Russia’s undersea arctic mapping effort is only one of many international efforts to better define country borders. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, ratified in 1994, redefined country border lines by defining the boundary as the edge of the continental shelf. As a result countries are busily undertaking undersea mapping efforts to determine where continental shelfs end.
Overlapping claims are mounting as the determination of shelf boundaries is still an inexact science. The arctic is one area of dispute, as is the Gulf of Mexico, the Bering Sea, and the South Pole.
Read more in this online story in Wired magazine.
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