ARCUS 17th Annual Meeting and Arctic Forum 2005

CALM II: The Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring Program's Second Five-Year Plan, 2004-2009

Frederick E. Nelson¹, Nikolay I. Shiklomanov², Jerry Brown^3
1Department of Geography, University of Delaware, Pearson Hall, Newark, DE, 19716, USA, Phone 302.831.8269, Fax 302.831.6654, fnelson@udel.edu
²Department of Geography, University of Delaware, Pearson Hall, Newark, DE, 19716, USA, Phone 302.831.1314, Fax 302.831.6654, shiklom@udel.edu
³International Permafrost Association, PO Box 7, Woods Hole, MA, 02543, USA, Phone 508-457-4982, Fax 508-457-4982, jerrybrown@igc.org

Several factors converged in the late 1980s and early 1990s to encourage development of long-term geocryological monitoring, and to make the resulting data sets freely available to interested users: (1) publicity about the impacts of climate change followed two decades of unprecedented resource development in the cold regions and raised concerns about the stability of associated infrastructure; (2) the global nature of climatic change made apparent the need for widespread cooperation among permafrost scientists, who became increasingly aware of the importance of their subject in the context of recent climate change, (3) international agreements were signed and governments became concerned with facilitating data exchanges with interested users; and (4) permafrost scientists became increasingly aware of the benefits accruing from free exchange of data. The Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) network is a highly successful geocryological monitoring program that developed in the 1990s in accord with the principles of data rescue, archiving, and exchange developed during the previous decade. CALM now consists of more than 125 observation sites in both polar regions, as well as several midlatitude mountain ranges. The CALM program is allied closely with several comprehensive international global climate-change programs. CALM recently received its second five-year block of support from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This presentation discusses the main features of CALM II, which include measurements of active-layer thickness, the thermal regime of the active layer and shallow permafrost, and frost heave and thaw settlement. In addition, CALM II includes several sites at which critical field experiments are conducted. CALM II and it companion program, Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP), constitute the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), a comprehensive global-change permafrost monitoring program.