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Definition
The continent of Antarctica has an area of c. 1.4 million km2, and the surrounding Southern Ocean (waters south of the Antarctic Polar Front) comprises 9.6% of the world’s oceans, both possessing significant environmental, scientific, historic, educational, and intrinsic values (Burton-Johnson et al. 2016; Hughes et al. 2018; Xavier et al. 2016b). Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, and driest continent on Earth, with temperatures in parts of its central icy plateau descending below −90 °C (Cassano 2013; Scambos et al. 2018). Antarctica includes about 10% of the planet’s land surface and its ice contains about 70% of its freshwater (Kennicutt II et al. 2014; Walton 2013). It became isolated from other continents around 25–35 My ago, in the final stages of the breakup of Gondwana (Convey et al. 2018; Storey 2013), and this has led to high levels of endemism, particularly of certain marine groups such as fish and crustaceans...
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Xavier, J.C., Convey, P. (2020). Antarctic: Climate Change, Fisheries, and Governance. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (eds) Life Below Water. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71064-8_1-1
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