Speirs Bruce applied Fridtjof Nansen's scientific approach, in which the scientific staffs were integrated into sledging operations. In this approach, every variable that could possibly affect the outcome of the research was incorporated into preparations, much as is the case in classical experimental design. While no attempt is made to judge sledging success in the study, the results clearly indicate the importance of knowing how to use the tacit dimension in sledging. The implications go far beyond sledging and suggest the need for managers to have an intimate understanding of how things work.