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The Antarctic Site Inventory

The Antarctic Site Inventory commenced work in November 1994 with start-up funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation Office Of Polar Programs.

The project is primarily sustained by public support and private foundation grants, and frequently has been augmented by support from Antarctic Treaty governments and agencies — including the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Marine Mammal Commission, and the German Federal Environment Agency (Unweltbundesamt).

The Inventory’s now-tested hypothesis is whether opportunistic visits can be used: to effectively and economically detect possible visitor-caused changes in the physical features, flora, and fauna of sites in the Antarctic Peninsula being visited repeatedly; to collect baseline information necessary to detect possible changes in the physical and biological variables being monitored; and to determine how best to minimize or avoid possible environmental impacts of tourism and non-governmental activities in the Antarctic Peninsula area. In these regards, the Inventory has proved enormously successful. Logistics are provided by expedition tour vessels and the United Kingdom ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance.

The environmental concern is identifying changes to the baseline reference state and, if possible, determining whether any detected changes are naturally occurring or are anthropogenic, perhaps caused by human activities. Potential impacts may be short-term or long-term, immediate or cumulative.

Through eleven seasons from November 1994 through February 2005, the Inventory has made 639 visits to 93 Peninsula locations, including repetitive visits to all of the most heavily visited sites in the Antarctic Peninsula.

Data collected by the Inventory are intended to assist the implementation of the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which, among other things, requires a priori environmental impact assessments for all human activities, and for monitoring to be done, as and when necessary, to assess and verify predicted environmental impacts.

Three categories of data and information are collected:

Basic Site Information, which includes descriptions of key physical and topographical characteristics; latitude and longitude; distribution of flora, seal haul-out and wallow locations, and discrete groups of breeding penguins and flying birds;

Variable Site Information and Data, which includes weather and other environmental conditions (sea ice extent, cloud cover, snow cover, temperature, wind direction and speed), biological variables (number of occupied nests, number of chicks per occupied nest, ages of chicks), and the nature and extent of any observed visitor impacts (footprints or paths, cigarette butts, film canisters, and litter); and

Maps and Photodocumentation, which portray the major features of each site, particularly the locations of colonies and assemblages of resident fauna and flora.

With respect to key biological variables, data collection follows Standard Methods established by the Scientific Committee for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources for its Ecosystem Monitoring Program.

In November 2003, pursuant to a 5-year grant award to Oceanites from the US National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs, the Antarctic Site Inventory began a focused assessment and monitoring program at Petermann Island (65°10’S, 64°10’), a highly visited Peninsula location that is diverse in species composition and sensitive to potential environmental disruptions from visitors.

Biological data and site descriptions collected by the Antarctic Site Inventory are published regularly and routinely made available in peer-reviewed papers, government reports, and popular publications.

The most recent of these is the Compendium of Antarctic Peninsula Visitor Sites, 2d edition: A Report To The United States Environmental Protection Agency (2003).