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At its session
in Durban, South Africa, on July 15, 2005, the World Heritage Committee
approved inclusion of the Struve Geodetic Arc in the World Heritage List.
The Struve Geodetic Arc is Finland's sixth World Heritage
Site.
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Struve -pictures (zip): BMP-format (21Mt),
EPS-format (35Mt),
JPEG-format
(7Mt)
At the beginning of the 19th century,
Friedrich George Wilhelm Struve, a German-born astronomer, decided to use
triangulation to determine the exact shape and size of the Earth.
It had been established in
the 16th century that the Earth was round, but as early
as the 17th century Isaac Newton suggested
it might be slightly flattened at the
poles. The expeditions sent to Lapland and Peru in
the 18th century proved this theory
correct.
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Measurement of the
triangulation chain known as the Struve Geodetic Arc took place
between 1816 and 1855. It comprises 258
main triangles
and 265 station points. The northernmost point is located
near Hammerfest in Norway and the southernmost point near the
Black Sea in Ukraine. In Finland, the Struve Geodetic Arc
is also known as the Russo-Scandinavian meridian
arc.
A total of 34 station points
have been selected for protection, six of these being located in Finland: Stuor-oivi (now
known as Stuorrahanoaivi) near the Norwegian border;
Avasaksa (Aavasaksa) and Tornea (Alatornio church) in
western Lapland; Puolakka (Oravivuori) in Korpilahti; Porlom
II (Tornikallio) at Porlammi in Lapinjärvi;
and Svartvira (Mustaviiri) in the Pyhtää
archipelago.
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When it was originally
measured, the chain went through the territory of only two
countries, Russia and Sweden. Now it runs
through ten states: Norway, Sweden,
Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.
These countries have been cooperating since 1993 to ensure
protection of the chain and to restore
its station points. The Struve Geodetic Arc is
in fact the first World Heritage Site to
go through such a large number of
countries.
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The meridian measurements
carried out for the Struve Geodetic Arc are
surprisingly accurate and the results
have been used for many
scientific purposes. In Finland, the Struve
Geodetic Arc connected the triangulations of the northern
and southern parts of the country up
until the 1960s.
Before satellites could
be used for land surveying, the necessary measurements were made by
determining the angles of the triangulation network. In order to
determine the scale of the network, one or more baselines were also
measured. In Struve's time, distance measurement employed measuring
poles. These were eventually replaced by invar wires, which were
used up to the introduction of distance-measuring instruments in the
1960s.
Nowadays, measurements are made using
GPS instruments based on satellite positioning, some
of them having an accuracy of
only a few millimetres.
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Land surveys and mapping
agencies in the countries concerned and international
organizations such as the International Federation of Surveyors
(FIG), International Association of Geodesy (IAG), International Astronomical
Union (IAU) and EuroGeographics, the association of European
mapping and cadastral agencies, have all
campaigned for protection of the Struve Geodetic
Arc..
In Finland, the Ministry of
Education is the authority responsible for World Heritage matters
affecting cultural sites. Both the Ministry and the National Board
of Antiquities have been very active in their support for the
project. The unwavering commitment of these two bodies and the
strong support given by Tanja Karpela, Finland's Minister of
Culture, for the efforts being made by the ten countries concerned have finally borne fruit.
The Struve Geodetic Arc has now been
incorporated into the World Heritage List
as a cultural site.
Before inclusion of the Struve
Geodetic Arc, Finland already had five sites on
the World Heritage List: Suomenlinna Fortress, Old Rauma, the old
church of Petäjävesi, Verla groundwood and board mill, and the Bronze Age
burial site at Sammallahdenmäki. In the World Heritage List, the Struve Geodetic Arc
represents scientific and technological landmarks.
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