Witness the Arctic | Volume 16, Number 3 - Fall

Polar Educators International (PEI) is an international professional network for everyone who educates in, for, and about the polar regions. Evidence shows that education and outreach associated with the 2007-08 International Polar Year touched 24 million people through the work of teachers, scientists, writers, filmmakers, policymakers, government agencies, and many others. PEI was organized to continue this momentum. The network began to form during discussions at the IPY meeting in 2010 and was realized during the IPY meeting in 2012 with a formal announcement from Peter Harrison, chair of the IPY 2012 Montreal conference.

In July 2012, a group of high school students from three arctic nations visited research facilities in Greenland to participate in the Joint Science Education Program (JSEP), a cultural and scientific exchange between Denmark, Greenland, and the United States. For the past five years this program has brought students together for first-hand experience with arctic research and to learn about each other's language, customs, and cultures. Under the guidance of teachers from all three nations, the students worked alongside researchers in activities that included gathering snow samples to gauge the

A research team at the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks has strived to improve understanding of atmospheric dynamics and their role in the rapidly changing arctic climate system. The research is funded in part by the NSF Arctic Sciences Division in collaboration with national and international scientists and students from North Carolina A&T State University, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, North Carolina State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the NASA Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and

The Bering Sea Project is a multiagency integrated ecosystem study of the eastern Bering Sea. This six-year project received over $50 million from a 2007 NSF and North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) partnership plus significant contributions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and the National Marine Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center. It has supported 43 collaborative research projects, nearly 100 principal investigators, plus postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and technicians. With assistance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies, the Bering Sea Project assembled monetary and ship resources that would have been beyond the reach of any one agency. Now in the synthesis and writing phase, the Bering Sea Project promises to deliver a wealth of new knowledge and understanding of the mechanisms controlling the flow of energy and material through Bering Sea pelagic and benthic food webs, and an enhanced ability to anticipate the inevitable changes that will occur with global warming.

In the last months of 2011, scientists and crew aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy conducted the first winter research cruise in the Arctic. The purpose of the forty-day cruise was to collect baseline information on the winter physical and biological characteristics of three important arctic seas: the Bering, the Chukchi, and the Beaufort.

Witness the Arctic (WTA) had a conversation with Dr. Neil Swanberg, Program Director for the Arctic System Science Program (ARCSS) at NSF. He shared his perspective about how opportunities for arctic research are evolving at NSF, the value of and characteristics of successful interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary arctic science efforts, and the challenges and opportunities for the SEARCH program as it continues to develop.

WTA: In your view, how are opportunities for arctic research evolving at NSF?

The SEARCH Science Steering Committee (SSC) made significant progress over the past few months in moving SEARCH towards full implementation (see Spring 2012 Witness the Arctic article). The SEARCH SSC revised the five-year science goals and objectives to incorporate input from the broader scientific community

Sandia National Laboratories, an ARCUS Member Institution since the early 1990s, develops science and technology-based solutions to national and global security problems. Sandia is a government-owned/contractor operated (GOCO) facility managed by Lockheed Martin, a Fortune 500 company, for the U.S. Department of Energy. The GOCO partnership allows each partner to focus on its strengths: the government establishes mission areas, and the private sector implements the missions using best business practices.

NSF's Arctic Sciences (ARC) has established an Information Security and Risk Management Program to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information supporting and generated by scientific research. This initiative is designed to manage Information Technology (IT) risk to better secure information and systems and empower well-informed risk management decisions.

In May 2012 the ARCUS Board met in its first face-to-face meeting of recent years. The ARCUS Annual Meeting, convened in Washington, D.C. following the inaugural AGU Science Policy Conference and the ARCUS Arctic Forum, was the opportune time for a one-day retreat. The ever-growing myriad of arctic-related organizations emphasizes the increasing need for interdisciplinary science research that will form the basis for informed arctic policies. An organization such as ARCUS, whose membership is largely academic institutions, can play an important

The International Study of Arctic Change (ISAC) is an interdisciplinary program of research on arctic environmental change initiated in the wake of the 2003 Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) Open Science Meeting. A legacy of the International Polar Year (IPY), ISAC facilitates cooperation and collaboration in international arctic research and full integration of stakeholders into the research process. ISAC seeks to extend study of the Arctic from basic science to offer insight into options for solving real-world problems intrinsic to a changing planet.

The Advanced Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (ACADIS) system has expanded to meet data management needs of all research projects sponsored by the NSF’s Arctic Sciences Division. ACADIS builds on the Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (CADIS) project that supported data management needs associated with the Arctic Observing Network (AON). The updated ACADIS Gateway portal (http://www.aoncadis.org) now provides data preservation and access services for all projects funded by Arctic Natural Sciences (ANS), Arctic System Sciences (ARCSS), and Arctic Social Sciences (ASSP) programs.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) Arctic and Global Prediction Program is motivated by the significant sea ice retreat that has occurred in recent summers in the Arctic Ocean, and the implications for the U.S. Navy of the observed and predicted increase in maritime activity due to the diminishing summer ice cover. The overarching goal of the program is to improve the coupling of arctic system modeling and sea ice prediction capability at a variety of space and time scales in support of safe and efficient Navy mission planning and execution. To achieve this goal, the program supports basic

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NSF are completing production of the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) 5-Year Arctic Research Plan. Although details about the Plan have not been released yet, a draft version released for public comment in June 2012 (http://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/arctic/iarpc/arc_res_plan_index.jsp) identified seven key research areas that would benefit from coordination and collaboration—not only among Federal agencies but also with state and local stakeholders, industry, academia, and non-governmental organizations. The seven

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has applied a systems science approach to investigate how dramatic changes in permafrost features influence the structure and function of the arctic landscape. This study, led by W. B. Bowden of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, focuses on the composition of vegetation, the distribution and processing of soil nutrients, and exports of sediments and nutrients to stream and lake ecosystems to help understand how thawing permafrost will change the arctic landscape and other implications.

Recently an ARCUS member institution representative asked for my help in making the case for our consortium dues to his department dean. Together we successfully outlined the value that member institutions receive from their ARCUS dues. It is a message worth sharing more broadly.