Antartica Location:
At 14.4 million km2, it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America; in turn, Europe and Australia are smaller. Some 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice, which averages at least 1.6 km in thickness.
Antartica Geography:
Centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle, Antarctica is the southernmost continent and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. (Alternatively, it may be considered to be surrounded by the southern Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, or by the southern waters of the World Ocean.) It covers more than 14 million km2, making it the fifth-largest continent, about 1.3 times larger than Europe. The coastline measures 17,968 km (11,160 miles) and is mostly characterized by ice formations
Antarctica is divided in two by the Transantarctic Mountains close to the neck between the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea. The portion west of the Weddell Sea and east of the Ross Sea is called Western Antarctica and the remainder Eastern Antarctica, because they roughly correspond to the Western and Eastern Hemispheres relative to the Greenwich meridian.
Antartica People:
Antarctica has no permanent residents, but a number of governments maintain permanent research stations throughout the continent. The number of people conducting and supporting scientific research and other work on the continent and its nearby islands varies from approximately 4000 in summer to about 1000 in winter. Many of the stations are staffed year-round.
Two researchers studying plankton through microscopes.The first semi-permanent inhabitants of regions near Antarctica (areas situated south of the Antarctic Convergence) were British and American sealers who used to spend a year or more on South Georgia, from 1786 onward. During the whaling era, which lasted until 1966, the population of that island varied from over 1000 in the summer (over 2000 in some years) to some 200 in the winter. Most of the whalers were Norwegian, with an increasing proportion of Britons. The settlements included Grytviken, Leith Harbour, King Edward Point, Stomness, Husvik, Prince Olav Harbour, Ocean Harbour and Godthul. Managers and other senior officers of the whaling stations often lived together with their families. Among them was the founder of Grytviken, Captain Carl Anton Larsen, a prominent Norwegian whaler and explorer who adopted British citizenship in 1910, along with his family. Grytviken operated under the Argentine flag from 1904 (its foundation) to 1943.[24]
Field work.The first child born in the southern polar region was Norwegian girl Solveig Gunbjörg Jacobsen, born in Grytviken on 8 October 1913, and her birth was registered by the resident British Magistrate of South Georgia. She was a daughter of Fridthjof Jacobsen, the assistant manager of the whaling station, and of Klara Olette Jacobsen. Jacobsen arrived on the island in 1904 to become the manager of Grytviken, serving from 1914 to 1921; two of his children were born on the island.[25]
Emilio Marcos Palma was the first person born on the Antarctic mainland, at Base Esperanza in 1978; his parents were sent there along with seven other families by the Argentinean government to determine if family life was suitable on the continent. In 1986, Juan Pablo Camacho was born at the Eduardo Frei Montalva Station, becoming the first Chilean born in Antarctica. Several bases are now home to families with children attending schools at the station.[26]
Antartica Government:
Government
Executive Secretary governed by the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat
Johannes Huber
Antartica Economy:
Although coal, hydrocarbons, iron ore, platinum, copper, chromium, nickel, gold and other minerals have been found, they have not been located in large enough quantities to exploit. The 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty also restricts a struggle for resources. In 1998, a compromise agreement was reached to add a 50-year ban on mining until the year 2048, further limiting economic development and exploitation. The primary agricultural activity is the capture and offshore trading of fish. Antarctic fisheries in 2000 01 reported landing 112,934 tonnes.[34]
Antarctic postal services.Small-scale tourism has existed since 1957 and is currently largely self-regulated by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO). However, not all vessels associated with Antarctic tourism are members of IAATO. Several ships transport people to Antarctica to visit specific scenic locations. A total of 27,950 tourists visited during the 2004 05 Austral summer with nearly all of them coming from commercial ships. The number is predicted to increase to over 80,000 by 2010.[35][36] There has been some recent concern over the adverse environmental and ecosystem effects caused by the influx of visitors. A call for stricter regulations for ships and a tourism quota have been made by some environmentalists and scientists.[37] Antarctic sight seeing flights (which did not land) operated out of Australia and New Zealand until the fatal crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 in 1979 on Mount Erebus, which killed all 257 aboard. Qantas resumed commercial overflights to Antarctica from Australia in the mid-1990s.
Antartica More Information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antartica | 
