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Bearded seal © Malcolm Parsons One of our visitors during fieldwork © Malcolm Parsons

The Arctic has stirred up the imagination of explorers and researchers for many hundreds of years, but it is only in recent years that we have begun to understand more about the role that it plays in the world.

There are a number of threats facing arctic regions today – probably the biggest and most well known is global warming. While temperatures increase it appears that goose populations are also increasing. Increasing goose populations have been found to cause extensive changes to vegetation through overgrazing and nutrient input. The effects of goose population increases have been studied in Canada but are not so well understood in Svalbard.