Suchergebnisse

The international lawyer sometimes reads the current literature on the Canadian Arctic with a sense of uneasiness. A wide range of writers and scholars maintain an active discourse on questions relating to what is usually called "Arctic sovereignty." It is not that the lawyer feels he has any special wisdom or monopoly on discussions of questions of "sovereignty." The sovereignty concept has several layers of meaning, only one of which can be said to be the special preserve of the lawyer. Public discussion in Canada is largely, and legitimately, focussed on policy questions that flow from sovereignty, from Canada's right to exercise authority, to the exclusion of that of any other state, over vast areas of arctic lands and waters. If war is too important a matter to be left to the generals, perhaps sovereignty is too important a matter to be left to the lawyers. Nevertheless, the lawyer is sometimes troubled by a tendency of non-legal commentators to blur his favourite distinctions and to question some of his most firmly held assumptions.

Summarizes the activities of the EPF, founded by decision of the French Cabinet 27 Feb 1947 to carry out research in the earth and life sciences in polar regions. On its first expeditions, to Greenland in May and to Adelie Land, Antarctica in Nov 1948, the EPF introduced new techniques with motorized tractor convoys, air transport, parachutes and materials now in common use. EPF studies of the Greenland inland ice 1948-53 became international in collaboration with American Armed Forces 1952-58. In 1956 EPF assumed the technical and logistics organization and operational direction of the International Glaciological Expedition to Greenland (EGIG) at the request of the Snow and Ice Commission of the International Association for Scientific Hydrology: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany and Switzerland participated. Its operations, in 1957-60 and 1964-68, utilized several hundred men, air support, tracked vehicles, trailors on runners, sleds, etc. Its winter station, Jarl-Joset Station was constructed of prefabricated panels of a fiberglass-polyester composite material over a cellular core.

The Arctic Regions have been a fascinating subject of study for a long time, mainly because of man's strong desire to conquer the unknown. The military interest in those regions did not develop until recent years. With the straining of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II, the strategic significance of the Arctic soon became very real. This significance was appreciably diminished with the invention of intercontinental ballistic missiles but the more recent development of the nuclear missile-launching submarine has given the Arctic waters a new military importance. Of course, nuclear submarines could also be of considerable commercial interest. By borrowing the Arctic Ocean, merchant submarines could drastically shorten some of the present maritime trading routes. The exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic regions is already in process of giving new commercial meaning to the old Northwest and Northeast Passages. In the circumstances, an inquiry into the legal regime of the Arctic waters is timely. Two basic principles of the law of the sea are involved: the right of innocent passage, and the freedom of the seas. The present study will concentrate on the right of innocent passage. An investigation will be made into the legal status of the Arctic waters constituting what is commonly known as the Northwest Passage, on the North American side of the Pole, and the Northeast Passage or Northern Sea Route on the Soviet side. The basic question is whether or not the right of free and innocent passage in favour of foreign ships applies to those waters.

The Danish Meteorological Institute celebrated its centennial on 1 April this year and on the same date the Ionosphere Laboratory, a division under the Meteorological Institute, observed its tenth anniversary, although its history goes back almost twenty years. The idea of establishing an Ionosphere Laboratory was first conceived by the active and foresighted Professor P. O. Pedersen . During the Second Polar Year 1932-33 Pedersen wanted to build an ionosphere station in Godhavn . but it was not until 1951 that his wish was fulfilled by his assistant and later successor, Professor Jørgen Rybner. The year before, the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Bureau of Standards had established an ionosphere station at the American military base in southern Greenland and in 1957 when the U.S. Armed Forces left what is now called Narssarssuaq, Professor Rybner also undertook the responsibility for this station in his capacity as the Chairman of the Danish National Committee of the International Radio Union (URSI). It was realized that operation of the Greenlandic stations would only be feasible if there were an active group in Copenhagen to analyze the ionosphere data obtained and to train the station personnel before leaving for Greenland. To fill this need Professor Rybner founded a laboratory at the Technical University based upon support from local URSI funds. At the same time rapid technological development made possible measurements in the ionosphere with instruments launched with rockets or from satellites. Using the resources at the new laboratory, Professor Rybner in 1961 accepted a Norwegian proposal for a joint campaign with rocket launchings from Andøya in Lofoten, Norway, in cooperation with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This project formed the basis later for a Greenlandic ionosphere rocket program. . it was deemed desirable to change the laboratory supported under the Danish URSI Committee to an official laboratory under the Technical University of Denmark. . on 1 April 1962 the Ionosphere Laboratory was established at the University . Recordings of naturally generated electromagnetic noise at very low frequencies (VLF recordings), and studies had been made at Godhavn and Narssarssuaq for some years when , in 1964, a "VLF-station" was established at the Danish site Thule, approximately 80 miles north of Thule Air Base [AB]. Financial support was given by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and locally by the U.S. Army Research Support Group (USARSG). When in 1966 the American scientific camp situated approximately 16 miles east of Thule AB was closed down, the U.S. ionosphere station there was transferred to the Danish station at Thule; an ionosonde was made available from the U.S.A. and a building of 150 sq. m. was moved from the camp to the station by helicopter! The U.S. National Science Foundation supported the operation for the following three years until the Danish Government took over financial responsibility. Between 1966 and 1968 the Ionosphere Laboratory was reorganized involving among other administrative changes the establishment of an independent Danish Space Research Institute for work with balloons, rockets and satellites. Today, ten years after it was officially established with a staff of four, the Laboratory with a staff of twenty, is continuing its ionospheric research based largely upon the operations of the Greenlandic observatories at Godhavn, Narssarssuaq, and Thule. Although it is administered and financed by the Danish Meteorological Institute, it is still located at the Technical University north of Copenhagen, and maintains close cooperation with other laboratories at the University in teaching and providing guidance to graduate students. [Included are summaries of research under the following headings: ground-based measurements, vertical soundings, cosmic noise absorption measurements, whistler and VLF emissions, auroral electrojet activity, the polar ionization, geomagnetic micropulsation studies, the polar slant E condition, stratospheric balloon measurements, high altitude meteorological observations, ionospheric rocket experiment, and electric field measurements].