Polar tourism is a quickly growing, little-studied industry. Understanding tourism's current effects and forecasting future ones is increasingly important. This paper investigates the applicability and usefulness of predictive tourism models for polar environments, by focusing upon Arctic Ship Tourism (AST). R.W. Butler's evolutionary tourism model is presented, with emphasis upon Stanley Plog's version. The strong fit of AST within the framework of these models is established, with emphasis on likely future developments. Usefulness of models in the polar context is limited by several factors, including their origins, their lack of a price/demand element, their deterministic cycle, and vagueness. Still, identifying likely future trends, such as growth levels, passenger characteristics, regulatory mechanisms, and environmental impacts, can result in practical advice for polar resource managers and tour operators.

In the autumn of 1852, convinced that a successful search for her husband's missing expedition via Bering Strait could only be guaranteed by using a steam vessel, Jane, Lady Franklin, decided to dispatch such a vessel herself (this was the third such expedition she mounted). Her choice of vessel fell on the screw schooner Isabel, which Captain E.A. Inglefield had just brought back from his search of Smith Sound and Jones Sound. The captain she selected was William Kennedy, who, with Enseigne-de-vaisseau Joseph-René Bellot as second-in-command, had just returned from an expedition to the eastern Arctic in Prince Albert. After a few brief months of hectic preparations, in which Lady Franklin and her niece Sophia Cracroft played an unusually active role, Isabel sailed from the Thames on 1 April 1853, bound for Bering Strait via the Strait of Magellan. Despite warnings not to do so (largely due to the danger of losing his crew to the lure of the Californian and Australian gold rushes), Kennedy put into Valparaiso on 26 August 1853. Almost all his officers and crew jumped ship. After more than two years of frustration, during which he generated some revenue by several coastal voyages off Chile, at Lady Franklin's request Kennedy brought Isabel back to England in early December 1855. Isabel was found to have dry rot and was sold. Kennedy fell out with Lady Franklin and did not participate in any further Arctic searches.

1997 was an important year for Russia's Northern Sea Route (NSR) in terms of foreign interest. The first full transits of the NSR by western merchant ships were made. The International Northern Sea Route Programme (INSROP) continued into phase 2 of its research projects, and planning proceeded for a European Union-sponsored demonstration voyage to the Ob' River. The nuclear icebreaker Arktika returned to Arctic operations, while two icebreakers were removed from polar service. Information about the NSR became more widely available with the distribution of an English translation of a navigation guide. Winter operations continued in the Kara Sea, albeit reduced, and a limited number of summer voyages to Russian Arctic ports originated from the Pacific rim. RADARS AT synthetic aperture radar images of sea ice along the NSR were used for the first time during several demonstration voyages.

Azorella Peninsula on Heard Island in the sub-Antarctic comprises basaltic scoria that is overlain by basalt flows. Typical tube-fed pahoehoe flows characteristic of some Hawaiian-type volcanoes occur. The volcanic landforms of the peninsula include highly degraded volcano remnants and undissected scoria cones, pahoehoe flows, lava rises, tumuli, open vertical volcanic conduits, and lava tubes. Features produced by lava inflation are widespread but are generally of low topographic relief. Many detailed lava-flow features are preserved in dramatically fresh condition within the protected environment of lava tubes. They highlight the efficacy of the lava tubes in maintaining high temperatures and low viscosity of the flowing lava. The lava tubes on Heard Island are the only features of their kind hitherto recorded from Antarctic and sub-Antarctic latitudes.

The different designs of sledges and dog harnesses, the methods of hitching used by the various peoples of the Arctic regions in the eighteenth century, and the influences they had on each other, are investigated. The development of dog sledging reflects not only the migrations of herding tribes of the steppe into southern Siberia — which progressively pushed some peoples farther and farther northeast — but the relationship between peoples whose culture was nomadic or more settled, whose way of life depended on reindeer herding or not, or who had earlier or later contact with the Russians or other Europeans. The Europeans in North America, it is argued, learned dog sledging from the Eskimos and taught it to the Indians. The Russians appear to have discovered dog sledging in Siberia, where their influence ultimately overcame many of the techniques of the native peoples. The Eskimos are found to have had the most-developed harnessing methods during the eighteenth century, and to have been the prevailing influence where they met with other sledging peoples.