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May 26, 2017


No Arctic-science events are scheduled today.
Media   

Tiny Aleutian Island Has Big Dreams for a Deepwater Port. The tiny village of Adak at the end of Alaska's Aleutian chain is closer to Japan than to most of the United States. The southernmost city in Alaska, it lies roughly 3,200km (2,000 miles) from the state capital, Juneau. It is the site of a former U.S. military base and residents hope that disappearing sea ice might help revive the community if shipping traffic picks up in the north Pacific. The U.S. built a sprawling army and naval base on Adak Island during World War II. Alongside the military assets that remain are houses for up to  6,000 people, a bowling alley, swimming pool, 400-seat theater and even a disused McDonald's restaurant. "There are so many infrastructure assets - it's unbelievable what the Navy left out here," said long-time resident Cynthia Galaktionoff. "There's paved roads and garages, lights and sidewalks," she said. News Deeply

White House Budget Aims to 'Slow' Gains in Weather Prediction, Shocking Forecasting. The main U.S. weather forecasting model, which has fallen behind the European model in its accuracy, has been called a "national embarrassment." In an inexplicable budget proposal that has floored the weather community, the Trump administration aims to reduce investments in programs that would improve this model and many others aspects of the nation's weather forecasting... The administration proposes large cuts to NOAA's climate research and university grants while eliminating its Arctic research and education programs." The Sun Herald
 
UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to Spread Red Tent Project to Other Ethnic Regions. Members of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) met at UN Headquarters in New York City and praised the Nyaryana Mya (Red Tent) medical-social project for screening tundra residents in Russia's Nenets Autonomous Area, the Area's government agencies website reports. UNPFII Vice-Chair Mariam Wallet Aboubakrine suggested spreading the project to all other ethnic regions which have an insufficient healthcare infrastructure. "The Red Tent annual project has been implemented in the Nenets Autonomous Area since 2008, involving local authorities, medical organizations and companies using mineral resources. The purpose of the project is to mostly provide professional medical care to reindeer breeders and their families who undergo full-fledged medical checkups. Over a period of the past eight years, project participants have screened almost 5,000 area residents, including those from remote towns and villages," the website notes. The Arctic
 
Earliest Evidence for Dog Breeding Found on Remote Siberian Island. The hunter-gatherers of Zhokhov Island were a hardy folk. Nine thousand years ago, they survived frigid year-round temperatures in animal-skin tents some 500 kilometers north of what is now the Russian mainland, and they were the only people ever known to hunt large numbers of polar bears without firearms. Now it appears these ancient Arctic dwellers did something even more remarkable: They may have been among the first humans to breed dogs for a particular purpose. An analysis of canine bones from Zhokhov suggests the dogs there were bred to pull sleds, making this the first evidence-by thousands of years-for dog breeding in the archaeological record. "It's pretty convincing and very exciting," says Melinda Zeder, an archaezoologist at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Science Magazine
 
NASA Begins to Study the Impact of Climate Change to the Arctic Ecosystem.  After finishing the scientific flights to observe Arctic ice observation, NASA continues its study on the Earth's pole. This time the federal space agency run a series of flight to analyze the impact of climate change on the ecosystem in Arctic. According to NASA, the observation is conducted to advance the ability to monitor Arctic climate change and its impact on the boreal ecosystems. The series of scientific flights will fly over Alaska and northwest Canada in a scientific mission named Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, or ABoVE. Science Times
 
Research Icebreaker Sets Sail to Put Nunavut, Nunavik Under Microscope. With a farewell blast of its horn, the Canadian Coast Guard's research icebreaker, the Amundsen, set out May 25 with a shipload of researchers on board who will spend the next 133 days looking at, among other things, the health of Inuit in Nunavik. Along the voyage from its homeport in Quebec City to Nunavut's Kitikmeot region, a research agenda largely underwritten by industry will direct its course. Nunatsiaq Online
Future Events
         
Ninth International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences: People and Places (ICASS IX), June 8-12, 2017 (Umea, Sweden).  ICASS IX's theme is People & Place. Research on social sciences and humanities have a great responsibility to address the challenges for sustainable development in the Arctic, with a specific focus on the many different parts of the Arctic and the people that live there. The multiple Arctics have lately been addressed by many policy makers and researchers. The purpose is often to counteract the stereotypic understanding of the Arctic too often represented by icebergs and polar bears. A focus on people and place highlights the many variances across the region in terms of climate, political systems, demography, infrastructure, history, languages, legal systems, land and water resources etc.

2017 ESSAS Open Science Meeting on Subarctic and Arctic Science, June 11-15, 2017 (Tromsø, Norway). This 3rd Open Science Meeting (OSM) is intended to attract an interdisciplinary group of scholars who will be prepared to discuss their research in the Subarctic, in both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific, and the Arctic Ocean. The title of the OSM is Moving in, out and across the Subarctic and Arctic marine ecosystems: shifting boundaries of water, ice, flora, fauna, people and institutions. It will document the changes that have occurred, the processes that led to these changes, and how future changes are likely to further affect these marine ecosystems. It will also to consider the people who depend upon these ecosystems and how they may be able to cope with the changes in the ecosystem goods and services that they derive from these ecosystems. These include the availability of subsistence foods and the opportunity for commercial fishing. Economic and societal pressures on coastal communities and nations will be sought in relation with the ecosystem changes. To put the present day in a longer perspective, the conference will include a session on the paleoecology of people in Subarctic and Arctic regions that were forced to adjust to the changing temperature and sea-ice conditions in the past.

The Wilson Center-Arctic Circle Forum: The United States and Russia in the Arctic, June 21-22, 2017 (Washington, DC USA). In light of recent world media attention towards Russia and the United States, the Arctic Circle and the Wilson Center will host a Forum on the two countries' complicated yet inherently linked role and relationship in the Arctic. The future of the Arctic will be greatly influenced by the actions of the United States and Russia. What are their policies, their plans and their relations with other states in the Arctic and the Asian and European countries seeking an increasing role in the Arctic? High-level representatives, policymakers and experts will gather in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, June 21, to address these questions and challenges. This event is co-hosted by Wilson Center and Arctic.
 
The 2nd Asian Conference on Permafrost, July 2-6, 2017 (Sapporo, Japan). Delegates will participate in state-of-the-art oral and poster presentations in the modern city of Sapporo (host of the 1972 Winter Olympics). Field trips will visit marginal and extrazonal mountain permafrost sites that support unique geo-eco-hydrological features. All aspects of frozen ground research will be covered, from needle ice to deep permafrost, from frozen ground engineering in cities to permafrost on volcanoes, and from links between frozen ground and ancient cultures to present-day outreach. Plan now to enjoy science and engineering, excellent food, and unique field trips in Sapporo.

Co-hosted by U.S. National/Naval Ice Center (NIC) and the U.S. Arctic Research Commission (USARC). A biennial symposium originating in 2001 that focuses on U. S. naval operations and national strategic issues in an "ice-free Arctic." This symposium brings together nationally and internationally recognized experts on Arctic observations, climate change, and maritime operations. Confirmed speakers include USCG Commandant Paul Zukunft 
and Alaska's Congressman Don Young.

As the Symposium is organized jointly by two leading Research Institutes of Russian Academy of Science - Institute of Water Problems and Melnikov Permafrost Institute, particularly the contributions on following research topics are welcome:
  • Observational evidences of change in coupled permafrost-hydrology system.
  • Present state and future projections of local, regional and pan-Arctic hydrology.
  • Modeling studies representing landscape evolution, dynamics of water storages and permafrost degradation.
  • Impacts of permafrost hydrology changes on local communities.
VII International Conference on Cryopedology, August 21-25, 2017 (Yaktsk, Russia). The conference will be hosted by the Institute for Biological Problems of the Cryolithozone of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SB RAS). Plenary reports will be organized in the hall of the Academy of Sciences of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic. The official languages of the conference are English and Russian (with translation). All technical facilities (projectors, computers, video sets) will be available during the conference for presentation of papers. Additional information will be available soon. See the Facebook page  here.
 
2017 University of the Arctic Rectors' Forum and Conference, August 27-29, 2017 (Aberdeen, Scotland).  This conference will also consider how northern scholarship can add to discussions on the North into broader terrains of intellectual engagement. In so doing, it will challenge dominant paradigms of research in both the natural and the social sciences, above all by calling into question the very separation of the world of nature from that of human society which underwrites the distinction between these two branches of scientific inquiry. In its place the conference will seek to forge a new practice of interdisciplinary research, done in collaboration with northern residents and on their terms, which recognizes that every discipline is itself an ongoing conversation, or a way of knowing, rather than a compartment within an overarching, hierarchically organized system of knowledge. Conversations from the North will, then, help to generate a science that is more open-ended, responsive to environmental variation and respectful of the wisdom of inhabitants. 

2017 Arctic Energy Summit, September 18-20, 2017 (Helsinki, Finland). The 2017 Summit will address energy in the Arctic as it relates to:
  • Small and off-grid community energy solutions
  • Oil and gas development
  • Renewable energy
  • Regulation and Financing
  • Transportation and transmission
The AES is a multi-disciplinary event expected to draw several hundred industry officials, scientists, academics, policy makers, energy professionals and community leaders together to collaborate and share leading approaches on Arctic energy issues.

2017 Arctic Circle Assembly, October 13-15, 2017 (Reykjavi­k, Iceland).  The annual Arctic Circle Assembly is the largest annual international gathering on the Arctic, attended by more than 2000 participants from 50 countries. The Assembly is held every October at the Harpa Conference Center and Concert Hall and is attended by heads of states and governments, ministers, members of parliaments, officials, experts, scientists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, indigenous representatives, environmentalists, students, activists and others from the growing international community of partners and participants interested in the future of the Arctic. 

Polar Law Symposium 2017 and Rovaniemi Arctic Spirit, November 13-16, 2017 (Rovaniemi, Finland). The purpose of the Polar Law Symposium is to examine, in detail, the implications of the challenges faced by the Polar Regions for international law and policy and to make recommendations on appropriate actions by states, policy makers and other international actors to respond to these emerging and re-emerging challenges. The Rovaniemi Arctic Spirit  Conference is integrated with the Polar Law Symposium, which will be organized by the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law at the Arctic Center of the University of Lapland.

ISAR-5 Fifth International Symposium on Arctic Research, January 15-18, 2017 (Tokyo, Japan).  The fifth ISAR has been planned at the recommendation of the science steering committee of ISAR-4, which was held in Toyama, Japan in April 2015. The fifth ISAR will be devoted to discussions on environmental changes in the Arctic and their regional and global implications, to seek additional international scientific collaboration in this area by gathering, synthesizing and sharing information related to these changes occurring in the Arctic. Special emphasis will be placed on the fields of the social sciences and humanities, which were not included in the previous ISARs.  ISAR-5 will consist of general sessions and special sessions. The general sessions will address the following topics: atmosphere; ocean and sea ice; rivers, lakes, permafrost, and snow cover; ice sheets, glaciers, and ice cores; terrestrial ecosystems; marine ecosystems; geospace; policies and economy; and social and cultural dimensions. Special sessions will be solicited on cross-cutting themes.  
 
POLAR 2018, June 15-27, 2018 (Davos, Switzerland).  POLAR2018 is a joint event from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). The SCAR meetings, the ASSW and the Open Science Conference will be hosted by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL under the patronage of the Swiss Committee on Polar and High Altitude Research. The WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF is organizing POLAR2018.

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