A team of Russian explorers will travel 7,000 kilometres (4,350 miles) across the Arctic next year in amphibian vehicles to document the region's history and environment, mission members said Thursday. "It's the most difficult stage" of a project called Polar Ring, expedition leader Vladimir Chukov, a veteran Arctic explorer with a thick grey beard, told a news conference in Moscow.
The expedition, which began in the town of Salekhard in northern Siberia in 2002, aims to complete a tour of the the Arctic in four stages by 2009, taking in Russian, Danish, Canadian and US territory.
The crossing in four vehicles from Russia to Canada via the North Pole is planned for February-June 2007. Expedition members will log the journey on a website, arctic.izvestia.ru, through satellite link-ups.
"The changes to the planet's environment are most visible in the Arctic," said Ilya Freidovich, a scientist who is taking part in the expedition.
"These processes, unfortunately, are taking place very quickly and irreversibly," Freidovich said, referring to global warming and the melting ice caps.
He said ice samples would be collected every 30-40 kilometres of the route.
A study published by US scientists this week found that the shrinkage of Arctic sea ice could accelerate dramatically in coming decades, leaving the planet's most northerly ocean virtually devoid of ice in summer by 2040.
But Chukov sounded a more cautious note on the effects of global warming, saying there should be no "panic". Drastic changes in the Arctic environment "won't be felt tomorrow or even in 20 years' time", he said.
A video of the journey so far shows the explorers encountering the remains of a Soviet prison camp, ice caves created in Soviet times to store food reserves in case of war, native reindeer herders, polar bears and cranes.
Source: Agence France-Presse
