The last installment in this week on stones is an article about a storage site that holds millions of packages of seeds – a stronghold, or so the scientists thought, to protect humanity from losses of its most important crops.

The idea is, of course, brilliant. Put all of the world’s food seeds into a stone bunker in the depth of permafrost, deep in a mountain, in Spitsbergen, Norway, and know they will be safe from many, if not most, forms of destruction.

Except, the idea relies on the condition of permafrost – which, as we all know, is beginning to thaw.  Melting water, then,  managed to seep into the entrance of the seed vault.  No harm done, so far.  The floods did not reach the inner sanctum. But climate change is obviously forcing many projects to reconsider if and how they can be maintained.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts

Photographs are of stones/rocks in Indian Canyon near Palm Springs, CA.