(CBC News, 18 March 2013) -- A new arctic research facility opened in Winnipeg Monday — the same day a major late-season blizzard hit southern Manitoba. The Nellie Cournoyea Arctic Research Facility opened at the University of Manitoba, and adds 60,000 sq. ft. of space for researchers to work. David Barber is the research chair in arctic system science at the U of M and said the facility is one-of-a-kind in Canada.

“We have our own sea ice tank on the University of Manitoba campus where we can grow our own sea ice under controlled conditions,” said Barber. “We can test out different kinds of hypotheses about characteristics of the ice.” A grand opening event held Wednesday morning let the public get a glimpse inside the research that will go on at the facility.

“It has specialized cold rooms and specialized research labs that look at all kinds of aspects of the arctic system and how it’s functioning,” said Barber. The project was partly funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Foundation officials said the labs, classrooms and offices were needed to accommodate an influx of students and researchers who wanted to work with Dr. Soren Rysgaard. The centre was named after the first female premier of a Canadian territory.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Nunatsiaq News, 27 February 2013) -- The future Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Nunavut moved one step closer to reality, with the Feb. 27 announcement of where the facility will be built in Cambridge Bay — on the Plateau just outside town.

“This is another key milestone in the construction phase of the Canadian High Arctic Research Station,” said Bernard Valcourt, the new minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, in a news release. “With the selection of the Plateau site as the location for CHARS, we are one step closer to building this major centre for scientific research and to building important partnerships across the North, Canada, and internationally.”

The Plateau site, one of five which was under consideration for the $142.5-million facility, is located on a slope overlooking the community and the bay, but close to the centre of the town. This site will form the main campus of CHARS, and it may include one or multiple buildings, with “excellent potential use for community integration,” the news release said. The main campus will also use existing and future community infrastructure and remote experimental sites.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Brendan P. Kelly and Simon N. Stephenson/ US Office of Science and Technology Policy press release, 19 February 2013) -- Today, the Administration’s National Science and Technology Council released a five-year Arctic Research Plan that outlines key areas of study the Federal government will undertake to better understand and predict environmental changes in the Arctic. The Plan was developed by a team of experts representing 14 Federal agencies, based on input from collaborators including the Alaska Governor’s Office, indigenous Arctic communities, local organizations, and universities. Seven research areas are highlighted in the Plan as both important to the development of national policies and well-poised to benefit from interagency collaboration, including among them: regional climate models, human health studies, and adaptation tools for communities. ...

Among a number of other activities, the new five-year plan calls for the Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Department of State, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution to work together to assess the resilience and vulnerabilities of Arctic communities to the impacts of climate change. That assessment will aim to provide Arctic residents, community leaders, and policy makers at all levels of government with the knowledge needed to plan and adapt.

The research plan released today does not encompass all Federal Arctic research activities that will occur over the next five years. It does, however, provide a roadmap for unprecedented collaboration between agencies on high impact research activities that will provide a solid scientific basis for on-the-ground progress in the Arctic. It also complements a number of steps being taken by the Administration to enable data-driven and science-based stewardship in the Arctic region, including the recent launch of regionally-focused data communities on ocean.data.gov.

To read the full report, please click here.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Aarhus University , 1 February 2013) -- Climate change is one of the major challenges facing the international community in the coming century. The warmer climate has already had a significant impact on the distribution of the sea ice, and has led to the advancement of spring in the Arctic. There is a close connection between the Arctic climate and our own. The cold we are experiencing in Denmark at present is due to the polar front extending south, for example.

Researchers now have an unprecedented opportunity to study these climate changes at first hand, thanks to a grant of DKK 70.5 million from the Villum Foundation as part of its research infrastructure programme. The grant will be used to set up modern research facilities at Station North in the far north of Greenland. For a number of years, Aarhus University has been following the development of air pollution here from a small hut. This building will now be significantly upgraded, and Project Manager Henrik Skov is very pleased with the grant.

"It makes it possible to take top modern measurements and increase our presence at Station North. Our scientists will be able to carry out research that was previously impossible in the High Arctic," he says. "This way, we'll be able to extend our studies so that we not just follow air pollution, but also get to follow developments and understand the processes that exist between climate, pollution and the vulnerable ecosystems in the High Arctic. We're therefore certain that colleagues from Denmark and abroad will also be champing at the bit to join us in this work," he concludes.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Discovery News via Alaska Dispatch, 5 January 2013) -- Above the Arctic Circle, and below 700 feet of ice, scientists are working in the world’s only laboratory that is situated underneath a glacier, at the Svartisen glacier in northern Norway. These researchers are gathering some of the best glacial data that has ever been compiled, Discovery News reports. The lab is run by the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, and researchers are carrying out experiments on glacier movement and drainage, as well as how the melt water impacts rising sea levels. While the first tunnel was initially created for a hydropower company, researchers were able to convince them to dig another small tunnel for research. They have since created additional tunnels for the lab, too.

The tunnels are created in a unique way: Instead of drilling a borehole through the ice to access the base of the glacier, researchers melt 30 – 40 foot long tunnels using hot water. It's a process that is far easier to coordinate, and researchers aren't hindered by the cracks in the ice drilling causes. Also with the new lab, they have easier access to the glacier and are able to take measurements from the same location with every visit. Creating one tunnel takes between 24 to 48 hours. Miriam Jackson, a senior research scientist and glaciologist with the directorate, remarked on the "beauty" of the process to Discovery News.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Science Codex, 4 January 2013) -- What does pulling a radar-equipped sled across the Arctic tundra have to do with improving our understanding of climate change? It's part of a new way to explore the little-known world of permafrost soils, which store almost as much carbon as the rest of the world's soils and about twice as much as is in the atmosphere.

The new approach combines several remote-sensing tools to study the Arctic landscape—above and below ground—in high resolution and over large spatial scales. It was developed by a group of researchers that includes scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). They use ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistance tomography, electromagnetic data, and LiDAR airborne measurements. Together, these tools allow the scientists to see the different layers of the terrestrial ecosystem, including the surface topography, the active layer that seasonally freezes and thaws, and the deeper permafrost layer.

The goal is to help scientists determine what will happen to permafrost-trapped carbon as the climate changes. Will it stay put? Or will it enter the atmosphere and accelerate climate change? The scientists report their approach in a paper recently published online in the journal Hydrogeology. Their research is one of the first papers published in association with a new Department of Energy project called the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE-Arctic), which seeks to gain a predictive understanding of the Arctic terrestrial ecosystem's feedback to climate. The NGEE-Arctic project is a collaboration among scientists and engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Berkeley Lab, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research, Research infrastructure

(Atle Staalesen/Barents Observer, 6 December 2012) -- After many years of expeditions with drifting North Pole stations, vanishing ice forces Russian Arctic researchers to go for unmanned solutions. Talking at an international polar conference in Sankt Petersburg on Wednesday, Head of the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Institute Ivan Frolov confirmed that Russia will conduct no more missions with drifting Arctic research stations.

Frolov instead proposes to base a series of drifting research buoys in the region. He also suggests to build a specially designed platform which can drift with the Arctic current, RIA Novosti reports. Since 1937, a total of 40 missions have been conducted with well-manned North Pole drifting stations. The ongoing 40th mission will be the last. As previously reported, the researchers had major problems with finding a suitable ice floes for the ongoing North Pole-40 mission.

The drifting North Pole stations, which have been organized by the Arctic and Antarctic Institute, have given major contributions to Russian research on the Arctic. In average, 15 people have manned the stations, which have included both housing and research facilities. Normally, the stations have been established in April and subsequently operated for up to three years when the ice floes end up in the Greenland straits. This year, however, the researchers were forced to end the previous North Pole-39 mission in the Canadian part of the Arctic following vanishing ice.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Jeff Richardson/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 20 December 2012) -- The fate of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's $1.2 million Fairbanks research station remains uncertain a year after the department announced the building's planned closure. The greenhouse complex, which sits empty on Geist Road, is about to enter a federal process for transfer or disposal. Construction of the facility was completed last spring, soon after the USDA's Agricultural Research Service announced it was eliminating its Alaska station and shipping 10 federal jobs out of the state.

So far, finding a tenant for such a specialized building has been a struggle. The federal General Services Administration is expected to begin the formal process for unloading the building in January, with the first preference going to the USDA and other federal agencies. The University of Alaska Fairbanks hopes to claim two modular buildings at the Geist Road site, with plans to move them on campus to serve as temporary office space. The main facility, which is on leased property and can’t be moved from the site, hasn’t drawn any long-term attention from UAF.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Dan Joling/AP via Peninsula Clarion, 17 October 2012) -- ANCHORAGE - A new $200 million tool for Arctic marine research is nearly complete at a Wisconsin shipyard. After the crack of a champagne bottle Saturday, the 261-foot Sikuliaq — named for the Inupiat word for young sea ice — slid from a steel cradle and bobbed upright outside the Marinette Marine Corp, facilities in Marinette, Wis.

When the National Science Foundation vessel begins research missions in 2014, the Sikuliaq will fill a void in Arctic study that has become more noticeable with the profound recent melting of summer sea ice and accompanying northern activity, from offshore petroleum development and ecotourism to possible new trade routes.

“There’s going to be a lot of new information that comes from this vessel,” said Terry Whitledge, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which will operate the vessel. Marinette Marine has completed 75 percent of the vessel. After six to eight more months of construction and then sea trials, it’s expected to reach its home port of Seward in January 2014.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(ArcticNet press release via Yahoo! Finance, 20 November 2012) -- VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - Leading Arctic scientists, researchers, policy makers, NGOs, and northern stakeholders will meet in Vancouver [in December] to discuss climate change, food security, Inuit education, sovereignty and other pressing issues facing the Canadian Arctic.

"The Arctic is changing rapidly," said Louis Fortier, ArcticNet's scientific director. "Arctic ice is melting at record rates, new shipping routes are opening up and industries are showing keen interests in potential opportunities in the area. With Canada on the eve of taking over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, this year's meeting will address some of the major challenges and opportunities brought by climate change and modernization in the Arctic."

More than 450 people are expected to attend what is the country's largest annual Arctic research gathering. This year's event will also host the first award ceremony of the $1 million annual Arctic Inspiration Prize, donated by the Vancouver couple of Sima Sharifi and Arnold Witzig of the S. and A. Inspiration Foundation. The prize will be awarded annually to teams that have presented a viable plan to turn Arctic knowledge into action.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Public events and conferences, Research infrastructure

(Carolyn Gramling/Science, V. 338(6104): 183, 12 October 2012) -- Polar researchers will soon have their own ride to the icy waters of the Bering Sea and points north.

After more than a decade of hitchhiking aboard the Healy, a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker that doubles as a research vessel, marine scientists are celebrating the launch this weekend [13 October]of the Sikuliaq, a $200 million, nearly 80-meter ship owned by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

See also "UAF researchers eye Sikuliaq science possibilities"

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Margaret Munro/Winnipeg Free Press, 24 March 2012) -- Atmospheric scientist Pierre Fogal headed north in February to help check on Earth's protective ozone layer high in the Arctic stratosphere. But he spent much of his time on his knees dealing with burst water pipes and frozen sewer lines at Canada's beleaguered Arctic research station. Then this week, the electrical system malfunctioned, says Fogal, site manager for PEARL, the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. The station, now limping along at half power and a chilly 10 C inside, is one of the world's premier observatories for tracking the health of the Arctic atmosphere. The station houses millions of dollars worth of scientific equipment used to monitor the ozone layer, greenhouse gases and pollution swirling around the polar vortex.

But it has been a bad year. Unusually frigid weather has taken a big toll on the station's plumbing and power system, and the chilly financial wind blowing out of Ottawa has left PEARL in dire financial straits. Federal grants that have kept the station running continuously since 2005 have run out, forcing the science team that runs PEARL to shut it down, at least temporarily. With no money for salaries, the station's three operators were let go in December. And on April 5, the two researchers now at the station collecting one last batch of atmospheric data will turn off the lights. The public -- after learning of PEARL'S financial woes last month -- has donated $12,000 to help keep the station going. The federal government has not, however, opened its chequebook, to the dismay of leading scientists.

"I think it is absolutely outrageous both on environmental and financial grounds," Richard Peltier, of the University of Toronto, says of the federal government's inability to come up with the $1.5 million a year to keep PEARL operating year round. "For goodness sake, they put upwards of $10 million of instrumentation into the laboratory up there," says Peltier, an atmospheric physicist, who in February was awarded the Herzberg Gold Medal, Canada's top science prize. "To shut it down after not many years of operation makes no sense at all," says Peltier. In what Peltier describes as a "catastrophe for the country," the government has refused to provide new funding for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, one of the main funders of PEARL and many other university-based programs. CFCAS has awarded $119 million for research on climate, atmospheric and oceanographic sciences to university researchers across Canada since 2000. ...

Peltier and his colleagues say the funding drought has not only stalled research and jeopardized the Arctic lab, but it is prompting highly trained and valuable scientists and technical staff to leave Canada. "We're bleeding people," says Peltier. The most notable is Ted Shepherd, a celebrated atmospheric researcher at the University of Toronto, who has taken a new job at Britain's University of Reading. ... "In Canada, I think a lot of these cuts are for political reasons," says Shepherd. "It's not really budgetary at the end of the day, it's a choice." "It's a huge loss for Canada," atmospheric physicist Kimberly Strong, at the University of Toronto, says of Shepherd's departure.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 16 March 2012) -- Canadians have donated about $10,000 to help keep a unique High Arctic research station from closing after its federal funding stops, says the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory, or PEARL, is the northern-most civilian research station in Canada. The laboratory takes measurements on greenhouse gases and ozone and verifies the accuracy of satellite data, among other things. It contributes data to several international projects monitoring climate change.

“Donations range from $5 up to over $1,000 and they come from coast to coast, from students, from people from all walks of life who are responding to the fact that this unique research station will not continue,” said Dawn Conway, executive director of the foundation. She says about 80 people have donated since the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change announced the station would not be able to continue year-round.

“I’m really impressed with Canadians,” said Kim Strong, an atmospheric physics professor at the University of Toronto who takes a team to the station each spring to measure air quality, pollution and greenhouse gases. “It’s quite heartwarming. We’ve received a lot of expressions of support, which are just as welcome as the funding,” she said.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 28 February 2012) -- Canada's northernmost research laboratory is shutting down due to lack of funding. The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) in Eureka, Nunavut, which made key measurements last winter used to detect and analyze the largest ozone hole ever detected over the Arctic, will cease year-round operations on April 30. At that time, its equipment will be removed and the building will remain available only for intermittent, short-term projects.

"When you run out of money, there's no alternative but to close the lab," Jim Drummond, a Dalhousie University researcher who is the principal investigator for PEARL, said Tuesday. The station has been tracking ozone depletion, air quality and climate change in the High Arctic since 2005. But the Canadian Network for Detection of Atmospheric Change, an informal network of university researchers that runs the station, hasn't been able to secure the $1.5 million annual funding required to continue running the station all year round. That is largely due to the discontinuation of government funding to the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, which had been covering three-quarters of the station's costs, and the end to the International Polar Year program.

Drummond said the network has since applied for various government funding programs and has been turned down for all of them, despite the government's frequent assertion that the Arctic is a priority for Canada. PEARL is the biggest lab in Canada's High Arctic and, at 80 degrees north latitude, one of the closest in the world to the North Pole. "Shutting it down causes a big gap in the measurements," Drummond said. "We're losing the ability to know what's going on up there." ...

Matthias Schneider, a German researcher who leads a global network that uses data from around the world to understand atmospheric water cycle and its role in climate, said PEARL's closure will eliminate a "unique set" of High Arctic measurements "essential" to the global effort. University of Toronto researcher Kimberly Strong said the end to those and other measurements come "just as our need for high-quality data in the changing Arctic is becoming ever more important." The closure could also scuttle plans for a polar telescope and magnetic observatory at the site.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(China.org, 24 February 2012) -- China will beef up its effort to explore the North Pole and plan two Arctic expeditions before 2015, according to the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration. With the building of a new icebreaker in 2013, China can sail two polar expedition vessels at the same time in the North and South poles, said Wang Qiyi, senior engineer of the National Climate Center. The new icebreaker, with an estimated investment of 1.25 billion yuan ($198 million), can push through sea ice more than 1.5-meter thick with 0.2-meter snow covering. The country now has only one icebreaker, Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, for Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, which limits research time for the Arctic expedition.

As a major country in the Northern Hemisphere, China is greatly influenced by climate and environmental changes in the North Pole Its Arctic research mission started in late 1990s -- after the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Canada and Japan. The researches mainly concentrate on physical oceanography, marine biology and marine chemistry.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Planning and Organization, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 16 December 2011) -- A senior federal official says there will be no cuts to ozone monitoring stations in the Arctic. Environment Canada is reducing its ozone monitoring program but at a meeting this week of the federal environment committee, Karen Dodds, a senior environment official, said the stations in Canada’s far north would be maintained.

There are three ozone monitoring stations in the Arctic — in Alert, Eureka and Resolute. Tom Duck, an atmospheric scientist at Dalhousie University, said scientists only recently found a hole in the ozone over the Arctic and that northern monitoring is crucial. "These northern stations are really important,” he said. “They're important for ozone, looking for ozone holes, and really detecting fingerprints of ozone depletion. If they were to be reduced in their service we wouldn't be able to see ozone holes as well. Ozone holes appear at different places in the Arctic and so you actually need a rather sizable network of stations in order to look at the problem properly and understand really what's going on up there.

“Canada's an awfully big country,” he said. “There are only seven stations in southern Canada, there are only three in the Arctic. So that's not really getting a whole lot of coverage. In fact, we'd really like to see more Arctic stations. It would make perfect sense to have a station in Iqaluit, for example." There's no word yet on what will happen to the monitoring stations in southern Canada.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Jeff Richardson/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 13 December 2011) -- FAIRBANKS - Budget cuts are forcing the closure in spring of Alaska’s federal agriculture research station, including a newly built $1.2 million greenhouse and research complex in Fairbanks. A roughly $40 million cut to the Agricultural Research Service is resulting in the elimination of 10 stations throughout the country, said ARS spokeswoman Sandy Miller Hays. That includes all work under way at the Subarctic ARS station in Alaska, including projects in Fairbanks, Palmer and Kodiak.

The planned ARS closures stem from a spending bill passed by Congress in November that included a cut to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The cut came with some warning — President Obama proposed the elimination of the stations in his budget proposal early this year. About 10 federal employees throughout the state will be affected by the closure, USDA spokesman Matt Herrick said in an email. A number of University of Alaska Fairbanks students working and studying at the ARS station will also be out of work, said Carol Lewis, dean of the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Science. Lewis said the transfer of the five Fairbanks ARS employees to other stations in the Western United States could take effect as early as March but that the employees will have the option of retiring or leaving the service. While research would be able to continue until spring, she said, no additional field work will take place.

The Subarctic ARS station specialized in agricultural pest management, Lewis said, and a focus on insects, weeds and pesticides was largely avoided by UAF to prevent duplication. The Palmer station focuses on collecting northern plant samples, while the Kodiak office has studied techniques for using fish waste for agriculture.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(University of Alaska Fairbanks press release, 17 November 2011) -- Fairbanks, Alaska - The National Science Foundation awarded $16.3 million to the University of Alaska Fairbanks in support of the Toolik Field Station, a major site for national and international research in the North American Arctic since 1975. "With this award Toolik Field Station is now considered a major NSF facility, said Marion Syndonia "Donie" Bret-Harte, principal investigator for the award and scientist at UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology, which operates the station.

The five-year cooperative agreement, the third from NSF since 2000, will enable the station to increase and improve the provision of housing, utilities, meals, communications, modern lab space, vehicles and common-use science equipment to the hundreds of scientists and students who work at the station each year. "This is more than a supplies and logistics award," said Bret-Harte. TFS is currently host to NSF's Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research and Arctic Observatory Network programs and is a member of the International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic. TFS has also been selected as the arctic site for the National Ecological Observatory Network program.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Jane George/Nunatsiaq News, 14 November 2011) -- When the Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) opens in Cambridge Bay six years from now, people in this Nunavut community of 1,500 want to be prepared. For that, hamlet officials say they want help.

[The] CHARS will spark a flurry of construction activity, year-round, in Cambridge Bay, starting at least two years before the research station’s projected opening in 2017. New business opportunities will also start to flow from CHARS during construction of its facility and the housing needed for its 55 new employees, says Cambridge Bay’s current deputy mayor Wilf Wilcox. “But how can we organize our community, our businesses to take better advantage of them?” And it’s one question that Cambridge Bay has been largely left to grapple with on its own.

A nine-member steering committee, whose members include Wilcox, meets monthly to brainstorm how they can prepare for the $81-million CHARS project. But what they need is some expert advice, say Wilcox, who also runs a plumbing and electrical contracting business in Cambridge Bay, Jago Enterprises. “I don’t think we expected to have someone come in and do everything for us,” Wilcox said in a recent interview. “But we need to get some help.” The hamlet’s economic development officer Jim MacEachern also worries that if Cambridge Bay doesn’t prepare adequately for CHARS “we won’t have the capability to take advantage of the opportunities.” Wilcox and MacEachern would like to see a full-time person in the community, who would work on ensuring that Cambridge Bay benefits from CHARS. ...

...a state-of-the-art utilidor system lies at the heart of Cambridge Bay’s dream for its future as a centre for cutting-edge research and development in the Canadian Arctic. It’s the base of an “integrated infrastructure” proposal that the hamlet submitted as a project to the federal government for funding. ... But for now, CHARS remains at the design stage. The final selection of the design consultant and the awarding of a contract should be in place for the summer of 2012.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Yukon College News, 10 November 2011) -- Whitehorse - People interested in climate change and climate science in Yukon can now find the last eight years of research on the subject in one easy-to-access document. The Northern Climate ExChange (NCE) released the Compendium of Yukon Climate Change Science this week. The report, produced as part of the Northern Climate ExChange’s Climate Change Information and Mainstreaming Program, includes over 175 studies arranged into ten general themes. There are studies on everything from fish to forestry, from pollution to the breeding cycles of red squirrels at Kluane Lake (they’re giving birth an average of 18 days earlier, largely as a result of climate change in the area).

“The north is already experiencing the impacts of climate change,” says Lia Johnson, the Climate Change Information Analyst for the NCE. “There’s a lot of research being done here at the Yukon Research Centre, and by outside universities and researchers. It’s great to have all the relevant research on the Yukon in one place. “There are really two audiences for the compendium,” says Johnson. “There’s the full compendium, detailing all of the studies for governments, organizations and researchers to access. Then there’s a summary of 20 of the studies that give a broad overview of the state of knowledge for Yukon climate change. That’s more for the public.”

The compendium was compiled by Aletta Leitch, a student working at the NCE last summer. The compendium is available in a PDF format. The information is searchable through a standard keyword search. “It’s a living document,” says Johnson. “We’ve included material right up to the present day, and we’ll continue to add to it as new research is published.” The Northern Climate ExChange is one of six key programs that operate under the Yukon Research Centre (YRC) at Yukon College. The compendium can be found at http://www.taiga.net/nce/mainstreaming/index.html.

Tagged: News, Publication, Research infrastructure

(Alison Weisburger/The Arctic Institute, Center for Circumpolar Security Studies, 7 November 2011) -- As tough economic times persist across the globe, it is no surprise that the governments of both Canada and the United States are looking for ways to trim their budgets and use resources more efficiently. In both countries, recent discussions about potential cuts have given rise to the idea of reigning in funding for Arctic research as a way to save money. While these proposals are not yet formal legislation, they have garnered concern among the research community as well as internal debate among policy makers.

Congressman Joe Walsh, a Republican Representative from Illinois, announced in an online video that The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Polar Arctic Research Grant Program was that week’s winner of the “YouCut” project. The “YouCut” project is an initiative launched by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that asks people to select from a choice of budget items and vote on which they would most like to see cut. In his video, Walsh proposes that the government could save by taking away the annual $25 million dollars in grants that the NSF awards to researchers studying the Arctic. The website states that Walsh will introduce formal legislation aiming to cut this program. Fran Ulmer, the Chair of the U.S. Arctic Research commission (USARC), responded to Walsh’s video by releasing a statement in the USARC Daily email newsletter on October 17th. In her statement, she agrees that it is important to cut federal spending but asserts that the NSF Arctic research grants are “a small expenditure with a tremendous return on investment”. Arguing that research informs both policy makers and resource managers, she asserts that ignoring the need for information about the Arctic from scientific research “would be tantamount to a dereliction of duty.”

In Canada, the potential cuts to funding could affect a much more specific area of Arctic-related research: ozone monitoring. Despite the recent alarming report of a significant ozone hole above the Arctic, which included research contributions from several scientists who work for the Canadian government, more than 760 people at Environment Canada are still waiting to hear if their jobs will be eliminated because of workforce reduction related to budget cuts. According to an October 21st article in the National Post, Environment Minister Peter Kent has explained to the House of Commons that “his department was ‘optimizing and streamlining’ the way it monitors and collects ozone data”, although he denies any move toward shutting down the atmospheric monitoring network entirely. The department has suggested that the budget could be trimmed by improving the integration between different technologies used to measure ozone.

While these proposed cuts to funding are only in their exploratory stages, they seem to reveal a disconnect between scientists and policy makers. Even as scientists continue to expound the policy relevance of an in-depth understanding of the Arctic region, particularly in reference to developing strategic environmental, economic, and social plans for the region’s future, some policy makers continue to deny that the value of research is worth the cost. What these proposals bring to light is that even while recognition of the Arctic region's global significance may be on the rise, Arctic research remains relatively peripheral to the concerns of the average policy-maker in Washington, D.C. or Ottawa. On the one hand, it is clear that the national governments of the U.S. and Canada are serious about nurturing their advantageous geopolitical status as coastal Arctic States. However, what remains to be seen is whether robust funding for research will continue to underpin their activities, or if parts of Arctic research programs will be deemed costly luxuries that are nonessential for policy decisions.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres press release via Eurekalert, 28 October 2011) -- Bremerhaven -- Today the new polar research aircraft Polar 6 will be presented in Bremerhaven, Germany, at the beginning of next week the Basler BT-67 will take off to the Antarctic. Its first job there will be to carry out measurements of the ice crust, which is up to several kilometres thick. The measurement flights will contribute to answering one of the major open questions in climate research: To what degree is the sea level rising due to changes in the ice cover in Antarctica? "The polar regions play a key role in the worldwide development of the climate. Research there thus has high priority for us. We provide modern and reliable research equipment that scientists need for their important work," states Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, German Federal Minister of Education and Research. The ministry is funding the purchase and equipping of the Polar 6 with a total of 9.78 million euros.

"Aircraft of the Basler BT-67 type have proven to be outstanding for assignments in the polar regions," says Prof. Dr. Heinrich Miller, deputy director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, who has frequently travelled in the Antarctic on polar aircraft. "We are extremely delighted that with the Polar 6 we now have a second aircraft of this type at our disposal, giving us greater capacity to handle the enormous demand for research flights in polar regions." It is now possible, he adds, to carry out important investigations in the Arctic in spring without having to shorten the Antarctic season at the same time.

Tagged: News, Research, Research infrastructure

(US Arctic Research Commission Arctic Daily Update, 17 October 2011) -- Congressional Majority Leader Eric Cantor's website, YOUCUT, includes a video of Congressman Joe Walsh proposing elimination of Arctic research grants by the National Science Foundation.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 12 October 2011) -- Nunavut celebrated the opening of a state-of-the-art research centre. The Nunavut Research Centre in Iqaluit has been in operation since February, but on Wednesday, dignitaries, researchers and other invited guests were on hand for a special ceremony. "There is a pressing need for cutting-edge research combined with traditional knowledge in the North, administered by Northerners and more and more conducted by Northerners," said Nunavut premier Eva Aariak.

The 10,000 square foot building is home to research labs, classrooms and offices. It's also home to the environmental technology program at Nunavut's Arctic College. Aariak says having Inuit involved in scientific research will ensure traditional knowledge is passed on to future generations. Most of the money for the facility has come from the federal government. Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq was also on hand for the official opening.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(RIA Novosti via Arctic.ru, 3 October 2011) -- A new Russian manned drifting weather station started operating in the Arctic Ocean on Saturday. The Severny Polyus-39 (SP-39) floating station officially began its work after a ceremony to hoist the Russian flag on Saturday afternoon. The station has already sent its first weather report.

SP-39 has a crew of 16 specialists, including marine and ice scientists, hydrologists and meteorologists. The station and its crew arrived to the region onboard the Rossiya nuclear-powered icebreaker. The station is currently located at 84 degrees North 150 degrees West.

Russian floating stations, which are usually in operation for around a year, are designed to conduct meteorological, ice and oceanographic observations, as well as environmental monitoring. The stations also research the effects of climatic change on the Arctic and the impact on the region's ecosystems.

Tagged: News, Research, Research infrastructure

(Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada press release, 15 September 2011) -- Québec City, Quebec, September 15, 2011—The Honourable Christian Paradis, Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture), today announced an additional $67.3 million in funding to ArcticNet—the largest funding renewal for the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program to date. The mission of this world-leading network is to help adapt the coastal Canadian Arctic to climate change and modernization. ArcticNet received its first federal grant in 2003 for almost $46 million. ...

ArcticNet, an independent not-for-profit organization housed at the Université Laval in Quebec City, will receive the funding over a seven-year period. It was renewed because it met the threshold of excellence after rigorous evaluation of its scientific accomplishments, future research goals, and training and knowledge-transfer activities. ...

The NCE program is managed jointly by the three federal granting agencies—Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)—in partnership with Industry Canada.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(UArctic News, 30 August 2011) -- The second International Arctic Forum “The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue”, taking place at the Northern Arctic Federal University (NArFU) Sept 21-23, 2011 will see the official opening of the University of the Arctic's Research Office, also hosted by NArFU.

UArctic President Lars Kullerud sees the establishment of a research office as a critical step in creating a collective capacity for UArctic members to coordinate northern research. He notes that many of UArctic's members in the North are perceived as smaller actors, and risk being marginalized by larger institutions from outside the region when it comes to high level research projects. The new office will help to promote the collective capacity of these members and strengthen the role of northern institutions in Arctic research.

Kullerud recognizes that other key Arctic research organizations like IASC and IASSA do a fantastic job in Arctic research, and points to the Memorandum of Understanding that was recently signed between those organizations and UArctic to increase cooperation in this area. He states that the new Research Office will ensure that UArctic members are well represented in these efforts. Kullerud concludes that, "for the first time we will have real capacity for the Knowledge and Dialogue strategic area (Mimir). In the past it has been a challenge to realize the potential in this area. Now there is a better opportunity to show UArctic's capacity and engage more effectively with the working groups of the Arctic Council.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(CP via Winnipeg Free Press, 24 August 2011) -- CHURCHILL, Man. - An Arctic research station on Hudson Bay has marked the unveiling of its new facility in one of the busiest polar bear habitats by naming the recipient of one of Canada's largest research prizes.

Serge Payette, a plant ecologist at Laval University in Quebec, won the $50,000 Weston family prize in northern research. "It's a testimony to the work I've done over the last decades, thanks to the students I've trained," said Payette, who's been working in the Arctic for 40 years. The award's announcement gave further profile to the opening of the new station in Churchill, Man. It's one of four Arctic research centres given $11 million each by Ottawa in 2009 for refit and refurbishment. The money has taken the station from the era of punch cards and slide rules to the age of the Internet, said Mike Goodyear, director of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre.

The centre sits 23 kilometres east of Churchill and next to Wapusk National Park, which protects the inland denning area of a major polar bear population. In the old building — built 50 years ago by the military — snow blew through cracks in the windows. The roof leaked. The old lab didn't have proper heat. Not any more. "It's a brand-new building," Goodyear said proudly. New labs are clean and have separate wet and dry areas providing space for finicky technical analysis. "It'll allow a higher level of sophisticated research," said Goodyear. "In the past, for a lot of soil samples, there was only so much processing that could be done in Churchill and the rest would have to be sent back down to wherever. With a proper wet lab, there's more of that kind of work that can be done in Churchill. "It benefits the researchers because it provides a bit more instant feedback on what they're doing." Accommodations for scientists and the public who visit on educational vacations have also improved. "(The old building) was tight and uncomfortable," said Goodyear. "It wears on you. "The new building smooths that out."

Payette agrees field stations such as Churchill are essential to northern science. "It is of the utmost importance," he said. "If you want to have a good idea of the diversity of the North, you must go into the field. "This is a superb building."

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Alutiiq Museum & Archaeological Repository announcement via AnthroAlaska listserv, 16 August 2011) -- The Alutiiq Museum proudly announces that is it has earned accreditation. Bestowed by the American Association of Museums, accreditation is the highest level of professional certification for a museum in the United States. It indicates that an institution meets the most rigorous standards of practice in everything it does, from caring for collections to serving the public.

We become the seventh museum in Alaska and only the second tribal museum in the nation to earn this top professional certification. Many members of Alaska’s anthropological community helped us to achieve this long held dream.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Sarah Rogers/Nunatsiaq News Online, 12 July 2011) -- Officials say Nunavut’s new research vessel, the MV Nuliajuk, will provide a much-needed boost to the territory’s fishing industry. Not to mention that the 64-foot Nuliajuk is a beauty. Territorial and community leaders and elders gathered aboard the Nuliajuk July 11, to christen the floating fisheries research station as it lay anchored off Iqaluit.

Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak threw a bottle of sparkling water against the ship’s hull to christen it. Maritime tradition says that a bottle of champagne must be smashed against the hull of a new vessel; if the bottle doesn’t break, the vessel will have bad luck.

“To see it all done – it’s incredible,” said Nunavut’s environment minister, Daniel Shewchuk, as he later toured the Nuliajuk with Ivan Oxford, the ship’s captain. “Time will tell, but I think it’ll have a very good benefit on our fisheries and enhance resources for all Nunavummiut,” Shewchuk said. The Nuliajuk will help Nunavut learn more about its potential resources as well as the environmental factors influencing the health of its fisheries, Oxford said.

Tagged: News, Public events and conferences, Research infrastructure

(RIA Novosti, 26 April 2011) -- Russia will create a scientific center in Barentsburg in the Svalbard Archipelago, polar explorer parliament member Artur Chilingarov said on Tuesday. "A decision is being discussed on building a Russian research center on the base of the existing observatory," Chilingarov said.

"This will be in Barentsburg," he continued adding that the construction may begin next year. Svalbard belongs to Norway, however, the archipelago was established as a free economic and demilitarized zone. Chilingarov said that he met with Svalbard authorities to discuss the construction of the research center and they fully understand the need to comply with the agreement on the Russian presence on the archipelago.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research, Research infrastructure

(Margaret Munro/Postmedia News, 16 April 2011) -- An enterprising team of astronomers is set to lug a telescope to the High Arctic, lubricate it with special low temperature grease and set up shop on Ellesmere Island. They say the island -- the last big chunk of land before the North Pole -- looks like it could be the best place on Earth to see the universe.

“It’s almost like being in space,” says astrophysicist Eric Steinbring, who has been checking out the view from mountaintops on the northern edge of Ellesmere. The “super-seeing” potential is so remarkable that he and his colleagues believe Ellesmere could put a Canadian site in the astronomical big leagues. The Arctic mountaintops appear to be as good, if not better, than the Hawaiian and Chilean sites now home to large world-class telescopes. And the view might be comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope.

“It looks that good,” said Steinbring, of the National Research Council’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, who is echoed by his colleagues at the University of Toronto and University of B.C. They dream of one day stationing a multimillion-dollar telescope on a remote Ellesmere mountaintop. And in a modest step in that direction, they are now racing to get a $100,000 telescope operating on the island by next winter, adding a new and decidedly chilly twist to Canadian astronomy. Astronomer Nicholas Law says the Ellesmere telescope is to spend the “wonderfully” long and dark Arctic winter looking for potentially habitable planets. He is putting the telescope together at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, which is financing the project with federal labs and granting councils.

Law says the project is different than other planet-hunting operations, which concentrate on larger stars. The Ellesmere telescope will survey stars as small as a 10th the size of our sun, which are believed to harbour plenty of small planets. “We have the possibility of detecting rocky planets on which liquid water could exist,” Law said.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(ARMAP news release via ArcticInfo, 18 February 2011) -- The Arctic Research Mapping Application (ARMAP) includes a new ARMAP 2D. This interactive mapping solution joins a suite of online maps and services that support arctic science. It is fast, intuitive, and optimized for high latitudes. With the new ARMAP 2D, you can earn more about research projects in your region of interest or scientific discipline; explore available data or possible collaborations; and use the online mapping tools to meet your own project's specific goals.

The new ARMAP 2D is available as a beta release online, at http://armap.org

The previous version of ARMAP 2D, which is based on outdated IMS technology, is still available. Other resources on the website include ARMAP in Google Earth, ARMAP 3D, a variety of web services, and spatial datasets customized for arctic research. ARMAP is funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs, and is a collaborative effort among the Systems Ecology Laboratory at the University of Texas at El Paso, Nuna Technologies, the INSTAAR QGIS Laboratory, and CH2M HILL Polar Services. For further information or to play with the application, please go to http://armap.org

Tagged: News, Polar research: Reports and findings, Research infrastructure

(Conference Board of Canada/Centre for the North via nunavutcircumpolar, 9 February 2011) -- The Centre for the North hopes to change the national conversation about Canada's North through the Northern Community Research Tool. This tool lets the user study the North as never before by making it possible to easily investigate similarities and differences across communities, and across 'types' of communities.

Information about some 800 Canadian Northern communities can be extracted — and mapped — for nearly 90 indicators (for one, two or three indicators at a time), classified under the following headings:

• Demography: age, gender, Aboriginal identity and language, population
• Economy: income, economic diversity, unemployment rate, employment by industry
• Education: college and high school graduation, literacy rates, schools
• Geography: latitude and longitude
• Health: employment in health care sector, prevalence of chronic diseases, mortality rates, life expectancy, birth weight, obesity, smoking
• Housing: value of dwelling, number of residents per home, households in need of major repair
• Society: lone-parent families, voter turnout

Webinars demonstrate how the tool works and give some background information: 1. Northern Community Research Tool - Short Webinar (run time 8:34) This one gives users a brief overview of the tool; and 2. Northern Community Research Tool - Long Webinar (run time 26:52). This was originally presented in December 2010 as a 'sneak peek' into the tool for Centre for the North investors (at the time, the tool was known as the Dynamic Community Typology Tool, which has since been updated to Northern Communities Research Tool).

People looking for a source of statistics that include the other circumpolar countries should have a look at ArcticStat.

Tagged: Arctic, Data, Education and outreach, News, Research infrastructure

(US Arctic Research Commission Arctic Update, 21 January 2011) -- The US Arctic Research Commission will meet today in Anchorage where it will hear from Senator Begich and from State and Federal representatives on Arctic research issues.

The Commission will discuss the development of Arctic research policy, and recent efforts to revitalize the Interagency Arctic Research and Policy Committee, responsible for the approximately $400M per years spent by the federal government on Arctic research. An agenda can be found here.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(IANS via Silfy News, 11 January 2011) -- New Delhi - Bharati, India's third state-of-the-art research station at Antarctica, will be operational by 2012, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said Tuesday. Bharati will have all the modern facilities and will have an Earth Station for transmission of real time data from the polar region to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The work on the research station coming up at Lasemann Hills, east Antarctica, started in 2008 and will be completed by 2012.

"About 60 percent of the work has been completed and it will be operational by 2012. The research station will be completed in a record five years' time," Sibal told reporters here. India will establish an Earth Station at the research station which will provide data to scientists in India. "Earth Station will transmit data to scientists within 45 minutes which now takes about two-three days," said Shailesh Nayak, secretary in the ministry. About 35 people - 25 scientists and 10 people from logistics - will be permanently stationed at the station.

Tagged: Antarctic, News, Research infrastructure

(L. Kruglova/Voice of Russia, 30 December 2010) -- There are two Poles of Cold in Russia where the lowest temperatures, 65 and 67 degrees Celsius below zero, have been registered. The two places, Oimyakon and Vekhoyansk, are in Yakutia of East Siberia at the edge of permafrost. The world’s first Permafrost Institute in Yakutia marked its 50th anniversary this year. Russia’s 60 percent of territory is covered with permafrost soil. A large complex of problems is being studied by the institute which are linked to the specifics of freezing of these lands, global warming and mining, says the director of the Institute of Permafrost, Rudolf Chzhan.

“The experts at the institute study the changes in permafrost and cryonic processes that are going on in the region. Lately, they have attached great significance to the Arctic. Suffice it to say that Yakutia bordering with the Laptev and East Siberian Seas is losing up to 10 thousand square kilometers of territory annually. Our institute has come to a conclusion that the permafrost is responding to climate change very slowly. In some places, permafrost retreats, while some other places are turning into cryogenic soil. Glaciers are disappearing in the Polar Regions and southern latitudes, and at the same time permafrost soil is changing from one variety to another,” says Rudolf Chzhan. ...

At present, Russia is drawing up a project to set up a federal scientific centre that will be engaged in permafrost studies, and in view of this, the Prime Minister visited Yakutia, says Rudolf Chzhan.

“Vladimir Putin visited the Island of Samoilov where we have been conducting research work with the Germans in the past years. The permafrost soil on the island is 500 meters thick. The temperature of the cryogenic soil falls down to ten degrees Celsius below zero. We showed the Prime Minister a well, which have been drilled by us,” Rudolf Chzhan said.

Tagged: News, Research, Research infrastructure

(Brandon Keim/Wired Science, 27 December 2010) -- If you've ever wondered what snowflakes truly look like, spend a few moments with these images from the Electron Microscopy Unit of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland. At the EMU, where other areas of focus include crop pathogens and livestock diseases, "studying the structure of snow is vital to several areas of science as well as to activities that affect our daily lives."

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Lisa Gregoire/Innovation Canada, 15 December 2010) -- When you turn 50, there’s a tendency to sit back and celebrate your accomplishments. But some 50-year-olds prefer to be bold and try new things. Such is the case for the University of Alberta’s Canadian Circumpolar Institute (CCI). Between building university-degree programs in the North and finding ways to get Canadians to the Antarctic, there’s no time for the CCI to rest on its laurels.

“We want to be the best northern-research centre that serves northerners, academia and government,” says Marianne Douglas, director of the CCI, which celebrates its golden anniversary this year. “We’re only 50 years old, but we’re getting there.”

With a fickle northern climate impacting ice conditions, plants, people and animal behaviour, the CCI is more relevant than ever — not only as a crucial funding agency for northern science and exploration but also as a repository for books, historical documents and interdisciplinary expertise, without which we couldn’t measure the extent of today’s changes and prepare for what might happen tomorrow.

Thanks to a wave of interest in northern issues in the late 1950s, the CCI was formed in 1960 as the Boreal Institute for Northern Studies to focus on Canada’s western boreal regions. In 1990, it reorganized to reflect a shift in contemporary research on Arctic peoples and their environment. That mandate has recently expanded to include the Antarctic, in an effort to compare the two polar regions for a more complete understanding of global environmental change.

One thing, however, has remained constant: the CCI’s commitment to science. With the funding it receives from the federal and provincial governments, as well as endowment and scholarship funds, the CCI apportions about $250,000 annually to students, post-doctoral researchers and faculty so that they can afford the expensive field trips to remote northern settings.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Tim Wall/Discovery News, 16 December 2010) -- Spotting seals from the air can be harder than finding a needle in a haystack. And Arctic storms can make it a lot more dangerous. But now, an unmanned aircraft equipped with cameras is being used to observe sea ice coverage and monitor seal populations in the far north. The drone is much cheaper to use than manned aircraft. It also eliminates the dangers to pilots and scientists flying in the fierce conditions of the Arctic.

Advanced facial-recognition software makes the use of these planes possible, since the same software can also identify seals on the ice. The software was developed by Boulder Labs Inc. The project is led by Elizabeth Weatherhead, senior scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), a joint venture of the University of Colorado-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"By finding the types of ice they [seals] prefer, we can keep track of that ice and see how it holds up as the Arctic sea ice extent shrinks," said Weatherhead in a University of Colorado press release. The drone, named Scan Eagle, has a 10-foot wingspan. It flies at altitudes from 300 to 1,000 feet for up to eight hours. During Scan Eagle's three- to five-mile flights over the Bering Sea it can capture thousands of images.

"Biologists are thrilled about the image recognition software because it could change the way we monitor seal populations," said Weatherhead. "We can send an unmanned craft out from a ship, collect 4,000 images, and have them analyzed before dinner.” The software can be altered to allow researchers to look for polar bears and other arctic creatures too. Also, having more information about the disappearance of sea ice will allow scientists to better understand how climate change is affecting the arctic.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research, Research infrastructure

(NSF Science Nation, 25 October 2010) -- There's nothing like temperatures that can reach minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit to keep you on your toes. For engineers Erik Verhagen and Camille Parisel, working in Antarctica on a project appropriately called "IceCube" is both challenging and exciting. While there are ways to get used to the harsh climate, these experts have to be very resourceful to fix technical difficulties so far away from "civilization."

"Whatever the problems are," says Parisel, "you have to do it yourself, you can't call and say, 'Well, help me, I don't know how to do that.' Sometimes you don't even have the Internet. We work together to fix problems; we try to make it work and we help each other." "Sometimes it happens that you are short of something, and you are creative, [so] you build it yourself. That's how you resolve problems," adds Verhagen. Parisel and Verhagen are among about 250 people around the globe who work on one of the most unusual observatories on our planet.

What is IceCube?

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a collection of thousands of sensors, buried up to a mile and a half below the surface of the Antarctic, designed to study neutrinos. Neutrinos are mysterious, subatomic particles that have very little mass, and only interact weakly with other particles. Neutrinos are emitted by violent cosmic events, such as supernovas or black holes. Why are they so important? Tracing their origin could provide clues in the search for dark matter and other secrets of our universe.

Tagged: Antarctic, News, Research conduct and ethics, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 26 October 2010) -- A $2-million research centre being built in Old Crow, Yukon, aims to help scientists save money while encouraging local youth to stay in school. Located on the banks of the Porcupine River, the facility will include a laboratory, a walk-in freezer and storage space. Officials hope to have it completed by the beginning of next month. The centre will allow university researchers who are collecting specimens in northern Yukon to begin their analysis while they're still in the area, as opposed to shipping out their specimens right away.

"A lot of scientists do work up there, and many of these are multi-year projects," Jeff Hunston, the Yukon government's director of heritage resources, told CBC News on Tuesday. "If they take all their field equipment up there, and at the end of the season have to ship south — only to ship it north again — back and forth, I mean, they're paying a lot of freight." Hunston said the research facility makes economic sense for researchers in Old Crow, a remote fly-in community that has a housing shortage.

"If we can actually store things there, it's a smart way to do business," he said, adding that having the facility could mean researchers can put more toward their projects.  Officials with the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in Old Crow say they hope the research facility will serve as a link between the scientific and traditional communities. "It's very important for the community in terms of allowing a place to facilitate scientific research within the community and provide a bridge between heritage and their culture," said Lance Nagwan, the First Nation's director of natural resources.

Many high school students in Old Crow have helped researchers in the field, and the First Nation says it hopes having those students involved in the analysis stage will encourage them to continue their studies.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Western Economic Diversification and National Research Council Canada press release via Marketwire, 29 October 2010) -- THOMPSON, MANITOBA - The Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification and the Honourable Peter Bjornson, Manitoba Minister of Entrepreneurship, Training and Trade today joined Rolls-Royce Canada Limited, Pratt & Whitney Canada, the National Research Council Canada (NRC), and other aerospace industry representatives to celebrate the grand opening of the Global Aerospace Centre for Icing and Environmental Research (GLACIER) facility and the not-for-profit Environmental Test, Research and Education Center (EnviroTREC). This world class, state-of-the-art cold weather testing and research facility will benefit Manitoba and the world's aviation industry. ...

EnviroTREC is a year-round research facility specializing in supporting engine icing certification and research. EnviroTREC is co-located with industry in this new facility built by Global Aerospace Centre for Icing and Environment Research Inc. (GLACIER) which is a limited joint venture between Rolls-Royce Canada Limited and Pratt & Whitney Canada.

"GLACIER will be a highly advanced centre for ice testing which is critical to the aerospace industry to ensure engine dependability and quality. The centre will also be a global leader in cold weather research which will deliver important benefits to the aviation industry," said Walter Di Bartolomeo, Chairman of the Board of GLACIER. Funding of $42 million for the facility includes a Government of Canada investment of $13.4 million, a $9 million secured, repayable loan from the Province of Manitoba with the balance coming from the aerospace industry. The opening of this facility and the jobs that are associated demonstrate Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce's commitment to Canada's economy through the Government's Industrial Regional Benefits (IRB) policy. The Program ensures high-value economic stimulus is injected into the economy, creating jobs and opportunities for Canadian workers and their families.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(RIA Novosti, 18 October 2010) -- A team of Russian scientists celebrated the opening of Russia’s Severny Polyus-38 floating research station on a drifting ice floe in the Chukchi Sea on Friday by setting off fireworks and singing the Russian national anthem. The equipment for the station and the crew were delivered to the ice floe by the Rossiya nuclear icebreaker.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Anchorage Daily News, 13 October 2010) -- A Coast Guard C-130 flew from Anchorage over the Arctic Ocean on Tuesday, October 12, 2010, on a mission to deploy a research bouy. The bouy will record temperatures on air, snow, ice and water as well as data on ice movement. The Coast Guard, the University of Washington and the National Ice Center partnered on the project to gather information on changing conditions in the Arctic. They will use this information to forecast weather and predict intensity of storms that affect the state. Researchers from the University of Washington say the last four summers set records for how little ice cover remained at the end of the melt season.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(RIA Novosti, 11 October 2010) -- At daybreak on Monday, Day 10 of the Arctic expedition, Russian polar explorers started unloading their equipment and supplies on a drifting ice floe they will call home for the next year or so. The ice floe for the SP-38 drifting station, currently on board the Rossiya nuclear-powered icebreaker, was found on Sunday after two days of intensive aerial surveys. It is located in the Chukchi Sea about 600 km north of the Vrangel Island, at 76.05°N 175.34°W and is 7 km by 12 km. It meets all the basic requirements, especially for the thickness of ice. The ice is at least three years old and 2-2.5 meters thick. About 1.5 meters had melted away during the summer season, but then it could gain as much or even more in winter. Its location and drifting pattern at about 0.2 knots will ensure the station's operation at least through August or September. The Rossiya went around the ice-field near the edge for a final look and after completing the circle, wedged carefully into the field by one to one-and-a-half hull lengths so as not to cause any cracks. Red flags were planted by the water's edge and on a helicopter pad a little further off. The unloading operation should take up to five days. Teams are working in three shifts around the clock. In addition to the 15 members of the SP-38 station, there is a maritime expedition support group [morskoi otryad] of over 30 young men (mostly students from St. Petersburg) recruited to help unload and set up the camp. They will then return with the icebreaker. A site for the station was chosen about 1 km from the edge and is approximately 200x300 meters.

Posted by Amanda Graham – 12 October 2010; 3:09:50 PM – Permalink  

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure, Youth Involvement

(Alexander Stelliferovsky/RIA Novosti, 10 October 2010) -- On board Icebreaker Rossiya in the Chukchi Sea - An ice floe for a Russian drifting station in the Arctic was found, expedition head Artur Chilingarov said on Sunday. It is located in the Chukchi Sea at 76.00.5 °N 175.34 °W and is 8 km by 12 km. It meets all the basic requirements.

SP-38 head Tomash Petrovsky, who had surveyed the ice floe from the helicopter and then on a snow vehicle, said the ice field was good and a site for the station would be chosen later, after a more detailed examination.

The expedition is currently on board the Rossiya nuclear-powered icebreaker that will deliver the SP-38 with 15 explorers to the ice floe for a year-long stint. Helicopter flights resumed in the early hours of Sunday after the first day of aerial reconnaissance showed no suitable ice fields. During the two rounds of helicopter flights over an area of about 200 by 100 km a total of 12 ice floes in Ice Field No. 1 were surveyed, but none could meet the basic requirements, especially for thickness.

Tagged: News, Research, Research infrastructure

(RIA Novosti, 10 October 2010) -- The first day of aerial reconnaissance in the Arctic showed there were no suitable ice floes for a Russian drifting station to land on, expedition head Artur Chilingarov said on Saturday. The expedition is currently on board the Rossiya nuclear-powered icebreaker that will deliver the SP-38 polar station with 15 explorers to a drifting ice floe for a year-long stint.

During the two rounds of helicopter flights over an area of about 200 by 100 km a total of 12 ice floes in Ice Field No. 1 were surveyed, but none could meet the basic requirements, especially for thickness. They also lacked relatively even sections to build a landing strip on. Although high-resolution satellite imagery of the area was available it could not be completely relied on, Chilingarov said.

“You see how important it is to visit and inspect each potential site,” he said. The outcome was not unusual as Arctic sea ice had melted over the past summer to cover the third-smallest area on record, Vladimir Sokolov, deputy head the expedition, said. The Rossiya is headed for the next ice field it should reach shortly before daybreak for helicopter flights to resume.

Tagged: News, Research, Research infrastructure

(Anchorage Daily News, 3 October 2010) -- FAIRBANKS - The Alaska Cold Climate Housing Research Center is getting a grant to build a $2 million addition that will expand its research and testing space by 50 percent.  The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported the new space will include offices, classroom space and room for design and research. The money is coming from the federal Economic Development Administration, part of the Department of Commerce, in addition to a $100,000 contribution from the Wallace Foundation.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(International Polar Foundation, 1 October 2010) -- From October 2nd to 17th, the general public will have the opportunity to discover the “Venturi Antarctica” at the Mondial de l’Automobile in Paris. Partnering with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the International Polar Foundation collaborated with car manufacturer Venturi from Monaco to develop the “Venturi Antarctica”, an electric vehicle to be used in the extreme conditions of Antarctica.

Once delivered to the BELARE team the vehicle will allow scientists and other crew members at the Princess Elisabeth Station to go into the field “emissions-free” from the 2011-2012 Antarctic season onwards. In order to develop this unique vehicle, Venturi had to use all its know-how to come up with solutions to the challenging Antarctic environment. Conceived for use in temperatures down to - 50 °C, the vehicle will be directed by “joysticks” for greater precision. Weighing only 1.200kg, the “Venturi Antarctica” is extremely light, and has the ability of transporting up to a ton of staff and materials over 150km at a maximum speed of 40km/h.

Designed and built to fit in the global objective of “zero emission” pursued by the Princess Elisabeth Station, the “Venturi Antarctica” was conceived to connect on the station’s micro “smart grid” and will thus adapt its charging time to the priorities set by the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). This new piece of automotive technology further illustrates the feasibility of a “zero emission” target, even in the most extreme conditions.

Tagged: Antarctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Patrick White/Globe and Mail, 29 August 2010) -- As Arctic settlements go, Cambridge Bay is a modern, sprawling town featuring many of the amenities southerners crave: gym, library, curling rink – even a golf course. Last week, Ottawa acknowledged that sophistication, awarding Cambridge Bay the Canadian High Arctic Research Station, a cutting-edge residence and lab scheduled to be built within seven years. But despite the cushy new facilities, the 55 researchers set to move in should steel themselves for a strange cultural acclimation. Syd Glawson, mayor of the 1,400-person hamlet along the Northwest Passage, recalls southerners arriving in his town completely ill-prepared for the 24-hour daylight, the absence of water and sewer service, the high-priced veggies, the ongoing struggles with booze, the local obsession with karaoke and, yes, the cold. “Will there be culture shock? You’re darn right there will be,” Mr. Glawson chuckles. ...

Local politicians lobbied heavily for the station, envisioning a generator for jobs, visitors and learning opportunities for local kids. But northern researchers already have a reputation for isolating themselves from the community, according to residents, often exacerbating a latent cultural divide between white professionals and local Inuit. ...

While the research station is not expected to open until 2017, the social upheaval that will come with arrival of dozens of construction workers followed by international scientists is a matter of anticipation and trepidation in the place northerners simply call Cam Bay. ... There's also a worry that the southerners will sequester themselves away from residents, as they have done often in the past. The most glaring example of this exists among the 18-member crew of the local Distant Early Warning line station. They live between the station and the airport, rarely setting foot in the town’s shops.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 25 August 2010) -- Residents of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, are surprised and excited to learn that a world-class Arctic research station will be built in their community. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Tuesday that Cambridge Bay, a hamlet of about 1,500 in western Nunavut along the Northwest Passage, will be the site of the world-class research facility. "It felt to me like Cambridge Bay just won the Stanley Cup. The cheer that went up was really something to behold," Mayor Syd Glawson told CBC News following Tuesday's announcement. "We worked hard and long for this, and it finally came true." Glawson said he knew something was in the works, given Harper was slated to make some kind of announcement there on Tuesday, but nobody in the hamlet was certain until the announcement made it official. Poor weather prevented Harper from flying out of Churchill, Man., for the scheduled event in Cambridge Bay on Tuesday. The prime minister made the announcement in Churchill instead. Cambridge Bay was chosen over two other Nunavut communities, Pond Inlet and Resolute Bay. All three shortlisted contenders spent the last 18 months vying for the opportunity to host the Arctic research station.

Posted by Amanda Graham – 27 August 2010; 11:02:10 PM – Permalink  

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 24 August 2010) -- A small hamlet on the Northwest Passage has been chosen as the home to Canada's High Arctic Research Station, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday. The western Nunavut community of Cambridge Bay has been chosen over Resolute Bay and Pond Inlet to the east. All three sites were shortlisted in 2009 as possible locations.

"By building this leading-edge research station, we are advancing Canada's knowledge of the Arctic's resources and climate while at the same time ensuring that northern communities are prosperous, vibrant and secure," Harper stated in a release. Harper was supposed to deliver the news Tuesday morning in the hamlet of 1,500, but heavy winds cancelled his flight out of Churchill, Man. Instead, the prime minister made the announcement in Churchill. ...

The High Arctic Research Station was announced in the 2007 throne speech, and $2 million was allocated for the feasibility study on the proposed station in the 2009 budget.

Cambridge Bay is on the southeastern coast of Victoria Island. Pond Inlet is located near the northern tip of Baffin Island in eastern Nunavut, while Resolute Bay is in central Nunavut, on the southern coast of Cornwallis Island.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Postmedia News via Canada. com, 17 July 2010) — Construction has started on a large-scale upgrade to Arctic research facilities in Resolute, an isolated community that's in the running for a new High Arctic research station promised by the Conservative government. Two Quebec companies issued a news release Friday saying they will deliver 31 prefabricated modules to Resolute next week. Construction CEG and Concept Mat — two companies based in Matane, Que. — said they"have beaten the clock" on delivery of the modules, which are"adapted to the rigorous climate and conditions of the Nunavut territory in Resolute Bay.

"The multi-task building includes a state of the art laboratory, complete kitchen, dining room, living room and 35 rooms as sleeping quarters," the news release said. A spokesperson listed on the release did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. The federal government announced the Polar Continental Shelf Project upgrades in January 2009. Meanwhile, community leaders in Resolute are hopeful Prime Minister Stephen Harper will soon declare their community will host a long-awaited High Arctic research centre.

Mayor Ludy Pudluk said the hamlet has been told to expect the announcement during Harper's scheduled visit there at the end of August. That's near the end of Operation Nanook, the military's annual summer exercise in the Arctic."It's going to be good, not only for Resolute, but for the High Arctic," Pudluk said."We need more air traffic up here."

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Xinhua, 2 July 2010) -- MOSCOW - Russia may abandon its polar drifting scientific stations in the Arctic region within five years and build a special permanent platform for replacement, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday. The final decision on the replacement has not been made yet, but the idea "is being discussed actively," head of high-latitude expedition of the Arctic and Antarctic Institute, Vladimir Sokolov, said.

The institute had to spend all the money allocated for 2010 for the emergency evacuation of the SP-37 drift station after the ice floe it stands on had been broken, he said. "So this year the next station, SP-38, will not likely be planted, we are just short of funds for that," Sokolov added. According to the scientist, service fees for the nuclear ice-breakers rose tenfold during the last six years and the next polar station could be launched only if the extra state funds would be allocated.

Russia set up annual polar expedition before World War II and kept them going even during the Great Patriotic War. The polar drift stations' crews consist of meteorologists, oceanographists and other scientists.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Elisabeth Pain and Kate Travis/Science Careers Blog, 5 July 2010) -- If you want to start an organization aimed at encouraging and supporting young scientists, get senior scientists involved. This was one of the key messages of a presentation by Jenny Baeseman of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) at this weekend's Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) in Turin, Italy.

APECS was born out of the involvement of young scientists in the 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY), a story told on Science Careers in April 2008. Among the goals of the polar year "was to expand the polar community," said David Carlson of the International Polar Year program office in the United Kingdom. "There was nothing in the system preventing young scientists to come with ideas and say, 'we want to be the next generation of polar scientists.'" And that's effectively what the founders of APECS did.

APECS started out with no budget but a lot of enthusiasm and the support of the IPY program office, Baeseman said. Its early members used free tools such as Google Groups and Skype to organize themselves and start creating an active community of young polar scientists. But "from the very beginning, we decided that it is great that young people get together... but we don't want to be by ourselves," Baeseman said. "We wanted to learn from senior researchers ... to continue the continuum of knowledge."

Tagged: IPYLegacy, News, Research infrastructure, Youth Involvement

(North Shore Outlook Business, 21 June 2010) -- Four new hydrographic survey boats from North Van will help map out Canada's Arctic regions. Last year, Hourston Glascraft was awarded a $650,000 contract to build the 23-ft. long vessels for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The first boat will be finished next week, the second in three weeks and the third is currently in a mold, the company's owner Bill Hourston said.

"This is a design we've been using since 1980," he said, noting to date the North Van company has supplied 50 government vessels. "The V haul goes through rough waters, but it doesn't have much draft so it can go into shallow water too." The 225-hp boats will be based in the department's central and Arctic region, where they'll be used in science and navigational chart programs.

"Our government is pleased to provide new platforms for surveys that support many applications, from shipping and fishing to tourism and leisure activities," said Randy Kamp, the minister of fisheries and oceans' parliamentary secretary. There's still a lot of uncharted coastline and ocean floor surrounding Canada, said George Schlagintweit, engineering project supervisor for the department's Pacific region Canadian Hydrographic Service.

"We are trying to have a presents in the Arctic as much as possible," he said. The contract is a part of $175 million poured into Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard via Canada's Economic Action Plan. The money will provide 60 new small craft and 38 other small boats and barges for the two bodies. It also includes repair work on 40 aging large vessels. The four North Van boats will be completed by March 31, 2011.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Canwest News Service via Vancouver Sun, 1 June 2010) -- QUEBEC - A group of researchers at Laval University in Quebec will receive $33 million over seven years to study how ecosystems react to climate change in the Canadian Arctic. The federal government is contributing more than $10 million by creating a new research chair on the Arctic frontier. Headed by oceanographer Marcel Babin at Laval University, the group will study the impact of global warming on water, ice and life forms in the Arctic.

"The Arctic is really the place in the world where the impact of those changes is the most important," Babin said Tuesday in Quebec City. He noted the most important change is the melting of the ice cover that has shrunk by 30 per cent in recent years. Babin and his team will gather data in the Arctic using free-drifting floats and unmanned submarines equipped with sensors that measure key processes in marine ecosystems. Private companies, including oil giants BP and Esso, are also funding the research.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research, Research infrastructure

(RIA Novosti/Infographics, 24 May 2010) -- Each station opens in April-May and is shut down after two or three years of operations.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Chris Windeyer/Nunatsiaq News via Edmonton Journal, 20 May 2010) -- IQALUIT, Nunavut - Nunavut's Arctic research vessel will hit the high seas in 2011, even if it still lacks a name and a home port. Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl was in Iqaluit Thursday to announce $320,000 in funding to outfit the ship. The federal government has already spent nearly $1.9 million to build it.

The still-unnamed vessel would mostly cruise the waters off Baffin Island and in Hudson Bay, conducting research for Nunavut's developing fishery. Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak said research will help grow the territory's offshore fishing industry, now mostly limited to shrimp and 13,500 tonnes of turbot in Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait.

"Relatively little is known about the fisheries potential in (other) Nunavut waters," Aariak said. The Nunavut Fisheries Training Consortium will also use the boat, which is still under construction in Glovertown, N.L., to train workers for the fishery. Strahl told reporters the vessel will expand Canada's Arctic research capacity. "We need better science to underpin the decisions we're making," Strahl said.

The territory will own the ship, though it will only operate in the summer months and probably spend winters in Newfoundland. The hull of the 20-metre long boat is not ice-strengthened, said Simon Awa, Nunavut's deputy environment minister. But where the ship will be docked when it's in Nunavut is an open question. The territory still lacks proper wharves, and a $25-million fishing harbour is still under construction in the Baffin Island community of Pangnirtung, 350 kilometres northeast of Iqaluit.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(UDaily, 12 May 2010) -- Frederick E. (“Fritz”) Nelson, professor of geography in the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, has been elected to the board of governors of the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA). The appointment not only highlights the University's continuing contributions to Arctic research and education, but also reveals important historic connections between the international institute, a past UD president who was a polar explorer, and Nelson himself.

AINA's mandate is “to advance the study of the North American and circumpolar Arctic through the natural and social sciences, the arts, and humanities, and to acquire, preserve, and disseminate information on physical, environmental, and social conditions in the North.”

As a member of AINA's board of governors, Nelson joins 29 other Arctic specialists in overseeing the multidisciplinary institute's international governance structure. The U.S. corporation currently is headquartered at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and its Canadian counterpart is at the University of Calgary.

The institute publishes the quarterly journal Arctic, as well as a monograph series, and maintains a large specialized library and archival collection at its Canadian headquarters in Calgary. It also maintains a field research station at Kluane Lake in Yukon Territory and operates a scholarship program in support of northern research by graduate students at North American colleges and universities.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Fran Golden/Washington Post, 9 May 2010) -- A $40 million Alaska Native collection is debuting in Anchorage this month, representing a homecoming for 600 rare objects, most of which have never before been seen in public, much less touched. Paul Ongtooguk, an Iñupiag from the north of Alaska, said in an interview at the Anchorage Museum that he is looking forward to the "family reunion."

The new Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center at the Anchorage Museum, opening May 22, will display clothing, baskets, masks, weapons, utensils, drums, games and more in a first-of-its kind permanent loan arrangement between the Alaska museum and the Smithsonian. As part of the unusual agreement, some Alaska Native community members such as Ongtooguk, one of the consultants on the project and an assistant professor of education at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, will be allowed to remove the objects, with assistance from curators, for further study and interpretation.

The artifacts come from the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of the American Indian, where they've mostly been in storage. The initial agreement commits them to the Alaska museum for seven years. In choosing the objects, which represent nine native cultures across the state and date mostly from 1850 to 1900, Smithsonian anthropologists examined about 30,000 items in Washington. The effort was headed by Aron Crowell, director of the Arctic Studies Center, who has represented the Natural History Museum on the project since 1994.

Tagged: Arctic, Education and outreach, News, Public events and conferences, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 23 April 2010) -- Fisheries officials in Nunavut hope a new government-owned vessel will help them better understand the territory's fish and other marine resources. Little is known about the extent of fish stocks in Nunavut's waters, and that has held up development of the territory's commercial fishery. So the Nunavut government is in the process of buying a $2.5-million fishing vessel that will allow researchers to find out where marine species are located, as well as determine their populations. "There's huge gaps in knowledge base, and we know there's traditional knowledge — there's clams, scallops, kelp," Wayne Lynch, the Nunavut government's director of fisheries and sealing, told CBC News on Thursday. "We know these species are there. In what commercial quantities and locations are still to be identified. We have two-thirds of Canada's coast line and we have a lot of missing information." The 19.5-metre vessel will also be used to perform hydrographic surveys and respond to oil spills. It is expected to be in Nunavut waters by next summer.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Julia Finn/pollib-L, 13 April 2010) -- This new listing has been undertaken by a team at the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) on behalf of the Polar Libraries Colloquy. The information in all entries contained in the previous PLC online directory has been imported into this new edition.

Organizations are encouraged to check and update their entries in the new Directory of Polar Libraries. This will require a password that can be ordered here. SPRI will actively control the distribution of these passwords. We invite organizations already listed in the directory to order a password as soon as possible to update their entries.

A link to a web form has also been provided on the Directory home page to allow organizations not currently listed to submit entries. SPRI will also monitor these new submissions to ensure that no false entries are posted.

We would like to thank Rebecca and Martin, the SPRI Webmaster, for their hard work on the project. Congratulations to SPRI on the new Directory of Polar Libraries!

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Quirin Schiermeier/Nature News, 30 March 2010) -- Almost five years after watching a launch failure destroy their ice-measuring satellite, Europe's polar researchers are ready to try again. For scientists hoping to understand how polar ice is reacting to climate change — and how sea levels may rise as a result — the stakes are higher than ever.

CryoSat-2, the satellite's second incarnation, is set to lift off on 8 April from a launch pad in Kazakhstan, aboard a converted Soviet missile. Technical problems with the rocket have already delayed the launch, which was originally scheduled for February. "I hope this time around probability is on our side," says Duncan Wingham, CryoSat-2's principal scientist, who will watch the launch from the European Space Operations Centre of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Darmstadt, Germany.

ESA's original mission to measure changes in ice sheets and sea ice in Earth's polar regions failed on 8 October 2005 when a software problem caused the commercial launch rocket to fail. By now, other satellites that monitor Earth's ice are either ageing or malfunctioning (see 'Keeping tabs on Earth's ice). NASA's ICESat, for example, has lost the use of its key sensors, and stopped returning data last year; its successor will not be launched before 2015.

 "CryoSat-2 gives us a new pair of eyes on what is happening to Earth's ice," says Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist and chief scientist at NASA's Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The changes in the cryosphere are providing the most unequivocal evidence that we are changing our planet in ways that should concern us all."

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Jeff Richardson/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner via Anchorage Daily News, 2 April 2010) -- FAIRBANKS, Alaska - Rob Aikman arrived at work on Thursday and found a new occupant in the reindeer pens at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A 17-pound calf was roaming the pasture on wobbly legs, trailing his mother during a chilly April morning. ... Within the next week or so, most of the other 18 pregnant reindeer at the station also will give birth. It's a busy but welcome April ritual in the lower fields at UAF, which are home to the only reindeer research facility in North America. ... To watch for new reindeer calves or to submit a name, go online to reindeer.salrm.uaf.edu and click on "2010 Calf Watch."

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(CanNor press release CanNor-09-027, 26 March 2010) --  The Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency is supporting Yukon tourism and research capacity with funding for the Yukon Wildlife Preserve. ... CanNor will provide the Yukon Government with nearly $2 million for the design and construction of a new animal research and rehabilitation centre at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve. An estimated 137 person-months of employment will be created during the design and construction of this new facility and up to 1.5 new positions on an ongoing basis. ... “Having proper examination and recovery space will make it much easier to treat animals safely and efficiently, and will help us to expand our collaboration with other wildlife veterinarians, researchers and students,” said Kim Porter, president of the Yukon Wildlife Preserve Operating Society.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Andrew Rankin/Northern News Services, 18 March 2010) -- INUVIK - The ground was broken Monday on Aurora College's new $11-million research facility to replace the more than 40-year-old Aurora Research Institute (ARI). A small gathering of dignitaries, including Premier Floyd Roland, IRC chair and CEO Nellie Cournoyea and Aurora College's president Sarah Wright Cardinal as well as college and research institute staff, celebrated the monumental day. Part of Monday's celebration included an official site blessing from elders Winston Moses and Rosie Albert. The plan for a new research centre was developed and came to fruition with the help from its partners the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation as well as the Gwich'in Tribal Council. The money came from the Arctic Research Infrastructure Fund. The new facility is being built behind the research institute on Mackenzie Road. So far only site preparation work has been done on the location. Construction is expected to be finished next March. Pippa Seccombe-Hett, director of the Aurora Research Institute, said the new building will be a badly-needed upgrade to the current research institute. "Basically it will improve the services we can offer to visiting researchers and it will improve the science that can be done." Seccombe-Hett also said that unlike the current outdated facility, the new centre can accommodate any research team. The institute licenses all scientific research in the territory and supports researchers visiting Inuvik or Fort Smith, whose studies focus on such areas as permafrost, hydrocarbons, wildlife and social sciences. The energy efficient centre will boast three new laboratories that can be adapted into classrooms. It offers plenty of other facilities, including a walk-in freezer and lab support room. There will also be lots of conference space dedicated to interactive research presentations designed for community participation.
Posted by Amanda Graham – 21 March 2010; 7:16:13 PM – Permalink  

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Witness the Arctic/ARCUS, 11 March 2010) -- Toolik Field Station (TFS), located on Alaska's north slope and administered by the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has operated year-round since 2006. Plans are underway for a new year-round-capable kitchen and dining facility, which will increase the "winter-over" capacity of the station, and scientific services have been expanded to include an environmental data center. TFS management is also in the process of developing a new "master plan", which will direct further station development over the next ten years.

Between October and April, TFS capacity is currently limited to 16 scientists at a time. Although the station has winter-capable housing for 30 people, capacity during these months is constrained by the size of the station's insulated kitchen and dining space. To address this need, plans are underway for a new year-round-capable kitchen and dining hall at TFS. In collaboration with CH2M HILL Polar Services (CPS) and with project funding provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, design of the new facility has been developed over the past 11 months and is now nearly complete. Construction of the structure, which will seat approximately 100 people, is expected to begin in summer 2010. This will be the first new structure at the station since 2004 when the Cottongrass Dormitory was commissioned.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Shawn McCarthy/The Globe and Mail, 10 March 2010) -- Scientists who study climate change from a remote post on Ellesmere Island are planning to shut down their cash-strapped project after the federal government refused to refinance a key climate-change research foundation. The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) is located 1,100 kilometres from the North Pole, and collects data on the changing climate of the Far North, where global warming is found to be most intense. But in a conference call this week, PEARL scientists were not discussing their findings but were making plans to shut down the lab, including complicated arrangements to air lift out their equipment. In its budget last week, the Harper government provided no new money for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmosphere Sciences. The foundation is the country's main fund for scientists studying everything from global climate models, to the melting of polar ice and frequency of Arctic storms, to prairie droughts and shrinking Rocky Mountain glaciers.

For many in the research community, the budget decision merely confirmed the view that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government remain skeptical of climate-change science and hostile to those who provide evidence that aggressive action must be taken to avert catastrophic global warming. “It's quite clear we have a government that says they believe this is an issue but really don't care about it,” said Andrew Weaver, a world-renowned climatologist from the University of Victoria. “It's quite clear by their actions with [the climate foundation] and its lack of funding that they're basically saying, ‘We don't want your science any more.'” The foundation was endowed with $110-million nearly 10 years ago under the former Liberal government, but will run out of money by early 2011. As a result, scientists must wind up their projects. “There is nowhere to apply for more money,” said James Drummond, a Dalhousie University physicist who is principal investigator for the PEARL project.

He said the government is financing research infrastructure but not providing support for salaries and operational expenses. His network has already lost several colleagues and more are planning to leave the country. Environment Minister Jim Prentice insists the government remains committed to basic research on climate change. He said the foundation has been operating for 10 years and it is now time to assess its work. “We think it is appropriate that the foundation report to the government on the progress it has made, how those dollars were invested and what we've learned from the research that was done,” he said. Mr. Prentice said the government has other avenues for financing research on climate change – including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the government's often-touted High Arctic research station. But that facility won't be ready for several years. Climate scientists said that as the funding dries up, the country's capacity to make use of the station will be lost.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(The Arctic Sounder, 4 March 2010) -- Robin Mongoyak's business plan for taking tourists on off-road adventures in Barrow has grown into something much more ambitious. He has started a new company, Kiita ATV Tours. With help from Alaska Growth Capital (AGC), Robin also is providing snowmachines to the world's researchers who flock to Barrow to study climate change, arctic flora and fauna, and dozens of other subjects. The chief logistics supplier for science in Barrow, the nonprofit Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, needed a new fleet of snowmachines for the dozens of sea ice and tundra research projects it facilitates. But BASC has no capital reserve. AGC, working with Mongoyak, is providing BASC with 10 new snowmachines on a long-term lease backed by a federally guaranteed USDA rural development loan.

In February a research team will use the machines to compare this year's sea ice in relation to previous years. Another group will use the machines to tow a science buoy over the ice into Elson Lagoon. One group will study frost flowers, the beautiful crystals that grow at the open water edge of the shore-fast sea ice platform off the Barrow coast. Researchers from Purdue will use the snowmachines to transport and test a new atmospheric iodine detector. By early spring, scientists will be out on the tundra tracking breakup conditions. Others will be on Elson Lagoon looking at contaminants on snow. A large group of NASA researchers will spread out on an "icy worlds" project starting in April.

"We are so happy to work with a locally owned small business while we help scientists. The fact that Robin is purchasing the machines locally is an added benefit. And believe me, the scientists will be very happy to see that we've upgraded the snowmachine fleet here in Barrow," said BASC executive director Glenn Sheehan.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Queen's University Belfast press release via RedOrbit Science News, 12 February 2010) -- Researchers at Queen's University have helped produce a new archaeological tool which could answer key questions in human evolution. The new calibration curve, which extends back 50,000 years is a major landmark in radiocarbon dating — the method used by archaeologists and geoscientists to establish the age of carbon-based materials. It could help research issues including the effect of climate change on human adaption and migrations.

The project was led by Queen's University Belfast through a National Environment Research Center (NERC) funded research grant to Dr Paula Reimer and Professor Gerry McCormac from the Center for Climate, the Environment and Chronology (14CHRONO) at Queen's and statisticians at the University of Sheffield. Ron Reimer and Professor Emeritus Mike Baillie from Queen's School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology also contributed to the work.

The curve, called INTCAL09, has just been published in the journal Radiocarbon. It not only extends radiocarbon calibration but also considerably improves earlier parts of the curve. Dr Reimer said: "The new radiocarbon calibration curve will be used worldwide by archaeologists and earth scientists to convert radiocarbon ages into a meaningful time scale comparable to historical dates or other estimates of calendar age.

"It is significant because this agreed calibration curve now extends over the entire normal range of radiocarbon dating, up to 50,000 years before today. Comparisons of the new curve to ice-core or other climate archives will provide information about changes in solar activity and ocean circulation." It has taken nearly 30 years for researchers to produce a calibration curve this far back in time.

Tagged: News, Publication, Research infrastructure

(Ned Rozell/Tundra Telegraph, 11 February 2010) -- Researchers plan to expand the Fox Permafrost Tunnel during the next few years, drilling or blasting a new shaft 450 feet into a frozen hillside to parallel the existing tunnel. "We want to begin digging a new permafrost tunnel next winter," said Matthew Sturm of the U. S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory on Fort Wainwright. He and others envision a new Alaska Permafrost Research Center that will better serve scientists and non-scientists. With start-up federal funding of $500,000 this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will carve out a new tunnel as well as build labs, offices, and a learning center. Other improvements include a walkway on top of the frozen bluff, allowing scientists to do permafrost experiments from the forest and tundra above the tunnel, and side rooms within the new tunnel for permafrost-warming experiments. The improvements would replace infrastructure at the tunnel that has endured for four decades.

"Our current on-site facilities consist of a shack and a Porta-Potty," Sturm said. "The new tunnel would be excavated during the winter of 2010-2011 with a road header or by drilling and blasting, whichever method is found to best preserve large chunks of permafrost that could include animal and plant remains," said Kevin Bjella of the Corps of Engineers.

The original tunnel was dug 360 feet deep through a frozen hillside, which was originally exposed by miners who blasted it with water from a hydraulic giant in the northern Goldstream Creek valley about 15 miles north of Fairbanks. The official reason the Army dug the tunnel in the 1960s was to test ways of digging into permafrost and learn more about building underground usable spaces and foundations in permafrost. Near Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, the military dug ice tunnels hundreds of feet long with rooms for people to live and work. "We have a permafrost tunnel because of Cold War fear," Sturm said at a lecture on the tunnel expansion. Since it opened in the late 1960s, the tunnel has lured scientists who have written more than seventy papers on their studies conducted within.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(National Snow and Ice Data Center, January 2010) -- NSIDC and NASA data scientists proved the use of 21st-century techniques to revive data from 1960s satellites. Scientists today who study polar sea ice conditions rely on satellite records reaching back to 1979. But soon, data scientists hope to extend the look back by another decade or more. Researchers at NSIDC and NASA have shown that the oldest Earth observing satellite data can be made to yield new information, adding significantly to the view of Earth's climate history. When NASA launched the first Nimbus satellite in the 1960s, they also launched an era of Earth observations from space. While the early Nimbus satellites provided meteorological and other observations, methods did not yet exist to detect features such as the margins of the sea ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic. Even if they had, the limits of computer processing in those days would have made quantitative analysis unfeasible. These early satellite data still reside in NASA archives on archaic, two-inch tape media. When NSIDC scientist Walt Meier and project manager Dave Gallaher learned that NASA researchers had retrieved 1960s images of Earth from the Lunar Orbiter, they wondered if early NASA satellite data could also yield information about sea ice conditions before 1979. ...

[The task] proved more challenging than expected, due to truncated data, missing algorithms, and other issues. But the result was a global image of the Arctic from Nimbus II, captured on September 23, 1966, in higher resolution than ever seen before from this type of data. This date falls around the time that Arctic sea ice would have reached its end-of-season minimum extent. The image demonstrates the possibility of reprocessing the entire available time series, supporting new scientific study of past conditions on Earth.

Tagged: Data, News, Research infrastructure

(Gabriel Zárate/Nunatsiaq News, 4 February 2010) -- A project that promises to revolutionize the way traditional knowledge is gathered and used across Nunavut’s vast expanse has run into a problem all too familiar to software entrepreneurs everywhere — it’s running out of cash. The Igliniit Project has spent two years testing and refining a computer program for hunters to log what they see and do on while out on the land. But as the money from the International Polar Year’s research winds down, Igliniit looks to new sources to continue its work. Since Igliniit’s inception five years ago it has spent around $260,000 in technology, travel and fees.

 Shari Gearheard, one of the project’s coordinators, said it’s not clear how much more the project will need. That will depend on what new applications her group chooses to develop. She was looking to scientists’ groups and the departments of the Government of Nunavut for fresh funding. Igliniit has produced a program for a pocket computer to record weather data and hunters’ observations while on the land. Using a stylus on the touch-screen, hunters can record what they encounter while hunting or traveling. Igniniit’s coordinators presented their work in Iqaluit on Jan. 27 to a full house at Nunavut Arctic College and Unikkaarvik Visitors Centre.

The machine has icons for a variety of Arctic animals, as well as weather conditions, ice conditions, and even garbage, all though a pictographic interface in both English and Inuktitut syllabics. If it’s an animal, the hunter can record if he simply saw it or shot it. As a hunter taps the icons of what he sees, the machine records the time and the location of the sighting. Although the computer has GPS capability, it’s only for recording locations, not navigation. Hunters can do that on their own, Gearheard explained. The machine has an external weather sensor, which can be mounted on a snow machine or dog sled. The sensor takes readings of air pressure, humidity and temperature every 30 seconds. The weather data combined with the hunters’ observations has the potential to produce an enormous amount of raw data on areas of the Arctic seldom visited by researchers.

Gearheard said she hoped every hunters and trappers organization in Nunavut would consider using the Igliniit system to document their land. “The more you have eyes out there, the more you can share information,” she said.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research, Research infrastructure

(Randy Boswell/Canwest News Service via Vancouver Sun, 15 January 2010) -- A battle pitting fossil fuel against fossil science is taking shape in Canada's High Arctic, where a B.C. company's proposed coal mine on Ellesmere Island — which would be one of the planet's most northerly industrial operations — is raising fears among top international paleontologists that a "unique, world-renowned" fossil site serving as a time capsule of life on ancient Earth could be damaged.

The planned mining project by Vancouver-based Weststar Resources Corp., is now under environmental assessment by the Nunavut government. The firm announced in May that the Canadian government has approved eight licences for mining sites near Eureka — Canada's central Ellesmere scientific research base — along the Fosheim Peninsula and Strathcona Fiord. The company has also applied for 13 other licences nearby, claiming the region has "the greatest potential for coal deposits of any unit" in Canada's vast Arctic archipelago.

But the U.S.-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which represents 2,000 of the world's leading fossil scientists, has been rallying its members this week to deluge Nunavut's review board with objections to Weststar's plans. "The proposed development area includes fossil sites of a broad range of ages that includes some of the most significant sites in the world, and the Society . . . is deeply concerned over the possible loss of these valuable resources," said a statement issued Thursday.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(John Bowman/CBC News, 13 January 2010) -- Canada needs a national polar policy and better research co-ordination to effectively monitor the changing northern climate, says a Canadian Arctic researcher. John England of the University of Alberta, writing in the journal Nature this week, said Canadian scientists are finding it more difficult to get to remote Arctic regions to conduct their research.

"The capacity to support researchers in remote field sites has plummeted, making it difficult for Canadian researchers to continue crucial monitoring of the fast-changing Arctic environment ...," wrote England. Compounding the problem, said England, is the fact that funding for travel and support from the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP) isn't tied to research funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). "The PCSP allocates its logistical resources separately from, and often in contradiction to, the resource needs of peer-reviewed NSERC grants. This lack of co-ordination threatens long-established monitoring programmes," said England. ...

Steven Bigras, executive director of the Canadian Polar Commission, agrees that the lack of co-ordination is a problem. "[England] says there's a bit of a disconnect there between NSERC funding the research and then you have to follow up with Continental Shelf to ensure you have the logistical support to get to the field stations. If one says 'yes' and the other one says 'no,' it really doesn't help the overall effort," said Bigras. As well, England said budget cuts and increasing fuels costs "have rapidly eroded the PCSP's ability to fulfil its mission."

England praises Canada for funding Arctic research in the amount of $156 million during the International Polar Year from 2007 to 2009, but said that the future of research after that funding runs out "does not look as bright." "We've had two wonderful years of well-funded research in the Arctic," said Bigras. "This sudden splurge of research going on, and all these young people getting interested in the research." England wrote that the increasing costs have put Arctic research out of the reach of many Canadian researchers, "many of whom now talk openly about shifting their research attentions to something that can be studied farther south." England said that part of the solution lies in creating a national polar policy, " which would commit Canada to clear objectives and better co-ordinate research activities."

"If you have a policy, you have priorities and you fund those priorities," said Bigras. "[Currently], we have a set of projects out there and they're all priorities during the International Polar Year, but what happens to them after that?"

See also, Nunatsiaq News, "Scientist: cheapskate Canada shuns Arctic research," 13 January 2010, and England's "Canada Needs a Polar Policy"  and the Nature editorial: ". . . Canada is failing to make the most of a key national resource. Everyone involved needs to take responsibility. The government should designate a single person to be held accountable for science — either a chief adviser or a fully fledged minister with sufficient power and initiative to set a strong national agenda. Researchers, meanwhile, should find more effective ways of working together and making their voices heard, including becoming part of the political system themselves."

Tagged: Arctic, IPYLegacy, News, Research conduct and ethics, Research infrastructure

(BarentsObserver, 12 January 2010) -- Both German and French scientists say they want to build new science stations for increased activity in the science community Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard. Also Japanese researchers say they may build a new science station in Ny-Ålesund to replace the building they currently rent, reports Svalbardposten. Situated at 78° 55' N, 11° 56' E in the core of a vast Arctic wilderness with exquisite surroundings, Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, has since the mid-sixties formed a sprawling research community. The site comprises stations from ten nations from around the world, and activities have been increasing rapidly the last few years.

Svalbardposten writes that the Korean scientists in Ny-Ålesund want to expand their research station. Today the Koreans and the French are sharing a building. Russian research institutions have signaled that they want to build their own research station in Ny-Ålesund, but the negotiations between the Russians and the Kings Bay Company in Ny-Ålesund was halted when Kings Bay said that they will not allow Russian helicopters to be used for transportation of scientists to the base. Kings Bay AS is the owner of the village and the surrounding areas, and provides infrastructure and services for visiting scientists. [See Birger Amundsen, "Økt utenlandsk aktivitet i Ny-Ålesund," 7 January 2010.]

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(CP, 12 January 2010) -- A national Inuit group is creating a research centre to make sure scientists in the Arctic pay enough attention to what the people who live there already know. "Non-Inuit communities don't really understand the Inuit understanding of science," said Mary Simon, head of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. The centre is to be at the group's Ottawa headquarters and is intended to bring Inuit and southern scientists together, as well as to encourage young Inuit to take up Arctic research.

Simon frankly admits the centre was created partly in response to concerns over how issues such as the health of polar bears are portrayed. While official scientists say most bear populations are declining, Inuit hunters have long insisted the bears are perfectly healthy. It's usually the scientists who prevail, which has led to consequences such as a forthcoming American attempt to have all trade in polar bear hides outlawed in the 175 countries who have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. "It has everything to do with that," said Simon. "To resolve that conflict we need to bring the two knowledges together."

Scientists need to pay attention to hunters and others who observe the land and the animals on it over the course of a lifetime, she said. Using everything from the meat to the hide gives Inuit an understanding of the total animal as well as its environment. "They're observing the animals, they're using the animals." As well, Simon said, the centre will generate its own projects of interest and offer training and encouragement for young Inuit to pursue careers in northern science. "We've never had a real situation where the Inuit are in control of what's being done," she said. "We want to be front and centre in research that is affecting us." Andrew Derocher, a prominent University of Alberta polar bear biologist, said the centre could make it a lot easier for scientists to link up with locals who have deep knowledge of their environment.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research, Research infrastructure

(William J. Broad/New York Times, 4 January 2010) -- The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.

The collaboration restarts an effort the Bush administration shut down and has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis. The trove of images is “really useful,” said Norbert Untersteiner, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in polar ice and is a member of the team of spies and scientists behind the effort. Scientists, Dr. Untersteiner said, “have no way to send out 500 people” across the top of the world to match the intelligence gains, adding that the new understandings might one day result in ice forecasts.

“That will be very important economically and logistically,” Dr. Untersteiner said, arguing that Arctic thaws will open new fisheries and sea lanes for shipping and spur the hunt for undersea oil and gas worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The monitoring program has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering, federal officials said, but instead releases secret information already collected or takes advantage of opportunities to record environmental data when classified sensors are otherwise idle or passing over wilderness.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(UAF press release via EurekAlert! 8 December 2009) -- Fairbanks, Alaska - More than three decades ago, marine scientists in the United States first identified the need for a research vessel capable of bringing scientists to Alaska's icy northern waters. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has announced its intent to award a $123 million contract that will meet that need. The university has selected Marinette Marine Corporation of Marinette, Wis. to build the 254-foot Alaska Region Research Vessel. When complete, the vessel will be one of the most advanced university research vessels in the world and will be capable of breaking ice up to 2.5 feet thick. According to project leaders, the ARRV's home port will be in Alaska, most likely at UAF's Seward Marine Center.

"Ocean scientists need this ice-capable vessel now, more than ever before, to study the changes occurring in arctic waters," says Denis Wiesenburg, a co-principal investigator on the project and the dean of the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. The $123 million for the ship construction contract is funded entirely by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The total cost for the project is $200 million.

"In the short term, constructing this world-class research vessel will create American jobs to help our nation pull out of the current recession," said Sen. Mark Begich. "The University of Alaska has dreamed of having a new research vessel for decades and I am thrilled to see work will soon get underway through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Once complete, the ARRV will be a state-of-the-art platform to conduct the scientific research necessary for Alaskans to understand the challenges we're feeling from climate change and its implications on the changing arctic environment."

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Anchorage Daily News, 12 December 2009) -- Gov. Sean Parnell is expected to unveil his 2011 operating and capital budget proposals on Monday, but he did let one item on his list out of the bag this weekend: money for a new science building at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Parnell announced Saturday that his capital budget will include requests totaling $109.5 million for the new life sciences building, which would house classrooms and laboratories. The Legislature must approve the funding. "Advancement of science in this state is vital to the economic engine of the future," Parnell said in a news release. "We will see more students excel in post-secondary education and training in math and science, which will help them be successful when competing for high-paying jobs in Alaska." Parnell was scheduled to outline the rest of his budget at a luncheon speech Monday to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce. The budget proposals will cover the fiscal year that begins July 1 and ends June 30, 2011. The proposals will be the first for Parnell as governor. He was elevated to the job in July after the resignation of Sarah Palin.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Bruce Owen/Winnipeg Free Press, 4 December 2009) -- A $31-million injection from the Selinger government toward a new Arctic exhibit at Assiniboine Park Zoo and a separate state-of-the-art polar bear research centre will trigger other donors to step up to the plate to spruce up Winnipeg's signature park. City businessman Hartley Richardson, board chairman of the Assiniboine Park Conservancy, said Thursday the support from the province now allows the group to approach Ottawa and private donors to raise further funds for the zoo's $90-million redevelopment.

"It's really the federal government now and the private sector to secure the balance of the funding so that we can move forward," Richardson said, adding the project may qualify for federal economic stimulus cash before the supply of funds is cut off. "With this announcement we'll be moving very quickly to talk to them about whether there (are) funds open," he said. "We're obviously wanting to meet with the minister of the environment, Jim Prentice, and talk to him about the educational component of this, and its importance not only to Manitoba, but to Canada and the world of this polar bear research."

Construction on the new, state-of-the-art polar bear enclosure and research centre is expected to begin in 2011. The enclosure will also include a polar bear rescue shelter and be the headquarters of Polar Bears International, a U.S.-based conservation group. "It will position Manitoba as the polar bear research capital of the world," Premier Greg Selinger said. "By having this kind of research centre and this facility here, people will be able to come and experience the thrill of these magnificent creatures and see why it's important to protect them and their habitat."

Tagged: Arctic, Education and outreach, News, Research infrastructure

Makivik Corporation (www.makivik.org), organization that represents the Inuit of Nunavik, northern Quebec, Canada, has been publishing for several years the Makivik Magazine.  If you wish to have access to all the issues published (currently from Issue 48 (1998) through to Issue 89 (2009)), you can find them here, at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec:  http://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/1944396.  For further information on these issues, please contact the Editor in Chief, Bob Mesher at: b_mesher@makivik.org.

An IPY project by McGill's Marianne Stenbaek and Daniel Chartier resulted in the central part, to me, of our IPY project is the part focusing on Makivik and its publications over the last 33 years. These are publications that are often unavailable or lost but we have now been able to re-constitute a complete set of all the magazines—from Atuaqnik, Taqralik, and Makivik News to Makivik Magazine. The entire collection is available at http://services.banq.qc.ca/sdx/makivik (Note that the collection of Makivik Magazine here only goes up to 2008.)

"Finally it was an agreement between Makivik, the Quebec National Library, McGill and the University of Quebec in Montreal that allowed this project to materialize. We must not forget to credit Marianne Stenbaek, Daniel Chartier for your dedication to this project. Very special thanks are extended to Lise Bissonnette, president and general director of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, for her invaluable support to make this dream become a reality. These publications are definitely a valuable resource for the education sector, or to anyone else interested in the events and concerns of Nunavik going back 33 years" (Makivik Magazine, Issue 89, p. 67).

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Anita Thorolvsen Munch/Det Internasjonale Polaråret 2007-2008, 23 November 2009) -- The establishment of UArctic Institute for Circumpolar Reindeer Husbandry, is a result of the International Polar Year (IPY) and the IPY EALÁT project which has investigated traditional reindeer herding societies in the Arctic. The institute was endorsed by The Board of The University of the Arctic (UArctic) and is situated at The Sámi University College in Kautokeino / Guovdageaidnu. Among the founders are the Sámi University College, International Center for Reindeer Husbandry (ICR) and the Association of World Reindeer Herders.

Dr Robert W. Corell which has accepted the position as Professor in the new UArctic Institute, brings an impressive resume and experience to this new position. He was the leader of the Arctic Council project ACIA (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment), is head of the CAI (Climate Action Initiative), is a senior adviser to the Global Environment and Technology Foundation, and the former vice president at the H. John Heinz II Center for Science, Economics and Environment. ... The IPY EALÁT project is investigating how traditional reindeer herding societies in the Arctic are adapting to climate variability and change. The project is part of the broader EALÁT project that also involves outreach and education to reindeer herders in Eurasia and Alaska. Reindeer herding communities across the Arctic and Sub-arctic regions are facing profound changes in their societies. The professoriate to Dr Corell is a recognition for his willingness to include Arctic indigenous peoples and their knowledge and insights into investigations of the effects of global change, according to the UArctic press release. Find out more at The Reindeer Portal

Tagged: Arctic, IPYLegacy, News, Research infrastructure

(ArcticInfo list, 19 November 2009) -- The Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) and Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) working groups of the Arctic Council announce a new web portal called ArcticData. The portal is at: http://www.arcticdata.is/

The aim of the web portal is to make data generated through the activities of CAFF and PAME more readily available. The site is in its initial stages and data will be added as it becomes available. For further information, please go to the web site. If you have questions, comments, or data you would like made available on the ArcticData site, please email: data +at+ arctic.is

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Inke Arns/HMKV.de via Circumpolar Blog, 15 November 2009) -- Three architects – Richard Carbonnier (Nunavut, Canada), Giuseppe Mecca (Italy), and Catherine Rannou (France) – have been selected as the joint winners of the Arctic Perspective Initiative open architecture competition. The challenge of this international competition was to design a zero-footprint mobile research unit for use by local populations in the Arctic. The unit is intended to facilitate a diverse range of technological research opportunities, such as remote sensing, environmental monitoring, video editing and streaming, and communications systems.

The three winning entries, each awarded €1500, were selected by an expert jury from 103 submissions from architects and engineers in more than 30 countries. The competition was the first phase of a design process, the next phase of which will involve working with the winning submissions through a collaborative design effort with local community members from Nunavut, Canada. A prototype unit will be tested in the field next year in Igloolik, Nunavut, by local media workers, hunters, youth and elders of the community. ...

API is committed to the empowerment and sustainable development of Northern communities through the collaboration and combination of science, arts, engineering and culture. The unit aims to serve as a model for mobile research in the north, incorporating proven local expertise, sustainable resources, and high tech solutions, while promoting open source data sharing strategies and management. All required power will come from green sources.  The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a transnational art, science, and culture work group composed of HMKV (Germany), The Arts Catalyst (UK), Projekt Atol (Slovenia), Lorna (Iceland) and C-TASC (Canada).

For complete details on the winning projects and the jury process, please see here.

Tagged: Arctic, Awards, etc., News, Research infrastructure

(Henry Fountain/New York Times, 9 November 2009) -- A geodesic dome that sheltered scientists and support workers at the South Pole for three decades is due to be demolished in the next few months, having outlived its usefulness at the bottom of the world.  But a small group of polar veterans is trying to preserve the dome, arguing it is a signature feature of the United States Antarctic program. They want the 55-foot-high aluminum structure taken apart the same way that Navy Seabees assembled it — bolt by bolt and panel by panel — for reassembly stateside.

“If you saw anything about the South Pole, that dome would always be the symbol that you saw,” said Billy-Ace Baker, a former Navy radio operator in Antarctica and a founder of the Old Antarctic Explorers Association, who is involved in the effort. ... The National Science Foundation, or N.S.F., the federal agency that oversees polar programs, has agreed to disassemble the top three rings, or about 45 triangular panels, for eventual installation at a Seabee museum being built in Port Hueneme, Calif. The bulk of the dome, which has 904 panels and 1,448 struts in all, held together by about 60,000 bolts, would be cut apart.

Brian W. Stone, a deputy division director in the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs, said the agency had been talking with the Seabees for two years about ways to preserve part of the dome. “The Seabees feel it has historical significance, as do we and others who have worked at the South Pole,” Mr. Stone said. But as part of a long-term modernization plan at the site, the agency had to have the dome removed by next March, he said.

Tagged: Antarctic, History, News, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 3 November 2009) -- Military scientists are moving ahead with plans to monitor the approaches to the Northwest Passage as part of the federal Northern Watch program. Northern Watch tests the surveillance devices used to watch for foreign vessels and other craft travelling through the Arctic waterway from the east. The program was launched in 2008 but scaled back earlier this year because of logistical difficulties. "We discovered that we needed to do some more planning and preparation," Rick Williams, director general of science and technology operations with Defence Research and Development Canada, told CBC News. Williams said he had to delay this year's work on Northern Watch to bring the team back together, re-establish expectations and rebuild a base camp on Devon Island. "There was mould on the inside of some of the buildings and at some of the washing facilities and some of the storage facilities," he said. The crew also had to find a new path leading to the main camp from a remote lookout site — on an outcrop 300 metres above water — because the existing route turned out to be dangerous. ... Despite the logistical problems, Williams said, the team was able this past summer to install an underwater array of surveillance sensors that gathered data for about four weeks in Barrow Strait.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Mike Norris/Kingston Whig-Standard, 21 October 2009) -- A new $1-million fellowship will allow Queen's University graduate students to continue their research on Arctic environmental issues. The fellowship, funded by the TD Bank Financial Group, was announced yesterday at the university's Biosciences Complex.

"Arctic work is neither easy nor cheap. This will allow many more students to conduct research there," said John Smol, a Queen's biology professor and mentor for the new program. The endowment will help pay for trips and provide research students with a stipend. "It can represent much change in a student's life," said Smol, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change. "It can change what they do and change the world around us." Smol said there's a growing demand for Arctic researchers. ...[and] there's no shortage of research students who want to work up north. ... The funding is timely, said Smol, because research costs keep rising each year. "The cost of fuel is amazing," he said. "You travel around in little airplanes and helicopters and a barrel of fuel can be expensive. It can determine how much work you do or how long you stay."

Representing TD Bank was its deputy chair, Frank McKenna, the former premier of New Brunswick and former Canadian ambassador to the United States. "I expect more of tomorrow's leaders in environmental change will come from Queen's," said McKenna, who has a post-graduate political science degree from Queen's. "This is special for me. I owe this institution a great deal. I spent part of my life here and this university was very good to me." Queen's principal Daniel Woolf praised both Smol and the funding. "The university is very lucky to have a teacher and researcher of John Smol's calibre," said Woolf. "This fellowship is important in maintaining student-based research programs at Queen's."

Tagged: Awards, etc., News, Research infrastructure

(IPY Report: October, 7 October 2009) -- Assume you measure sea ice thickness from buoys.  Assume you have buoys in both the Arctic and Antarctic, providing data monthly during the hemispheric winter.  You agree to the IPY data sharing policies, but you face practical data management problems: requirements to provide your data to Arctic and Antarctic data centres and to your national data centre.  You face multiple portals, different formats, and a substantial work load to meet your data commitments and responsibilities.  We have a solution to propose - a Polar Information Commons!

You can (soon) share data through PIC.  In our vision, once you have labelled your data with a PIC 'badge', requesting data centres will recognise your data and download (and preserve!) it, keeping you and the data centres happy.  Perhaps, one of those data centres will pick up your PIC-labelled thickness data, add it to remotely sensed thickness data and their standard sea ice extent products and produce, again with a PIC label that recognises your original PIC label, an ice volume product - just what you would have wanted.  You and fellow researchers get that product through direct services of the data centre, but the centre also 'leaks' snippets of that back into the network with a PIC label to attract and inform other customers.  Meanwhile, when a colleague searches the PIC for ice thickness data to match with his or her radar data, they find and use your Antarctic thickness data.  You get a paper together, everyone's contribution gets acknowledged, and the PIC data continues to circulate for additional, perhaps un-anticipated uses.

If this sounds ideal, please learn more at www.polarcommons.org. See also "Ethics and Norms of Data Sharing," on the PIC site.

Tagged: Antarctic, Arctic, IPYLegacy, News, Research infrastructure

(The Copenhagen Post Online, 29 September 2009) -- A ‘unique resource’ is being shattered by the Science Ministry as it seeks to dismantle the Danish Polar Centre and divide the holdings of its library between scientific and social sciences institutions, according to Arctic researchers. In an open letter to Science Minister Helge Sander, penned by anthropologist Susanne Dybbroe on behalf of more than 100 national and international researchers, the group argues that closing the centre would weaken Denmark’s ability to study Greenland and the Arctic at time when the region is taking on increasing international importance.

Since 1990, the Danish Polar Centre and its 20 employees has helped steer the country’s Arctic and Greenlandic research programmes. Last year, the centre received 10 million kroner in funding. According to the group, the centre has helped Denmark establish a reputation as a leader when it comes to sociological studies of the region. ‘Now all of a sudden that’s gone,’ said Jens Dahl, of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Comparative Cultural Studies.

The centre’s activities began to wind down in February. Now that it has reached its final stages with the closing of the Polar Library, Dahl and other co-signers of the letter say researchers in the field lack an institution that consolidates knowledge on the area.

The Polar Library is one of the world’s largest libraries focusing on the Arctic and Greenland, and those who make use it worry that its contents will be spread to the wind. Representatives from the Science Ministry said, however, that dividing the library’s contents up between the University of Copenhagen and the National Environmental Research Institute would make it easier for researchers to find relevant information. ‘We’ve had a mixed bag of activities that have been too difficult to keep track of, now we’re just putting them out where they fit best,’ said Peter Sloth, of the Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Jonathan Taves/The Gateway, 3 September 2009) --  The Canadian Circumpolar Institute (CCI) at the University of Alberta is the leading candidate to be a major part of upgrades at Edmonton’s Telus World of Science (TWoS) over the next five years. TWoS is in the planning stages of a multi-million dollar renovation, and sees the CCI as a perfect fit for its new facilities.

“It’s a very significant plan. If all our aspirations were delivered upon, it would more than double the size of this facility,” said George Smith, president and CEO of TWoS. “The Circumpolar Institute will be a very key player in terms of [bringing] to the public through us some really important learning opportunities about those regions.” The CCI spans across all faculties at the U of A, looking at everything from glaciers, snow, and bodies of water, to the cultural and sociological impact of the environment on people living in the region. Director of the Institute Marianne Douglas said that a successful result of the discussions with the TWoS would present a unique chance for researchers to give exposure to their work. ...

“For the U of A, the City of Edmonton and the [TWoS], there’s this real convergence of interests. With Edmonton as the gateway to the north, going back over 100 years as an economic pipeline to the territories, but more importantly now, we’re a social, healthcare, and educational pipeline as well, in both directions,” said David Hik, Professor in Biological Sciences and Canada research Chair in Northern Ecology. Hik has been heavily involved in the discussions to determine how the partnership would work. “Over the last two years, we’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about what we can do together, and one of those things would be to build our capacity to do research, to support social, cultural, and economic development in the territories, and to communicate science.”

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(CBC News, 2 September 2009) -- Environment Canada plans to install a station near Great Slave Lake that will measure greenhouse gas levels in the Northwest Territories. The global atmospheric watch station, to be set up within a year, will join a network of eight existing stations across Canada. The station will be the second in Canada's North, with the first located near Canadian Forces Station Alert in Nunavut, said Francis Zwiers, Environment Canada's director of climate research.

"It's located there because it's very far from industrial emission sources, and so we're able to monitor ... what is the background state of the atmosphere," Zwiers told CBC News on Wednesday. "There are very a small number of stations like this spread across the face of the globe, in remote places, and those are the stations that tell us what the current greenhouse gas composition in the atmosphere is and how it's changing."

Zwiers said the Arctic is very important for climate change observers, which is why Environment Canada wants to have two global atmospheric watch stations in the North.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(University of New South Wales press release via EurekAlert! 31 August 2009) -- he search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth. No human is thought to have ever been there but it is expected to yield images of the heavens three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground. The joint US-Australian research team combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect astronomy—cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapour, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence.

The researchers pinpointed a site, known simply as Ridge A, that is 4,053m high up on the Antarctic Plateau. It is not only particularly remote but extremely cold and dry. The study revealed that Ridge A has an average winter temperature of minus 70°C and that the water content of the entire atmosphere there is sometimes less than the thickness of a human hair. It is also extremely calm, which means that there is very little of the atmospheric turbulence elsewhere that makes stars appear to twinkle: "It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all," says Dr Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and visiting professor to UNSW, who led the study.

"The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers," says Dr Saunders. "Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth." They found that the best place in almost all respects was not the highest point on the Plateau—called Dome A—but 150km away along a flat ridge.

Tagged: Antarctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Paul Watson/The Toronto Star, 29 August 2009)** -- RESOLUTE, Nunavut–Camped out on the empty Arctic ice pack, it's not a good time to remember you forgot something. The nearest shopping mall is thousands of kilometres away. Cellphones are useless. Steady satellite phone signals are hard to find. You're not on any courier company's map, anyway. But if you can at least find the tracking gizmo that is a digital lifeline to Canada's garage of the North, then help is at hand. In a short burst of data, all that the weak satellite signal can carry, you can tap out a brief text message, with coordinates: Need hand warmer. Stat.

And from February until shutdown in the fall, someone at the Polar Continental Shelf Program, the federally funded logistics centre for the Far North, is ready to read it. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Except when the staff are so exhausted from hauling southerners' buns from the fire that they're all zonked out in their bunks.

Since 1958, the program has supported groundbreaking science and research in the Far North from its warehouse and transportation hub in the hamlet of Resolute, on the southern tip of Cornwallis Island.

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

In 2002-03, SSHRC sponsored the national Dialogue on Research and Aboriginal Peoples, which resulted in the report Opportunities in Aboriginal Research (pdf document 287KB). This report presented strong evidence of the need to shift away from research on and for Aboriginal peoples, to research by and with Aboriginal peoples.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) is relaunching its Aboriginal Research Pilot Program and invites eligible researchers to apply before the upcoming deadline on 30 September 2009. The program facilitates research by and with aboriginal scholars and aboriginal communities on issues and topics relevant to Canada's Aboriginal Peoples, such as, but not limited to, urban issues, economic development, the environment, education, research ethics, intellectual and cultural property, traditional aboriginal knowledge, aboriginal knowledge systems, languages and cultures, and international aboriginal communities. The program also aims to build the humanities and social sciences community's capacity to operate within, and benefit from, traditional aboriginal and other knowledge approaches to these sorts of issues and topics.

Research Development Grants are worth up to $25,000 over a maximum of two years; Research Grants are worth up to $100,000 annually, for a maximum of $250,000 over three years. The program is open to applicants affiliated with a Canadian postsecondary institution, or a not-for-profit aboriginal or community organization holding institutional eligibility. For more information on institutional eligibility, please see the program description. All applications must include both university- or college-based scholars and participants from aboriginal communities.

For more information on the Aboriginal Research Pilot Program, or to  apply, visit: http:/www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/site/apply-demande/program_descriptions-descriptions_de_programmes/aboriginal-autochtone-eng.aspx 

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure

(Designboom, photography by Nils Petter Dale, 13 August 2009) -- The Svalbard Science Centre, located in Longyearbyen, Norway, has a copper-clad roof specially designed for the location’s climate. The building by Jarmund/Vigsnaes architecture is an addition to an existing building, that added around four times more space for the Svalbard museum and university research lab.

The skin was specially designed based on the region’s harsh wind and snow conditions to prevent the snow from accumulating in unwanted areas. The new building was built using wood on elevated poles to prevent thawing the permanent frost. Inside, the architects wanted to create a public space for gathering in the cold dark winters. They also used lots of vivid colours inside with warm timbre cladding to further enhance the space for the climatic conditions.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(Jeff Richardson/Fairbanks News-Miner, 19 August 2009) -- 13.5 MILE STEESE HIGHWAY - For years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s satellite tracking facility near Fairbanks has been the site of an odd contradiction. The half-century-old building—formally called the Fairbanks Command and Data Acquisition Station—has visible cracks in the walls, doesn’t meet modern building codes and has outlasted its expected life by 30 years. It’s also the location of more than $1 billion in sensitive electronics equipment, by NOAA’s calculations.

To bring the facility into the modern age, NOAA is spending $11.7 million to build a new station. By September 2010, the 20,000-square-foot facility will replace the existing building, which opened in 1961. The upcoming transition to a new building was formally dedicated on Tuesday, when NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco was among the officials to tour the construction site and plant a time capsule near the foundation.

Tagged: News, Research infrastructure

(BarentsObserver, 19 August 2009) -- Russia continues its arctic research program with drifting ice stations in the high latitudes. The icebreaker Yamal sails out to pick up scientists who have spent nearly a year on an ice floe and to find a suitable place for a new station. The nuclear powered icebreaker Yamal leaves Murmansk today to pick up the Russian scientists who have spent nearly a year on the drifting ice station “North Pole-36” (NP-36). The station was established on an ice floe between the Wrangel Island and the North Pole in September 2008. Since then, the station has drifted some 2500 kilometers and is now approaching Greenland, RIA Novosti reports.

The icebreaker will pick up the 16 scientist, their dogs and 150 tons of equipment. The vessel will then continue its journey to find a suitable ice floe for the next station, which will get the name “North Pole-37”. The station will probably be placed near Severnaya Zemlya off the Taymyr Peninsula.

The first scientific drifting ice station in the world, “North Pole-1” was established in May 1937. Since 1954 Soviet “NP” stations worked continuously, with one to three such stations operating simultaneously each year, according to Wikipedia. In the post-Soviet era, Russian exploration of the Arctic by drifting ice stations was suspended for twelve years, and was resumed in 2003.

Watch video of preparations on the Yamal on TV21.ru

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research infrastructure