to the Arctic started to happen more frequently by the middle of the nineteenth century. From 1338 to 1840, French La Recherche went on an expedition to the North Atlantic with a team of French, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish scientists. Between 1856 and 1914, the Swedes made about twenty-five expeditions to the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in Norway. As the Swedes expanded their influence in Spitsbergen, they used the area for economic as well as scientific motives through mining and resource extraction. During this time, the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, and Germany also started to become more active in Spitsbergen. Modern history In 1946, The Arctic Research Laboratory was established under the contract of the Office of Naval Research in Point Barrow, Alaska for the purpose of investigating the physical and biological phenomena unique to the Arctic. In 1948, Dr. Laurence Irving was appointed as the Scientific Director of the Arctic Research Laboratory and put in charge of coordinating various projects. Scientists performed fieldwork to collect data that linked new observations to prior widely accepted knowledge. Through the processes of soil sampling, surveying and photographing landscapes and distributing salmon tags, scientists demonstrated the significance of historical case studies in the study of environmental science. The ability to compare past and present data allowed scientists to understand the causes and effects of ecological changes. Around this time, geographers from McGill University were developing new methods of studying geography in the North. As laboratory research was beginning to trump field research, McGill geographers implemented use of aviation in research, helping knowledge production to occur in the laboratory instead of in the field. Aviation allowed researchers to remould the way they studied the Northern landscape and indigenous people. Quick and easy travel using aircraft also promoted an integration of the Northern science with Southern community-based science, while changing the scale of ecology being studied. The ability to photograph, and observe the Arctic from an aircraft, provided researchers with a larger scope that allowed them to see a massive amount of space at one time, while also asserting objectivity. A photograph produces evidence, similar to laboratory data, yet it can be understood, circulated and accepted by the common people due to its aesthetic value. During the Cold War, the Canadian government began taking initiatives to secure the continent, and to assert territorial authority over northern Canada, including the Arctic, which