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Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin

The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis) is a species of humpback dolphin inhabiting coastal waters of the eastern Indian and western Pacific Oceans. This species is often referred to as the Chinese white dolphin in mainland China, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan as a common name. Some biologists regard the Indo-Pacific dolphin as a subspecies of the Indian Ocean humpback dolphin (S. plumbea) which ranges from East Africa to India. However, DNA testing studies have shown that the two are distinct species. A new species, the Australian humpback dolphin (S. sahulensis), was split off from S. chinensis and recognized as a distinct species in 2014. Nevertheless, there are still several unresolved issues in differentiation of the Indian Ocean-type and Indo-Pacific-type humpback dolphins.

Taxonomy
Two subspecies of the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin are currently recognized:
 * S. c. chinensis, or the Chinese humpback dolphin
 * S. c. taiwanensis, or the Taiwanese humpback dolphin

Description
An adult Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin is grey, white or pink and may appear as an albino dolphin to some. Populations along the coasts of China and Thailand have been observed with pink skin. The pink colour originates not from a pigment, but from blood vessels which were overdeveloped for thermoregulation. The body length is 2 to 3.5 m for adults, 1 m for infants. An adult weighs 150 to 230 kg. Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins live up to 40 years, as determined by the analysis of their teeth.

Calves are dark grey or black at birth and measure around 1 m (3.3 ft) in length. Their coloration lightens through a mottled grey as they age.

Behaviour
Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins live in small groups, generally with fewer than ten individuals. They hunt as a group using echolocation.

Adult dolphins come to the water surface to breathe for 20 to 30 seconds before diving deep again, for two to eight minutes. Dolphin calves, with smaller lung capacities, surface twice as often as adults, staying underwater for one to three minutes. Adult dolphins rarely stay under water for more than four minutes. They sometimes leap completely out of the water. They may also rise up vertically from the water, exposing the dorsal half of their bodies. A pair of protruding eyes allows them to see clearly in both air and water.

Reproduction
Female dolphins reach sexual maturity at around ten years old, while males mature at around 13 years old. They usually mate from the end of summer to autumn, and calves are born after a gestation period of eleven months. The mother stays with her calf until it can find food for itself, usually when it reaches 3–4 years old.

Threats
The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin is threatened by habitat loss, water pollution, coastal development, overfishing and an increase in marine traffic within its range.

In 2015 the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin was classed as "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Water pollution
In 2013, conservationists in Hong Kong warned that the local population had fallen from 158 individuals in 2003 to just 78 in 2011. Members of Hong Kong Dolphinwatch spotted a group of dolphins helping a mother to support her dead calf above the water in an attempt to revive it. A Dolphinwatch spokeswoman claimed that the calf had died after ingesting toxins from polluted seawater through its mother's milk. The Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society warned of a further decline in dolphin numbers in the area.

Plastic pollution
Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins are at particular risk of exposure to organic pollutants because they inhabit shallow coastal waters, which are often impacted by human activities. Anthropogenic pollutants pose a risk to marine mammals that reside in coastal waters. Discharge of organic pollutants into marine environments has been shown to decrease water quality, resulting in habitat loss and a significant reduction in species richness. The loss of key pods has caused species fragmentation, also due to habitat loss, which increases species isolation and decreases connectivity, resulting in population decline.

Plastic pollution is widespread across all oceans due to the buoyant and durable properties of plastic, which allow for sorption of toxicants to plastic while traveling through the environment. This has led researchers to the conclusion that synthetic polymers are hazardous to marine life and should be declared as a hazardous waste type. There are many transit paths that allow for plastics and pollutions to enter oceans: freshwater waste can enter oceans by rivers at the delta or estuary, by humans discarding their waste directly into marine waters, or through photo-degradation and other forms of weathering processes that aid in plastic fragmentation and dispersal. Large quantities of fragmented plastics collect in subtropical ocean gyres. Plastic accumulation is not limited to ocean gyres; closed bays, gulfs and seas surrounded by densely populated coastlines and watersheds are all susceptible.

The consumption of plastics causes adverse effects in marine mammals such as disease susceptibility, reproductive and developmental toxicity. Constant absorption of organic pollutants like plastic can be transferred into the dolphin's tissues and organs through an ingestion pathway that is impacting megafauna, lower trophic levels and predators (not limited to Indo-Pacific). Organ toxicity can lead to organ failure, loss of offspring and milk toxicity. Even if the dolphin is not consuming plastic directly then it can take in plastic pollutants through biomagnification and bioaccumulation. Bioaccumulation is defined as the uptake of chemicals from the environment through dietary intake, dermal (skin) absorption or respiratory transport in air or water. This is a huge factor in plastic toxicity consumption in this species due to its long lifespan, which makes it susceptible to chronic exposure. Also, these dolphins contain a large quantity of blubber, lipids, which can result in an excess of toxicity storage in their tissues. Plastic pollution can also interfere with dolphins' use of echolocation. Echolocation is the main sense that all dolphins use to navigate, as well as to pinpoint prey and predators. Dolphins and whales use echolocation by bouncing high-pitched clicking sounds off underwater objects, similar to shouting and listening for echoes. The sounds are made by squeezing air through nasal passages near the blowhole. These sound-waves then pass into the forehead, where a big blob of fat called the melon focuses them into a beam. This process can be interrupted by noise pollution, as well as by obstructions in the water such as masses of oil or plastics. Large blockages in the water can refract sound-waves, misleading the dolphin to falsely detect prey, kin or a predator in the area. This can become confusing and frustrating which can lead to extreme stress and potential health issues.

Clusters of plastic debris can cause noise pollution which interferes with the dolphins' sense of echolocation. As plastic debris is hurled together by ocean currents, sound is produced underwater. An excess of sound waves underwater can render the dolphins' sense of echolocation useless.

Distributions and watching
In Hong Kong, boat trips to visit the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins have been running since the 1990s. The dolphins mainly live in the waters of Lantau North, Southeast Lantau, the Soko Islands and Peng Chau. A code of conduct regulates dolphin-watching activity in Hong Kong waters.

There have been some reports of dolphin watching practices that have further endangered the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, such as in Sanniang Bay dolphin sanctuary in Qinzhou and off Xiamen. However, these generally are small, locally organised one-off tours or private pleasure boats that do not adhere to the Hong Kong Agricultural and Fisheries Department's voluntary code of conduct.

Nánpēng Islands Marine Sanctuary in Nan'ao County is also home to local pods. The population in Leizhou Bay, Leizhou Peninsula, comprising nearly 1,000 animals and the second largest population in the nation, may also be targeted for future tourism. Hepu National Sanctuary of Dugongs, and waters around Sanya Bay and other coasts adjacent on Hainan Island are home to some dolphins. As the environment and local ecosystems recovery, dolphins' presences in nearby waters have been increasing such as vicinity to the nature sanctuary of Weizhou and Xieyang Islands. Gulf of Tonkin waters in Vietnam may have unstudied populations that may appear elsewhere such as along Xuân Thủy National Park and Hòn Dáu Island in Hải Phòng.

Cambodia: In December 2023, the Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC) estimated between 100 and 200 the number of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in the region of Kampot and Koh Kong. During a survey in May of 2024, MCC observed a pod of humpback dolphins with an Irrawady dolphin mother and calf on the Prek Tnaot River in Kampot.

Cantonese slang
The Cantonese language has a slang expression wu gei bak gei (often written as 烏忌白忌, "black taboo white taboo") which means someone or something is a bad omen or a nuisance. The phrase originates from the Cantonese fisher people, because they claim the dolphins eat the fish in their nets. However, in formal Chinese, it should be written as 烏鱀白鱀, with the gei originally in old Chinese, meaning dolphins. The wu refers to the finless porpoises, which are black, and the bak, white, referring to Chinese river dolphins. These two species often interrupt and ruin the fishermen's catch. As years passed, because "dolphin" sounds the same as "bad luck", the meaning of the phrase changed. However, in Cantonese, wu refers to the calves of Chinese white dolphin and bak refers to the adults. Nowadays, dolphins are not called gei anymore, but 海豚 (hai tun), literally meaning "sea pig", with none of the negative connotations for pig found in English.

Taiwanese humpback dolphin
The Taiwanese humpback dolphin (S. c. taiwanensis) is a subspecies of the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin found in the Eastern Taiwan Strait. The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins were first discovered along the west coast of Taiwan in 2002. Based on a survey done in 2002 and 2003, they are often found in waters <5m deep, and no evidence shows that they appear in water deeper than 15m. A study in 2008 found that the population of humpback dolphins, which occupies a linear range of about 500 km^2 along the central west coast of Taiwan, is genetically distinct from all populations living in other areas. This population is called Eastern Taiwan Strait population.

Taiwan is a densely populated island and highly developed area, which has many industrial development projects, especially along the west coast, where the Eastern Taiwan Strait populations of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins live. Based on data collected between 2002 and 2005, the Eastern Taiwan Strait population of humpback dolphins was less than 100 individuals. The newest data released in 2012 shows that only 62 individuals are left. It means during those 7 years, population of humpback dolphins is being destroyed constantly and severely. A preliminary examination revealed that the Eastern Taiwan Strait humpback dolphin population meets the IUCN Red List criteria for "Critically endangered". Without further protection and regulation, this population will go extinct quickly. The Eastern Taiwan Strait is listed as Endangered species Under the Endangered Species Act by NOAA Fisheries since 2018.

There are several facts that result in the decreasing number of Eastern Taiwan Strait population of humpback dolphins. First, large-scale modification of the shoreline by industrial development including hydraulic filling for creating industrial or science parks, seawall construction and sand mining cause habitat fragmentation and diminish dolphin's habitats. In addition, exploitation of shoreline also contributes to toxic contamination flows into dolphin's habitats. The chemical pollution from industrial or agricultural and municipal discharge results in impaired health of dolphins, for instance, reproductive disorders, and compromised immune system.

Second, fishing activities along the west coast of Taiwan are thriving, and cause many impacts on dolphins. Widespread and intensive use of gillnets and vessel strikes are potential threats for dolphins. Over exploitation of fish by fisheries' is another threat for the dolphin population. It has led to disturbance of marine food web or trophic level and reduces marine biodiversity. Therefore, dolphins have not enough prey to live on.

Still another problem is reduced amount of freshwater flows into estuaries from rivers. Since the Eastern Taiwan Strait population of humpback dolphins is closely associated with estuaries habitat, the elimination of freshwater discharge from rivers significantly decreases the amount of suitable habitats for dolphins.

Hydroacoustic disturbance is another critical issue for dolphins. Sources of noise can come from dredging, pile driving, increased vessel traffic, seawall construction, and soil improvement. For all cetaceans, sound is vital for providing information about their environment, communicating with other individuals, and foraging; also, they are very vulnerable and sensitive to the effects of noise. Elevated anthropogenic sound level causes many dysfunctions of their behaviors, and even leads to death.

In addition to threats from anthropogenic activities, dolphins are potentially at the risk due to the small population size, which may result in inbreeding and decreased genetic and demographic variability. Finally, climate change causes more typhoons to hit the west coast of Taiwan and cause great disturbance to dolphins' habitats.

Conservation
The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin is listed on Appendix II of the convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). It is listed on Appendix II as it has an unfavourable conservation status or would benefit significantly from international co-operation organised by tailored agreements. In the interim of 2003–2013, the number of these dolphins in the bay around Hong Kong has dwindled from a population of 159 to just 61 individuals, a population decline of 60% in the last decade. The population continues to be further threatened by pollution, vessel collision, overfishing, and underwater noise pollution.

In addition to their natural susceptibility to anthropogenic disturbances, the Chinese white dolphin's late sexual maturity, reduced fecundity, reduced calf survival, and long calving intervals heavily curtails their ability to naturally cope with elevated rates of mortality.

In recent years, Taiwan launched the largest Indo-Pacific Humpbacked Dolphin sanctuary on the Taiwanese coast, stretching from Miaoli County to Chiayi County. The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin is also covered by the Memorandum of Understanding for the Conservation of Cetaceans and Their Habitats in the Pacific Islands Region (Pacific Cetaceans MoU).

Timeline of main events

 * 1637: The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin was first documented in English by the adventurer Peter Mundy in Hong Kong near the Pearl River. The species are attracted to the Pearl River Estuary because of its brackish waters.
 * 1765: Pehr Osbeck gives the first scientific description of the species.
 * Late 1980s: Environmentalists started to pay attention to the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin population.
 * Early 1990: The Hong Kong public started to become aware of the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin. This was due to the side effects of the construction of the Chek Lap Kok Airport. It was one of the world's largest single reclamation projects: the reclamation of nine square kilometers of the seabed near Northern Lantau, which was one of the major habitats of the dolphins.
 * Early 1993: Re-evaluation of the environmental effects of the construction of Chek Lap Kok Airport. This alerted eco-activists such as those from the World Wide Fund for Nature in Hong Kong, in turn bringing media attention on the matter. Soon enough, the Hong Kong Government began getting involved by funding projects to research on the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins
 * Late 1993: The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department was founded.
 * 1996: Dr. Thomas Jefferson began to conduct research on the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in hope of discovering more about them.
 * 1997: The Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin became the official mascot of the 1997 sovereignty changing ceremonies in Hong Kong.
 * 1998: The research results of Dr. Thomas Jefferson was published in "Wildlife Monographs".
 * 1998: The Hong Kong Dolphinwatch was organized and began to run dolphin watching tours for the general public to raise the public's awareness of the species.
 * 2000: The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department started to conduct long-term observation of the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in Hong Kong.
 * 2000: The population of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins has reached around 80–140 dolphins in the Pearl River waters.
 * 2014: Jefferson and Rosenbaum revised the taxonomy of the humpback dolphins (Sousa spp.). They describe a new species, the Australian humpback dolphin and define the accepted common name for this species, the Indo-Pacific Humpback dolphin.

title: Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin


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Al-Ghabisiyya

Al-Ghabisiyya was a Palestinian Arab village in northern Palestine, 16 km north-east of Acre in present-day Israel. It was depopulated by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948-1950 period of Palestinian expulsion and remains deserted.

History
A wine press, dating to the Bronze Age, has been found at Al-Ghabisiyya. Other remains, suggesting that the place might have had a Roman and Byzantine settlement have also been discovered. One Corinthian capital was observed there in the 19th century.

During the Crusader period the site was known as La Gabasie and was one of the fiefs of Casal Imbert. It was described as part of the domain of the Crusaders during the hudna ("truce") between the Crusaders based in Acre and the Mamluk sultan al-Mansur Qalawun in 1283.

Ottoman era

The village corresponds to that of Ghabiyya in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Akka, part of Sanjak Safad, in the 1596 C.E. Ottoman tax register. This village had a population of 58 households (khana) and 2 bachelors (mujarrad), all Moslem. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, fruit trees, cotton, and water buffalo; a total of 6,334 akçe. 14/24 of the revenue went to a Waqf.

A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed the place, named as El Rabsieh. The village mosque dates from the time of Ali Pasha al-Khazindar, father of Abdullah Pasha (i.e. some time before 1818 CE). French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village, which he called "El-Rhabsieh", in 1875. In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described al-Ghabisiyya as "a village, built of stone, containing about 150 Moslems, on the edge of the plain, surrounded by olives, figs, pomegranate and gardens; a stream of water near, plentiful of water."

A population list from about 1887 showed that Al-Ghabisiyya had about 390 inhabitants, all Muslim.

British Mandate era
At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate, Al-Ghabisiyya had a population of 427, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 470, still Muslims, in a total of 125 houses.

The population grew to 690 in the 1945 statistics, still all Muslim. Together with the nearby villages of Shaykh Dannun and Shaykh Dawud, the village had 11,771 dunums of land in 1945. The local economy was based on livestock and agriculture. In 1944/45 a total of 6,633 dunums of land in the three villages was used for cereals, 1,371 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, and 58 dunams were built-up (urban) land. 300 dunums in Ghabisiyya were planted with olive trees.

1948 war, and expulsion
The village was in the territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Like many Arab villages, it had a non-aggression pact with nearby Jewish communities. In the early months of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the villagers provided the Jewish militia Haganah with intelligence and ammunition in return for an agreement to not enter the village or harm the inhabitants. On the other hand, some of the villagers joined in the March 1948 attack on the Jewish convoy to kibbutz Yehiam in which 47 Haganah soldiers were killed.

On May 21, 1948, the Haganah's Carmeli Brigade captured al-Ghabisiyya during Operation Ben-Ami. The village formally surrendered, but the Carmeli troops "entered the village with guns blazing", killing several inhabitants. Six villagers who were thought to have taken part in the attack on the Yehiam convoy were apparently then executed.

The villagers fled or were expelled to nearby villages, where they remained until the complete Jewish conquest of the Galilee in October. At that time, many of the residents went to Lebanon while others fled to nearby Arab towns and became Israeli citizens due to their registration in the October–November census. The latter tried repeatedly to settle back in their village. Some apparently obtained permission but others went back illegally. On January 24, 1950, the Military Governor of the Galilee ordered all the residents of al-Ghabisiyya to leave within 48 hours and then declared the village a closed military area. No alternative accommodation had been arranged, and the villagers took up temporary residence in abandoned houses of nearby Shaykh Dawud and Sheikh Danun.

The expulsion caused a public controversy. The leaders of the leftist Mapam party condemned it, but they were undermined by the Mapam-dominated regional Jewish settlements bloc (one Mapam kibbutz of which was already cultivating al-Ghabisiyya's land) which declared that the "Arabs of Ghabisiyya should on no account be allowed to return to their village". In September 1950, some of the villagers again resettled the village but were sentenced to several months in prison and given fines.

After 1948
In 1951, the villagers instituted proceedings against the Military Government in the High Court of Israel. The court ruled that the declaration of the village as a closed area had been improperly instituted, and in consequence "the military governor had no authority to evict the petitioners [from the village] and he has no authority to prevent them from entering or leaving it or from residing there." The military government responded by sealing the village, and two days later again declared it to be a closed military area. The villagers appealed to the High Court again, but the court ruled that the new declaration was legal and in consequence villagers who had not managed to return to the village before that declaration (which in practice was all of them) were forbidden to go there without permission. The village thus remained deserted. Its lands were officially expropriated and in 1955 its houses were demolished leaving only the large mosque. Later attempts of the villagers to return to the village were not successful. The villagers set up a committee whose principal activity was to renovate the village cemetery and mosque, and in July 1972 the committee wrote to the prime minister:

"In the village a mosque and the cemetery remain.... The mosque is in a run-down state and the cemetery, where our relatives are buried, is neglected and overgrown with weeds to such an extent that it is impossible to identify the graves any more. Knowing that our state authorities have always taken care of the places of worship and cemeteries of all the ethnic communities,... [we ask] to be enabled to carry out repairs on the mosque and also to repair and fence the cemetery and put it in order."

The authorities did not permit the al-Ghabisiyya's residents to carry out the requested renovation of the mosque and cemetery. The land of the village, including the mosque, had been acquired by the Israel Land Administration (ILA) under one of the laws regarding land expropriation, and not the Ministry of Religion, which is responsible for holy places. In 1994 members of the village committee began renovating the mosque and praying there. In January 1996 the ILA sealed the entrance of the mosque, but the villagers broke through the fence and again used the mosque for prayers. The villagers appealed to Prime Minister Shimon Peres in April 1996, they received a reply on his behalf from one of his aides: "The government of Israel regards itself as obligated to maintain the holy places of all religions, including, of course, cemeteries and mosques sacred to Islam. The prime minister has stated to the heads of the Arab community, with whom he recently met, that the government would see to the renovation and the restoration of the dignity of mosques in abandoned villages, including the mosque in Ghabisiyya." However, Shimon Peres was defeated in the next prime ministerial elections, and in March 1997 police surrounded the mosque and representatives from ILA removed copies of the Quran and prayer rugs and once again sealed the entrance of the mosque. The conflict was carried to the court in Acre, where the uprooted villagers contended that the government action was contrary to Israel's "Law of Preservation of Holy Places". The ILA challenged the villagers right to pray there, and used the illegal eviction of 1951 and the demolition of the village in 1955 as arguments to bolster its claim:"'The village of Ghabisiyya was abandoned by its inhabitants and destroyed during the War for Independence'.... [the mosque..had stood]..'lonely and neglected'...'and since it was in a run-down and unstable state that constituted a threat to the safety of those inside it, it was decided by the Ministry of Religions to seal it and fence it off."

The court declined to issue an injunction permitting worshippers back into the mosque. The Ghabisiyya villagers still pray in the field outside the sealed mosque.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Al-Ghabisiyya


text:
Iqrit

Iqrit (إقرت or إقرث, Iqrith) was a Palestinian Christian village, located 25 km northeast of Acre. Originally allotted to form part of an Arab state under the proposed 1947 UN Partition Plan, it was seized and depopulated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and their territory later became part of the new State of Israel. All of its Christian inhabitants were forced to flee to Lebanon or the Israeli village of Rameh, and, despite the promise that they would be returned in two weeks' time, the villagers were not allowed to return. In 1951, in response to a plea from the Iqrit villagers, the Israel Supreme Court ruled that the former residents of Iqrit be allowed to return to their homes. However, before that happened, the IDF, despite awareness of the Supreme Court decision, destroyed Iqrit. Descendants of the villagers maintain an outpost in the village church, and bury their dead in its cemetery. All attempts to cultivate its lands are uprooted by the Israel Lands Administration.

Antiquity: archaeological sites
The Canaanites erected a statue for the god Melqart of Tyre in the village. The village area contains mosaic floors, remains of a wine press, rock-hewn tombs, cisterns, and granite implements. There are many archaeological sites in Iqrit's vicinity.

Iqrit is identified with Yoqeret or Yokereth (יוקרת) a Jewish village mentioned in the Talmud, homeplace of Jose of Yokereth (Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit, 23b).

Crusader period
When the Crusaders occupied Iqrit, they called it Acref. Açref is a name still commonly used for the village among surrounding Bedouin tribes.

Ottoman period
Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Iqrit appeared in the 1596 tax registers as being in the  nahiya (subdistrict) of Akka under the Liwa of Safad, with a population of 374 and an economy dependent largely on goats, beehives and agriculture. There was a press used for olives or grapes.

In 1875,  Victor Guérin passed by the village and was told that it was "very considerable" and inhabited by Maronites and Greek Orthodox Christians. In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's (PEF) Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) called it Akrith, and described  it as a village of stone buildings situated on a tell, with arable land including figs and olives, a modern chapel serving a Christian population of 100, and water supplied by three springs and a dozen rock-cut cisterns.

British Mandate
Like a number of other villages in the area, Iqrit was linked to the coastal highway from Acre to Ras an-Naqura via a secondary road leading to Tarbikha. There were 339 people living in 50 houses in the census of 1931, which rose to 490 by the 1945 statistics, comprising 460 Christians and 30 Muslims. There was a total of 24722 dunam of land according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 458 dunams were plantations and irrigable land; 1,088 were used for cereals, while 68 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

At the time of their eviction in November 1948, there were 491 citizens in Iqrit, including 432 Melkites (Greek Catholics), inhabiting the entire area of the village. Some of the 59 Muslims of the village rented their homes in Iqrit while others had built houses in esh-Shafaya.

Only part of the village land was cultivated and the rest was covered with oak, laurel and carob trees. By 1948, the village owned about 600 dunams (600,000 m²) of private property with groves of fig trees that served all inhabitants of Iqrit and the surroundings. The groves covered the hill of al-Bayad, and the remaining cultivated land was used for crops of lentils, as well as tobacco and other fruit trees.

The village included a private elementary school administered by the Greek Catholic Archdiocese and a large Melkite (Greek Catholic) church, the latter of which remains standing. There were two natural water springs, and many wells and a large pool for collected rainwater. There were many threshing floors, mainly located between the built-up village lands and the cemetery.

1948 war

Iqrit was captured on 31 October 1948 by the Haganah's Oded Brigade during Operation Hiram, an Israeli offensive which advanced on the coastal road towards Lebanon. Iqrit and Tarbikha surrendered and the villagers stayed in their homes.

Iqrit and a number of other villages in the region were soon affected by a policy known as "an Arabless border strip". Six days after its surrender, on 5 November 1948, the Israeli Army ordered the villagers to surrender the village, stating that they would be returned in two weeks' time when the military operations had concluded. Some went to Lebanon and the Israeli Army trucked the majority to Rame, a town between Acre and Safad.

According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the villagers of Iqrit were outright expelled by the Israeli Army in November 1948, together with the villagers of Kafr Bir'im, Nabi Rubin and Tarbikha, "without Cabinet knowledge, debate, or approval – though, almost inevitably, this received post facto  Cabinet endorsement." While some of the former inhabitants of Iqrit became refugees in Lebanon, most are now internally displaced Palestinians who are also citizens of Israel.

1951 Supreme Court ruling
The first legal action against the state of Israel was brought in 1951 by 5 men of Iqrit. Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari, acting as their lawyer, was instrumental in gaining the right of return for the men. On 31 July 1951, the Israeli courts recognised the rights of the villagers to their land and their right to return to it. The court said the land was not abandoned and therefore could not be placed under the Custodian of Absentee Property.

In July 1951, the villagers of Iqrit pleaded their case before Israel's Supreme Court, and the court ruled in favour of the right to return to their village. After this judgement, the military government found another justification to prevent their return. The villagers appealed to the Supreme Court again and were scheduled to have their case considered on 6 February 1952.

IDF razes Iqrit
On Christmas Day 1951, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed the village. According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Israeli soldiers took the village chief of Iqrit to the top of a nearby hill to force him to watch as Israeli troops conducted explosive demolition of each house in the village.

1952 verdict
In its third verdict, in February 1952, the court blamed the villagers for depending on promises from the military ruler of Galilee, instead of benefiting from the legal remedy which was given to them by the court in its first relevant verdict.

Return attempts: 1970s–2000s
In the 1970s, villagers from Iqrit conducted a series of sit-ins in the village's former church over a period of six years, and the case of Iqrit (and of Kafr Bir'im) was frequently covered by the Israeli media. Several prominent Israeli cultural and artistic figures supported the movement to repatriate the Iqrit villagers and public empathy for their plight was widespread. While the Israeli authorities recognized the villagers' right to return in principle, officials resisted implementing this right. In 1972, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir stated: "It is not only consideration of security [that prevents] an official decision regarding Bi'rim and Iqrit, but the desire to avoid [setting] a precedent. We cannot allow ourselves to become more and more entangled and to reach a point from which we are unable to extricate ourselves."

Meron Benvenisti noted in 2000 how it has been argued that the villagers of Iqrit and Bi'rim are not the only present absentees in Israel, and therefore recognizing their right of return is perceived as setting a "dangerous precedent" that would be followed by similar demands from other displaced persons. However, Benvenisti argued in 2008 that it could be a positive precedent if the Iqrit villagers were to be allocated the small amount of empty land they need to establish a community settlement on their own land.

In 2003, some of Iqrit's villagers repetitioned the Supreme Court so as to facilitate their return to Iqrit, but the petition was rejected by the court. Recently, four families built their houses opposite the village from west, on a side hill of al-Bayad.

Since 2010
In August 2012, a large demonstration was held in the city of Haifa demanding Israel to grant the descendants of villagers from Iqrit and Kafr Bir'im the right of return to the respective villages. Since the last Roots Camp in 2012, a group of the village's youth decided to stay in the village and conduct their lives as regular villagers; this came as an act of opposition to the Israeli government's continued dismissal of the case.

Iqrit is among the demolished Palestinian villages for which commemorative Marches of Return have taken place, such as those organized by the Association for the Defence of the Rights of the Internally Displaced.

1972 Munich massacre
The operational name of the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972 was named by its perpetrators, the Black September Organization, "Iqrit and Bir'im", after the two Galilean villages.

2023 war incident
On 26 December 2023, during the Israel–Hamas war, an anti-tank missile shot by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon damaged a shed in the Iqrit church compound, but not the church itself. The civilian man in his 80s who was guarding the church suffered moderate wounds. As IDF troops and medical services were working to evacuate him, they were hit by further missiles, which resulted in nine soldiers being wounded, one of them seriously.

Israeli villages
Following the war, the area was incorporated into the State of Israel and a number of new Jewish villages were established there, two of them partially on Iqrit's land: Shomera (1949; built mainly on the ruins of Tarbikha), and Even Menachem (1960). Gornot HaGalil (1980) followed nearby. At the western entrance of Iqrit, there is now a cowshed that belongs to the moshav of Shomera.

Iqrit vestiges
The Melkite Greek Catholic church is the only building of Iqrit which remains standing. The fenced cemetery is annually maintained, on the road to the north. Uncleared rubble from the destroyed houses remains and there are overgrown fig, grape, almond, and olive orchards.

title: Iqrit


text:
Khirbat Iribbin

Khirbat Iribbin (خربة عربي) or Khurbet 'Arubbin (meaning "The ruin of Arubbin"), was a Palestinian Arab village in the Upper Galilee, located 23 km northeast of the city of Acre. In 1945, it had a built-up land area of over 2,000 dunums and a population of 360 Arab Muslims.

Location
The village was located on the north bank of Wadi Karkara, about 1 km south of the Lebanese border, and with a view to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.

History
A three-aisled Byzantine church (from the 6th or 7th century CE) had been reused as a village house.

Ottoman era
In 1875 Victor Guérin inspected the place, which he described: "The ruins of this name are scattered over the flanks and summit of a hill, bordered on the south by the deep ravine of Wady Kerkera. Terraces, once regulated by the hand of man and now overgrown with thick underwood, were formerly covered with dwelling-houses whose remains cumber the soil. The foundations of some are still visible. They were small, but tolerably well-built, with regular stones of fair dimensions. On the door, still standing, of one of them, we observe a cross with standing, equal arms set in a niche. Besides these, the ruins of a building measuring twenty-six paces long from west to  east, and twenty from north to south, deserve particular attention. It was built with cut stones worked in with much care and without cement. The southern facade was pierced with these doors. Another door, the only one on that side, was constructed in the middle of the western facade; its lintel is lying on the ground. On the east was an apse, whose interior are in place. Within this ancient church are several monolithic columns half hidden by the bushes; they measure 2.50 metres in length, by thirty-five centimetres in diameter. The capitals and the base are wanting, or at all events no longer visible. By the side of this building is observed a sort of subterranean magazine arched in stone with a circular arch. It is partly filled up. On the sumrnit of the hill the vestiges of a town can be recognised. It was approached by a number of steps.'

British Mandate era
In the 1945 statistics, the village (including Arab al-Aramisha, Jurdayh and Khirbat Idmith) had a population of 360 Muslims. A total of 2,637 dunums of village land were used for cereals, and 16 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.

1948 and aftermath
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it was captured by Israel's Oded Brigade on October 31, 1948, during Operation Hiram.

Following the war the area was incorporated into the State of Israel. Kibbutz Adamit was founded in 1958 on village land, to the west of the village site. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the village site in 1992: "The site is covered with the debris of houses. It also has a number of wells and caves. The remains of animal shelters are located about 1 km away, and about 4 km to the east is the rubble of houses used by the Arab al-Qulaytat."

Petersen inspected the place in 1991, and found that the remains of the village consisted of several widely spaced rectangular houses, one storey high. Most houses were made of rough field stones laid dry, but with traces of older coursed masonry in places. The roofs were flat, made of earth on top of short branches, resting on transverse arches.

title: Khirbat Iribbin


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Khirbat Jiddin

Khirbat Jiddin (خربة جدين), known in the Kingdom of Jerusalem as Judin, was an Ottoman fortress in the western Upper Galilee, originally built by the Teutonic Order after 1220 as a crusader castle, 16 km northeast of the city of Acre, which at the time was the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The castle was destroyed by the Mamluk sultan Baibars sometime between 1268-1271 and lay in ruins until being rebuilt and expanded by the Arab ruler Zahir al-Umar as Qal'at Jiddin (قلعة جدين) in the 1760s, only to be destroyed again around 1775 by Jazzar Pasha. The ruined fortress, known as Khirbat Jiddin, was later inhabited by the al-Suwaytat Bedouin tribe. According to a 1945 census, there were 1500 Muslims living in the area. Khirbat Jiddin land totaled 7,587 dunums, of which however all but 34 were officially listed as non-cultivable; 4,238 were owned by Arabs and 3,349 dunums owned by Jews. Kibbutz Yehiam was established in the area in 1946. Today the remains of the castle are the central part of Yehi'am Fortress National Park.

Byzantine period
The site was inhabited in the Byzantine period.

Crusader period
The Crusaders called the place Judin or Judyn. A Crusader castle was built there some time after May 1220, when the Teutonic Order acquired the nearby village of Shifaya. The village fell to Sultan Baibars between 1268 and 1271. In 1283, Burchard of Mount Sion described a destroyed castle on the site that had belonged to the Teutonic Order.

Marino Sanuto, in 1322, still referred to it as a castle belonging to the Teutonic Knights.

The castle was built around two towers with an outer enclosure wall.

Ottoman period
The fortress as it now exists was built in the eighteenth century by Zahir al-Umar, the Bedouin ruler who became Ottoman governor of the Galilee. It was Zahir al-Umar who had the enclosure walls and towers constructed and the moat hewn out of the bedrock, together with an angled entrance gatehouse, vaulted in a manner faithful to the Crusader style. The vaulted hall on the lower level of the castle was the basement of a palatial residence that included a small mosque and a bathhouse. The hall's roof rested on a series of square pillars on the hillside. The walls featured well shafts and gun-slits. The mosque was a small square building originally roofed with four cross-vaults resting on a central pillar. The bathhouse was a small building supplied with water from the wells below.

An Italian, Giovanni Mariti, who visited "Geddin" in the 1760s, says he was given a generous reception by the local sheik who guarded the place for Daher. Jezzar Pasha destroyed the fortress around 1775.

A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed the place, named as Chateau de Geddin.

French explorer Victor Guérin visited in 1875, and described it:

"Two great square towers, deprived of their upper stage, are still there, partly upright, and contain several chambers now in very bad condition. The staircases which lead to them have been deprived of part of their steps to make access more difficult. Underneath are magazines and cellars, the vaults of which rest on several ranges of arcades. Cisterns hollowed in the rock are found beneath a paved court. Below and near the castle a second inclosure, flanked by semicircular towers, contains within it the remains of numerous demolished houses and cisterns."

When Kitchener inspected the place in 1877, he found it "quite unoccupied, though there are several chambers and vaults that could serve as habitations."

British Mandate
The ruins were later inhabited by Bedouin of the al-Suwaytat tribe whose primary occupation was animal husbandry. In the 1945 statistics, they also cultivated barley and tobacco on 22 dunums of land. At the same time, Jews cultivated the remaining 32 dunums officially listed as cultivable.

The land ownership of the village in 1945, in dunams:

Types of land use in dunams in the village in 1945:

1948 War and aftermath
Khirbat Jiddin was in the territory envisaged as an Arab state in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. On July 11, 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it was captured by Israel's Sheva' Brigade as part of Operation Dekel.

title: Khirbat Jiddin


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Talk:UCSD p-System

Meaning of "p-code and "p-machine"
Are you sure that "p-code" and "p-machine" comes from "pseudo-machine" and not from "Pascal code"? Seems more likely to me, but I don't have any documentation for it. -- ESP 17:14 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I have seen both myself in various sources. This is a very quick first cut and I intend to check my p-System VII manual to see which UCSD considered official before I finish. -- RTC 17:18 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I believe it means "Portable". In the earliest documents I can find, it is referred to as the "Pascal-P ... portable compiler" (se "Pascal-P implementation notes" in Barrons"). This material, by definition, predates UCSD: it was the implementation that UCSD was based on. --samiam95124 27 May 2005

In the UCSD PASCAL System II.0 User's Manual March 1979, the following items refer to "p-Code" or "p-Machine" using the prefix pseudo.
 * Page 1, the 2nd sentence of section 1.1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW says:
 * "This system is highly machine independant since it runs on a pseudo-machine interpreter commonly referred to as the "P-machine"."

 * Pages 4 & 5, subsection 1.1.4 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE UCSD PASCAL SYSTEM contains multiple instances of "pseudo-machine".
 * Page 247, section 4.9 P-CODE DISASSEMBLER begins:
 * "The disassembler reads a standard UCSD code file and outputs symbolic pseudo-assembly (P-Code) along with various statistics..."

The rest of the text just seems to refer to "code" or ".CODE files" without using either pseudo or Pascal as a qualifier. The text does not appear to contain any usage of "Pascal-machine".

From the above I conclude that UCSD originally used the "p" in "p-Code" and "p-Machine" as an abbreviation for pseudo, not Pascal. I agree that over the years the usage became interchangable and eventually was generally accepted by most users that it was an abbreviation for Pascal (this probably came about because the "p" in "p-System" obviously had to mean Pascal, not pseudo. Although some people that liked to make jokes about the p-System would probably say otherwise.). -- RTC 04:56 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Note that p-code on the Western Digital Microengine was executed directly by the microcode of MCP-1600 CPU used in the Microengine.

Note also there were a number of non-public implementations of p-code in microcode for a variety of projects used within the defense industry (can we talk about these??). There were a number of defense projects using unique-to-the-project CPUs. The small effort of writing a p-code interpreter gained those projects the use of UCSD Pascal, which was often a dramatic improvement over existing software.

As an aside - the p-code instruction set bears a strong resemblence to the instruction set of Burroughs "A-Series" machines. At the time UCSD Pascal was developed, the main(?) computer at UCSD was a Burroughs machine. --pbannister 20:40, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

The sentence " Later versions also included additional languages that compiled to the p-code base (for example, Telesoft Pascal, also in San Diego, a licensee of the p-system, ported it to the Motorola 68000)." does not make sense. I suspect that this actually mixes two subjects, that some developers compiled P-code to real machine code and thus bootstrapped the p-system, and the fact that at least one other language besides Pascal, Basic, was also implemented under the p-system. Someone with historical knowledge care to handle that ? --samiam95124 27 May 2005

This article, and the article UCSD Pascal overlap more than just mildly.--Samiam95124 01:13, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have put this in the "Pascal Dialects" catagory, which means that you can find it there with other pascals.--Samiam95124 29 June 2005 02:48 (UTC)

Priority: UCSD Pascal or Ada?
This article UCSD p-System says that the important improvements that UCSD Pascal introduced, variable length strings and "units" of independently compiled code, was "an idea taken from the then-evolving Ada programming language". The article on UCSD Pascal says that these features of UCSD Pascal "influenced the design of the Ada programming language". The Ada programming language article makes no mention of these features. Does anyone know which language deserves credit for priority? Finell 06:19, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:UCSD p-System


text:
Kola Peninsula

The Kola Peninsula (Ко́льский полуо́стров; Куэлнэгк нёа̄ррк) is a peninsula located mostly in northwest Russia and partly in Finland and Norway. It is one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is bordered by the Barents Sea to the north and by the White Sea to the east and southeast. The city of Murmansk, the most populous settlement on the peninsula, has a population of roughly 270,000 residents.

While humans had already settled in the north of the peninsula in the 7th–5th millennium BCE, the rest of its territory remained uninhabited until the 3rd millennium BCE, when various peoples started to arrive from the south. By the 1st millennium CE only the Sami people remained. This changed in the 12th century, when Russian Pomors discovered the peninsula's rich resources of game and fish. Soon after, the Pomors were followed by the tribute collectors from the Novgorod Republic, and the peninsula gradually became a part of the Novgorodian lands. The Novgorodians, however, established no permanent settlements until the 15th century.

The Soviet period (1917–1991) saw a rapid population increase, although most of the new arrivals remained confined to urbanized territories along the sea coast and the railroads. The Sami people were subject to forced collectivization, including forced relocation to Lovozero and other centralized settlements, and overall the peninsula became heavily industrialized and militarized, largely due to its strategic position (as the pre-eminent Soviet ice-free Atlantic coast) and to the discovery of the vast apatite deposits in the 1920s. As a result, the peninsula suffered major ecological damage. After the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy went into decline. Its population fell from 1,150,000 in 1989 to 795,000 in 2010. The peninsula recovered somewhat in the early 21st century, and is considered the most industrially developed and urbanized region in northern Russia.

Despite the peninsula's northerly location, its proximity to the North Atlantic Current (an extension of the Gulf Stream) leads to unusually high temperatures in winter, but also results in high winds due to the temperature variations between land and the Barents Sea. Summers are rather chilly, with the average July temperature of only 11 C. The peninsula is covered by taiga in the south and by tundra in the north, where permafrost limits the growth of trees, resulting in landscape dominated by shrubs and grasses. The peninsula supports a small variety of mammals, and its rivers are an important habitat for the Atlantic salmon. The Kandalaksha Nature Reserve, established to protect the population of common eider, is located in the Kandalaksha Gulf. The peninsula is also the site of the Kola Superdeep Borehole, the deepest hole drilled into the Earth.

Location and overview
The peninsula is located in the far northwest of Russia, almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is bordered by the Barents Sea in the north and the White Sea in the east and southeast. Geologically, the peninsula occupies the northeastern edge of the Baltic Shield. The western border of the peninsula stretches along the meridian from the Kola Bay through the valley of the Kola River, Lake Imandra, and the Niva River to the Kandalaksha Gulf, although some sources push it all the way west to Russia's border with Finland.

Under a more restrictive definition, the peninsula covers an area of about 100000 km2. The northern coast is steep and high, while the southern coast is flat. The western part of the peninsula is covered by two mountain ranges: the Khibiny Mountains and the Lovozero Massif; the former contains the highest point of the peninsula—Yudychvumchorr. Mount Chasnachorr, the height of which is 1191 m, had been formerly considered the highest point of the Khibiny. The Keyvy drainage divide lies in the central part. The mountainous reliefs of the Murman and Kandalaksha Coasts stretch from southeast to northwest, mirroring the peninsula's main orographic features.

Administratively, the territory of the peninsula consists of Lovozersky and Tersky Districts, parts of Kandalakshsky and Kolsky Districts, as well as the territories subordinated to the cities and towns of Murmansk, Ostrovnoy, Severomorsk, Kirovsk, and parts of the territories subordinated to Apatity, Olenegorsk, and Polyarnye Zori.

Natural resources
Because the last ice age removed the top sediment layer of the soil, the surface of Kola Peninsula is extremely rich in various ores and minerals, including apatites and nephelines; copper, nickel, and iron ores; mica; kyanites; ceramic materials, as well as rare-earth elements and non-ferrous ores. Deposits of construction materials such as granite, quartzite, and limestone are also abundant. Diatomaceous earth deposits are common near lakes and are used to produce insulation.

Climate

Proximity of the peninsula to the Gulf Stream leads to unusually high temperatures in winter for the region, resulting in significant temperature variations between land and the Barents Sea and in fluctuating temperatures during high winds. Cyclones are typical during the cold seasons, while the warm seasons are characterized by anticyclones. Monsoon winds are common in most areas, with south and southwesterly winds prevailing in winter months and with somewhat more pronounced easterly winds in summer. Strong storm winds blow for 80–120 days a year. The waters of the Murman Coast remain warm enough to remain ice-free even in winter.

Precipitation levels on the peninsula are rather high: 1000 mm in the mountains, 600 - 700 mm on the Murman Coast, and 500 - 600 mm in other areas. The wettest months are August through October, while March and April are the driest.

The average temperature in January is about -10 C, with lower temperatures typical in the central parts of the peninsula. The average temperature in July is about +11 C. Record lows reach -50 C in the central parts and -35 to -40 C on the coasts. Record highs exceed +30 C almost on all the territory of the peninsula. First frosts occur as early as August and may last through May and even June.

Most areas of the Kola Peninsula are subarctic climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfc). The nearby islands usually belong to tundra (Köppen climate classification: ET).

Flora and fauna

The peninsula is covered by taiga in the south and tundra in the north. In the tundra, cold and windy conditions and permafrost limit the growth of the trees, resulting in a landscape dominated by grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs such as dwarf birch and cloudberry. In northern coastal areas, stony and shrub lichens are common. The taiga in the southern areas is composed mostly of pine trees and spruces.

Reindeer herds visit the grasslands in summer. Other animals include red and Arctic foxes, wolverines, moose, otters, and lynx in the southern areas. American minks, which were released near the Olenitsa River in 1935–1936, are now common throughout the peninsula and are commercially hunted. Beavers, which became endangered by 1880, were re-introduced in 1934–1957. All in all, thirty-two species of mammals and up to two hundred bird species inhabit the peninsula.

Beluga whales are the only cetacean being common around the peninsula. Other dolphins, including Atlantic white-sided dolphins, white-beaked dolphins, and harbor porpoises, as well as large whales, such as bowhead, humpback, blue, and finback, also visit the area.

The coasts of the Kandalaksha Gulf and the Barents Sea are important breeding grounds for bearded seals and ringed seals. The Barents Sea is one of the only places the rare Gray seals can be found. Greenland seals, or harp seals, also can be seen from time to time.

Twenty-nine species of fresh water fish are recognized on the territory of peninsula, including trout, stickleback, northern pike, and European perch. The rivers are an important habitat for the Atlantic salmon, which return from Greenland and the Faroe Islands to spawn in fresh water. As a result of this, a recreational fishery has been developed, with a number of remote lodges and camps available to host sport-fishermen. The Kandalaksha Nature Reserve, established in 1932 to protect the population of common eider, is organized in thirteen clusters located in the Kandalaksha Gulf of the Kola Peninsula and along the coasts of the Barents Sea.

Hydrology

The Kola Peninsula has many small but fast-moving rivers with rapids. The most important of them are the Ponoy, the Varzuga, the Umba, the Teriberka, the Voronya, and the Yokanga. Most rivers originate from lakes and swamps and collect their waters from melting snow. The rivers become icebound during the winter, although the areas with strong rapids freeze later or not at all.

Major lakes include Imandra, Umbozero, and Lovozero. There are no lakes with an area smaller than 0.01 km2. Recreational fishery is developed in the region.

Ecology
The Kola Peninsula as a whole suffered major ecological damage, mostly as a result of pollution from the military (particularly naval) production, industrial mining of apatite, and military nuclear waste. About 137 active and 140 decommissioned or idle naval nuclear reactors, produced by the Soviet military, remain on the peninsula. For thirty years, nuclear waste had been dumped into the sea by the Northern Fleet and Murmansk Shipping Company. There is also evidence of contamination from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, with contaminants being found in the flesh of reindeer and other animals, and from the 1972 and 1984 controlled nuclear explosions 21 km northwest of Kirovsk. Additionally, several nuclear weapons test ranges and radioactive waste storage facilities exist on the peninsula.

The main industrial pollution source is Norilsk Nickel in Monchegorsk—the large smelters responsible for over 80% of the sulfur dioxide emissions and for nearly all nickel and copper emissions. Since 1998, SO2 emissions in the area have dropped by almost 60%, from 88.3 thousand tonnes to 37.3 thousand tonnes in 2016, according to Norilsk Nickel. Based on its new ‘Sulphur programme 2.0', Norilsk Nickel has set itself staged targets in cutting down sulphur dioxide emissions, which can have negative health and environmental effects. The ultimate aim is a 95% reduction (compared to 2015) in SO2 by 2030 for its Polar Division on the Taimyr peninsula, which includes its Nadezhda smelter and Copper plant, partly through a SO2 capture solution. Other polluters of note include the thermal power stations in Apatity and Murmansk.

Early history
The Rybachy Peninsula in the north of the Kola Peninsula was already settled in the 7th–5th millennium BCE. In the 3rd–2nd millennium BCE, the peninsula was settled by the peoples who arrived there from the south (the territory of modern Karelia). Bolshoy Oleny Island in the Kola Bay of the Barents Sea is the location of an important Bronze Age archaeological site where ancient DNA has been recovered.

By the end of the 1st millennium CE, the peninsula was settled only by the Sami people, who did not have their own state, lived in clans ruled by elders, and were engaged mostly in reindeer herding and fishing. In the 12th century, Russian Pomors from the shores of the Onega Bay and in the lower reaches of the Northern Dvina discovered the peninsula and its game and fish riches. The Pomors organized regular hunting and fishing visits and started barter trade with the Sami. They also called the White Sea coast of the peninsula Tersky Coast (Те́рский бе́рег) or Terskaya Land (Те́рская земля́).

By the end of the 12th century, the Pomors explored all of the northern coast of the peninsula and reached Finnmark (an area in the north of Norway), necessitating the Norwegians to support a naval guard in that area. The name given by the Pomors to the northern coast was Murman—a distorted form of Norman meaning "Norwegian".

Novgorodians
Pomors were soon followed by tribute collectors from the Novgorod Republic, and the Kola Peninsula gradually became a part of the Novgorodian lands. A 1265 treaty of Yaroslav Yaroslavich with Novgorod mentions Tre Volost (волость Тре), which is later also mentioned in other documents dated as late as 1471. In addition to Tre, Novgorodian documents of the 13th–15th centuries also mention Kolo Volost, which bordered Tre approximately along the line between Kildin Island and Turiy Headland of the Turiy Peninsula. Kolo Volost lay to the west of that line, while Tre was situated to the east of it.

By the 13th century, a need to formalize the border between the Novgorod Republic and the Scandinavian countries became evident. The Novgorodians, along with the Karelians who came from the south, reached the coast of what now is Pechengsky District and the portion of the coast of Varangerfjord near the Jacob's River, which now is a part of Norway. The Sami population was forced to pay tribute. The Norwegians were also attempting to take control of these lands, resulting in armed conflicts. In 1251, a conflict between the Karelians, Novgorodians and the servants of the king of Norway led to the establishment of a Novgorodian mission in Norway. Also in 1251, the first treaty with Norway was signed in Novgorod regarding the Sami lands and the system of tribute collections, making the Sami people pay tribute to both Novgorod and Norway. By the terms of the treaty, Novgorodians could collect tribute from the Sami as far as the Lyngen fjord in the west, while Norwegians could collect tribute on the territory of the whole Kola Peninsula except in the eastern part of Tersky Coast. No state borders were established by the 1251 treaty. The treaty led to a short period of peace, but the armed conflicts resumed soon thereafter. Chronicles document attacks by the Novgorodians and the Karelians on Finnmark and northern Norway as early as 1271, and continuing well into the 14th century. The official border between the Novgorod lands and the lands of Sweden and Norway was established by the Treaty of Nöteborg on August 12, 1323. The treaty primarily focused on the Karelian Isthmus border and the border north of Lake Ladoga.

Another treaty dealing the matters of the northern borders was the Treaty of Novgorod signed with Norway in 1326, which ended the decades of the Norwegian-Novgorodian border skirmishes in Finnmark. Per the terms of this treaty, Norway relinquished all claims to the Kola Peninsula. The treaty did not address the situation with the Sami people paying tribute to both Norway and Novgorod, and the practice continued until 1602. While the 1326 treaty did not define the border in detail, it confirmed the 1323 border demarcation, which remained more or less unchanged for the next six hundred years, until 1920.

In the 15th century, Novgorodians started to establish permanent settlements on the peninsula. Umba and Varzuga, the first documented permanent settlements of the Novgorodians, date back to 1466. Over time, all coastal areas to the west of the Pyalitsa River had been settled, creating a territory where the population was mostly Novgorodian. Administratively, this territory was divided into Varzuzhskaya and Umbskaya Volosts, which were governed by a posadnik from the area of the Northern Dvina. The Novgorod Republic lost control of both of these volosts to the Grand Duchy of Moscow after the Battle of Shelon in 1471, and the republic itself ceased to exist in 1478 when Ivan III took the city of Novgorod. All Novgorod territories, including those on the Kola Peninsula, became a part of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.

The Novgorod Republic lost control of the peninsula to the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1471, but the Russian migration did not stop. Several new settlements were established during the 16th century, and the Sami and Pomor people were forced into serfdom. In the second half of the 16th century, the peninsula became a subject of dispute between the Tsardom of Russia and the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway, which resulted in the strengthening of the Russian position. By the end of the 19th century, the indigenous Sami population had been mostly forced north by the Russians as well as by newly arriving Izhma Komi and Kominized Nenets (so-called Yaran people), who migrated here to escape a reindeer disease epidemic in their home lands in the southeast of the White Sea. The original administrative and economic center of the area was Kola, situated at the estuary of the Kola River into the Kola Bay. In 1916, Romanov-na-Murmane (now Murmansk) was founded and quickly became the largest city and port on the peninsula.

Russian settlement
Russian migration to the peninsula continued into the 16th century, when new settlements such as Kandalaksha and Porya-Guba were established. Kola was first mentioned in 1565. In the end of the 15th century, the Pomors and the Sami people were forced into serfdom, mostly by the monasteries. Monastery votchinas greatly expanded during the 17th century, but were abolished in 1764, when all of the Kola Peninsula peasants became state peasants.

In the second half of the 16th century, King Frederick II of Denmark–Norway demanded that the Tsardom of Russia cede the peninsula. Russia declined, and in order to organize adequate defenses established the position of a voyevoda. The voyevoda sat in Kola, which became the administrative center of the region. Prior to that, the administrative duties were performed by the tax collectors from Kandalaksha. Newly established Kolsky Uyezd covered most of the territory of the peninsula (with the exception of Varzuzhskaya and Umbskaya Volosts, which were a part of Dvinsky Uyezd), as well as the northern part of Karelia all the way to Lendery.

Despite the economic activity, permanent settlement of the peninsula did not intensify until the 1860s, and even then it remained sporadic until 1917. The population of Kola in 1880, for example, was only around 500 inhabitants living in 80 households, compared to 1,900 inhabitants in 300 households living there in 1582. Transportation facilities were virtually non-existent and communication with the rest of Russia was irregular. 1887 saw an influx of Izhma Komi and Nenets people who were migrating to the peninsula to escape a reindeer-disease epidemic in their homelands and brought their large deer herds with them, resulting in increased competition for the grazing lands, a conflict between the Komi and the Sami, and in marginalization of the local Sami population. By the end of the 19th century, the Sami population had mostly been forced north, with ethnic Russians settling in the south of the peninsula.

In 1894, the peninsula was visited by the Russian Minister of Finance, Sergei Witte, who became convinced of the region's economic potential. Consequently, in 1896 telephone and a telegraph communications were extended to Kola, improving links with the mainland. The possibility of building a railway was also considered, but no action was taken at the time. Also in 1896, Alexandrovsk (now Polyarny) was founded, and grew in size so rapidly that it was granted town status in 1899; Kolsky Uyezd was renamed Alexandrovsky on that occasion.

During World War I (1914-1918), the still poorly-developed peninsula suddenly found itself in a strategic position, as communication between Russia and the  Allies via the Baltic and Black Sea was cut. Britain helped in the development of the ice-free harbors of the Murman Coast as the only practical means of sending Allied war supplies to the Eastern Front. In March 1915, the construction of the railroad was rushed, and the railroad was quickly opened in 1916, even though it was only partially completed and poorly built. In 1916, Romanov-na-Murmane (Romanov on the Murman: modern Murmansk) was founded as the terminal point of the new railroad; the town quickly grew to become the largest one on the peninsula.

Soviet and modern periods

Soviet power was established on the territory of the peninsula on, 1917, but the territory was occupied by the forces of Russia's pre-war allies in March 1918–March 1920. Alexandrovsky Uyezd was transformed into Murmansk Governorate by the Soviet government in June 1921. On August 1, 1927, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) issued two Resolutions: "On the Establishment of Leningrad Oblast" and "On the Borders and Composition of the Okrugs of Leningrad Oblast", according to which Murmansk Governorate was transformed into Murmansk Okrug (which was divided into six districts) and included into Leningrad Oblast. This arrangement existed until May 28, 1938, when the okrug was separated from Leningrad Oblast, merged with Kandalakshsky District of the Karelian ASSR, and transformed into modern Murmansk Oblast.

All in all, the Soviet period saw a significant increase in population (from 15,000 in 1913 to 1,150,000 in 1989), although most of the population remained concentrated in the urban localities along the railroads and the sea coast. Most of the sparsely populated territories outside the urbanized areas were used for deer herding. In 1920–1940, the town of Kirovsk and several work settlements were established on the peninsula.

The Sami peoples were subject to forced collectivization, with more than half of their reindeer herds collectivized in 1928–1930. In addition, the traditional Sami herding practices were phased out in favor of the more economically profitable Komi approach, which emphasized permanent settlements over free herding. Since the Sami culture is strongly tied to the herding practices, this resulted in the Sami people gradually losing their language and traditional herding knowledge. Most Sami were forced to settle in the village of Lovozero, which became the cultural center of the Sami people in Russia. Those Sami resisting the collectivization were subject to forced labor or death. Various forms of repression against the Sami continued until Stalin's death in 1953. In the 1990s, 40% of the Sami lived in urbanized areas, although some herd reindeer across much of the region.

The Sami were not the only people subject to repressions. Thousands of people were sent to Kola in the 1930s–1950s, and in 2007 over two thousand people—descendants of those forcibly sent there—still live on the peninsula. A significant portion of the people deported to Kola were peasants from southern Russia subjected to dekulakization. Prisoner labor was often used when building new factories and for manning those which were operational: in 1940, for example, the whole Severonikel Metallurgy Mining Complex was turned over to the NKVD system.

Demography

Until the 1800s, the Kola Peninsula was extremely sparsely populated, with only 5,200 inhabitants in 1858. In 1868 the Russian government created incentives for settlement and not only Russians but also Finns, Norwegians and Karelians moved to the peninsula. By the 1897 census 9,291 people were counted in the Kola uyezd; 63% Russian, 19% Sami, 11% Finnish and 3% Karelian.

By 1913 about 13,000–15,000 people lived in the peninsula, mostly along the shores. However, the discovery of the vast natural resource deposits and industrialization efforts led to an explosive population growth during the Soviet times. By 1970, the population of the peninsula was around 799,000. The trend reverted in the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The population of the whole Murmansk Oblast went down from 1,150,000 in 1989 to 890,000 in 2002 to 795,000 in 2010.

As of the 2010 Census, the population consisted mostly of Russians (89.0%), Ukrainians (4.8%), and Belarusians (1.7%). Other groups of note include Komi (~1,600 inhabitants), Sami (~1,600), and Karelians (~1,400). The indigenous Sami people are mostly concentrated in Lovozersky District.

Historical background
During the 15th–16th centuries, the main occupations of the Tersky Coast population were Atlantic salmon fishing, seal hunting, and the extraction of salt from the sea water. The salt extraction in Kandalaksha and Kola was mostly carried out by the monasteries in Pechenga and Solovki, and for a long time remained the only "industry" on the peninsula.

By the mid-16th century, Atlantic cod fishing developed on the Murman Coast in the north. The 1560s saw a rapid growth of international trade, with the Russian merchants from different regions of the country arriving to the peninsula to trade with the merchants from Western Europe. In 1585 the trade was moved to Archangel, although the settlement of Kola was still permitted to trade locally produced goods.

During the 17th century, the salt extraction activities gradually went into decline as the locally produced salt was uncompetitive with cheap salt produced in the Kama River regions. Extensive poaching also led to the significantly reduced outputs from pearl hunting. Commercial deer herding became more popular, although its share in the economy remained negligible until the 19th century. By the end of the 17th century, the practice of seasonal fishing and hunting settlements in the north of the peninsula became very common.

Peter the Great, recognizing the political and economical importance of the peninsula, promoted its industries and commerce. The region fell into neglect after St. Petersburg was founded in 1703 and most of the shipping trade shifted there. In 1732, large deposits of silver in native form were discovered on Medvezhy Island in the Kandalaksha Gulf and copper, silver, and gold deposits were found in the lower reaches of the Ponoy River. Despite the efforts ongoing for the next two centuries, there was no commercial success. At the end of the 18th century, the local population learned the practice of peat production from the Norwegians and started using peat for heating. Timber cutting industry developed in the region at the end of the 19th century; mostly in Kovda and Umba.

The Soviet era saw drastic industrialization and militarization of the peninsula. In 1925–1926, significant deposits of apatite were discovered in the Khibiny Mountains, and the first apatite batch was shipped only a few years later, in 1929. In 1930, sulfide deposits were discovered in the Moncha area; in 1932–1933 iron ore deposits were found near the upper streams of the Iona River; in 1935, significant deposits of titanium ores were discovered in the area of modern Afrikanda.

The collectivization efforts in the 1930s led to the concentration of the reindeer herds in kolkhozes (collective farms), which in turn were further consolidated into a few large-scale state farms in the late 1950s–early 1970s. By the mid-1970s, the state farms were further consolidated into just two, based in Lovozero and Krasnoshchelye. The consolidations were rationalized by the necessity to isolate the herders from the military installations, as well as by the need to flood some territories to construct hydroelectric plants.

Fishing, being the traditional industry of the region, was always considered important although the volumes of production remained insignificant until the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1920s–1930s, the Murmansk Trawl Fleet was created and the fishing infrastructure started to develop intensively. By 1940, fishing accounted for 40% of the oblast's and for 80% of Murmansk's economy.

During the Cold War, the peninsula served as the naval basing area for a large portion of the Soviet naval and air strategic forces, providing protection from and posing a threat to northern Norway. Also the ELF-transmitter ZEVS of the Russian Navy is situated there.

Border tensions between Norway and the Soviets were dramatized in the premiere of The Sandbaggers. Norwegian concerns about Russian troops in the Kola peninsula persisted into the 1990s, after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Modern economy

After the economic slump of the 1990s, the economy of the oblast started to rebound during the first decade of the 2000s, although at a rate below the country's average. Today the Kola Peninsula is the most industrially developed and urbanized region in northern Russia. The major port of the peninsula is Murmansk, which serves as the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast and does not freeze in winter. Although the strategic importance of the Kola Peninsula has diminished since the Cold War, the peninsula nevertheless still has the highest concentration of nuclear weapons, reactors, and facilities in Russia, with the number of nuclear reactors alone exceeding any other region of the world.

Mining is the basis of the oblast's economy, and mining enterprises remain the principal employers in such monotowns as Apatity, Kirovsk, Zapolyarny, Nikel, and Monchegorsk. The Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company, a division of Norilsk Nickel, conducts nickel-, copper-, and platinum-group-metals-mining operations on the peninsula. Other large mining companies include OAO Apatit, which is the largest producer of phosphates in Europe; OAO Olcon, one of the leading producers of iron ore concentrates in Russia; and OAO Kovdorsky GOK, an ore-mining and processing enterprise.

The fishing industry, although still operating significantly below the Soviet level of production, remains profitable, supplying 20% of Russia's fish in 2006 and with the volume steadily growing in 2007–2010. Murmansk is a key base for three fishing fleets, including Russia's largest, the Murmansk Trawl Fleet. Fish breeding, especially of salmon and trout, is a growing industry.

The energy sector is represented by the Kola Nuclear Power Plant near Polyarnye Zori, which produces about half of all energy, and a network of seventeen hydroelectric and two thermal power stations, generating the other half. The energy surplus, accounting for about 20% of the total generated energy, is transferred to the unified energy system of Russia, as well as exported to Norway and Finland via the NORDEL system.

With the economy of the oblast being mostly export-oriented, transportation plays an important role and accounts for 11% of the Gross Regional Product. On the Kola Peninsula, the transportation network includes ship transport, air transport, automotive transport, electrified public transport, and access to the railways mostly passing through the rest of Murmansk Oblast. The city of Murmansk is an important port on the Northern Sea Route. The largest airports are the Murmansk Airport, which handles international flights to Scandinavian countries, and the joint military-civilian Kirovsk-Apatity Airport located 15 km southeast of Apatity.

title: Kola Peninsula