Everyone's heard of the Wild West -- get ready for the Wild North. As sea ice in the Arctic keeps melting, the region is going to become one of the last great frontiers of oil, gas, and mineral exploration on the planet.
Trouble is, the United States, Canada, Russia, and several countries in Scandinavia all have major claims to the region. For the most part the boundaries have been drawn, but there are a few areas of overlap, and they could lead to a good, old-fashioned international territorial dispute.
To try and help sort things out, researchers at Durham University in the UK have put together a map of countries' claims and where they overlap.
As the scientists point out, a lot of the problem stems from the fact that the Arctic Ocean is essentially uncharted. Every country gets exclusive rights to the 200 nautical miles of water off its coast. The rule designed to cover the continental shelf, a relatively shallow part of the sea floor that is often rich in resources.
But no one knows for sure where the continental shelf ends in the Arctic Ocean. Research expeditions from the interested countries are trying to figure this out, but it's likely that everyone's going to have a different definition of where their piece of shelf ends, allowing them to draw territorial boundaries that benefit them the most.
Should be an interesting kettle of fish to keep an eye on as the amount of open water in the Arctic keeps increasing.
Source: Durham University
Hello Mr. Reilly. I was just reading your article on the arsenic in Mono Lake. In the article you refer to the energy molecule ATP as Adenosine Troposphere. I thought the troposphere was the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. Should this be corrected to Adenosine Tri-Phosphate?
Please email me your response, as I am not really a "blogger".
Thanks!
Joe Dunbrook
email: jgdunbrook@sbcglobal.net
Posted by: Joe Dunbrook | August 15, 2008 at 07:42 PM