Svalbard in the news again...

...this time it's the opening of the SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT (SGSV)

This is a store house where a small number of all the world's seeds and their DNA is going to be stored.
The Seed Vault is designed to hold samples of every type of seed. There are thousands of grey boxes all neatly labelled. They are stored beneath the permafrost at temperatures of 20 degrees below zero.
The vault can withstand a nuclear explosion or earthquake.

It's also know as the Doomsday Vault: the idea being that if some future catastrophe kills all plant life, the seeds in the vault (or Ark) will help to revegetate the world.

Longyearbyen is less than 1000km from the North Pole.
A range of images, courtesy of Mari Tefre / Global Crop Diversity Trust are HERE.

An INTERACTIVE look inside the vault is here too.

Can you think why the vault is located in this remote, extreme location ?