First published in 1997, the Compendium is an important reference tool for everyone who works in or visits the Antarctic Peninsula - setting forth updated site-descriptive information, census data, species presence/absence data, and regional maps compiled by the Antarctic Site Inventory project since 1994. The Inventory is operated by the US non-profit science and educational organization Oceanites, Inc., the only non-profit, publicly supported, science project working in Antarctica, and the only project monitoring and analysing environmental changes throughout the vastly warming Antarctic Peninsula ecosystem, where it's warming faster - or as fast - as any other location on Earth. The new, 3rd edition covers the 142 sites visited and censused by Antarctic Site Inventory researchers in 17 field seasons through February 2011.