Map of the Month Jan 09 - Antarctic Facilities

I found this Map of the Month for January, through my research to check on the current set of year-round Antarctic Research Stations. These features are shown on the Antarctica spreads of our atlases and on our digital map databases.

I used the COMNAP map of main Antarctic Facilities and accompanying table to carry out my investigations. Our news files were updated with the result and the relevant information was passed on to our map and database editors.

The map
The main map is titled Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, Antarctic facilities operated by the National Antarctic Programs in the Antarctic Treaty Area (south of 60° latitude south), Draft Edition 4 (as at June 2008). This map is designed for printing out at A0+ size (84 x119 cm and larger), so is essentially a wall chart.


Click to download the map (8.3 MB PDF) from the COMNAP website

It also includes: A smaller Antarctic Status world map and table indicating the countries signed up to the Antarctic Treaty and membership of Antarctic organisations. A table of the Main Antarctic Facitities operated by the National Antarctic Programs in the Antarctic Treaty Area with relevant details. A smaller Antarctica Search And Rescue map indicating the Maritime and Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centres responsible for part of the Antarctic Region & Boundaries of Maritime Search and Rescue Regions.


Extract from the main map (click to enlarge)

The background
COMNAP stands for Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs. Created in 1988, it is the international association that brings together National Antarctic Programs from around the world to develop and promote best practice in managing the support of scientific research in Antarctica.

Each signatory to the Antarctic Treaty normally establishes a National Antarctic Program, which has national responsibility for managing the support of scientific research in the Antarctic Treaty Area on behalf of its government and in the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty. COMNAP currently brings together the National Antarctic Programs of 29 countries from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australasia.

The result
After checking the map and facilities table, two year-round Antarctic Research Stations have been added to our databases and will be shown on forthcoming mapping such as the Times Concise Atlas of the World (new 11th edition to be published later this year). Arturo Prat station (Chile) on Greenwich Island, South Shetland Islands is now operational all-year round. The new eco-friendly, zero-emission, Princess Elisabeth (Belgium) station in Dronning Maud Land is under trial operation.

Further information
This map is copyright to COMNAP. It is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

The first formal use of "Antarctica" as a continental name was in the 1890s, attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew, see a previous Collins Maps post Antarctica.