Witness the Arctic | Volume 13, Number 2 - Spring

UNBC has prioritized three interdisciplinary research themes that either relate to existing areas of research strength or to areas where the university foresees significant future potential and is seeking to build research capacity: natural resources and the environment; rural, remote, and northern health; and the sustainability of communities. Institutes that advance these themes at UNBC include:

            <ul><li>The <a href="http://www.unbc.ca/nres-graduate-program" title="Natural Resources and Environmental Studies Institute" target="_blank">Natural Resources and Environmental Studies Institute</a> promotes integrative research addressing natural resource systems and human uses of the environment. Most researchers within the</li></ul>

Housed within the College of Science and Management, the Geography Program (www.unbc.ca/geography/index.html) has ten faculty.

Gail Fondahl is involved in a project under the aegis of the Sustainable Development Working Group of the Arctic Council to develop and then test a set of social indicators for tracking human development in the Arctic. The Arctic Social Indicators (ASI) project, which is a follow-up to the 2004 Arctic Human Development Report and involves over two dozen collaborators, is led by Joan Nymand Larsen of the Stefansson Arctic Institute and Peter Schweitzer of the

The Environmental Science and Engineering Program (www.unbc.ca/ensc/index.html) has 13 faculty members—their research interests range from large-scale global climate to regional environmental issues.

Stephen Déry leads the Northern Hydrometeorology Group (NHG), which, with funding primarily from the NSERC, investigates the role of climate variability and change on the high-latitude and alpine water cycle. Most group members are graduate students within the Environmental Science and Engineering Program or research staff.

In collaboration with Marc Stieglitz (Georgia Institute of Technology)

The Outdoor Recreation and Tourism Management Program (www.unbc.ca/ortm/) is within the College of Science and Management and has five faculty members.

Over the past four years, Pat Maher has established a diverse program of research on tourism in the polar regions. He recently worked with Parks Canada to study management issues associated with cruise ships in the national parks of Nunavut. The resulting technical report, Cruise Tourism in Auyuittuq, Sirmilik, and Quttinirpaaq National Parks, was published in 2008. Maher and colleagues from Vancouver Island University, Thompson Rivers

The Ecosystem Science and Management Program (www.unbc.ca/esm/) houses 30 faculty with interests in all aspects of ecosystem function, from the cellular and molecular scale to the organismal and landscape scale, and the role of humans in modifying these ecosystems.

Paul Sanborn and master's student Lesley Dampier are working with the Yukon Geological Survey to explore the relationships between soil development and glacial history in the central Yukon Plateau, near Carmacks, a small community in Yukon Territory. The eastern edge of their study area was overridden several times by the

Established in 1994 with considerable public endorsement and enthusiasm, the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) has grown into one of Canada's premier small universities—just over 4,000 students attend the main campus in Prince George and four regional campuses throughout the province.

Today, UNBC offers 25 bachelor's programs, 14 master's programs, and 1 doctoral program in its two colleges—the College of Arts, Social, and Health Sciences and the College of Science and Management.

UNBC's internationally recognized academic and research programs prepare graduates in select

On behalf of the ARCUS Board of Directors, I am pleased to announce that Susan E. Fox became executive director of ARCUS in April 2009. Fox replaces Wendy K. Warnick who stepped down from the position after 17 years of service.

As a seasoned non-profit executive, Fox brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to ARCUS. Her experience includes a combined 15 years of service as executive director of the Society of American Archivists and the American Association of Law Libraries. In these positions, she worked with staff and the community to bring the organizations to a new level of

Denmark assumed chairmanship of the Arctic Council (AC) at the sixth Ministerial Meeting in Tromsø, Norway, in April 2009. More than 300 participants attended, including delegates from the eight arctic nations, observer states, and indigenous peoples' organizations.

Following on two years of Norwegian leadership, Denmark's program for 2009–2011 prioritizes peoples of the Arctic, the International Polar Year (IPY) legacy, climate change, biodiversity, megatrends in the Arctic, integrated resource management, operational cooperation, and the AC in a new geopolitical framework. Per Stig Møller

This year's Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) was held in March 2009 in Bergen, Norway, attended by more than 300 scientists, students, policy makers, and other professionals.

The purpose of the summit, which is organized by IASC and other scientific organizations, is to provide opportunities for international coordination, collaboration, and cooperation in all areas of arctic science and to combine science and management meetings. This event typically features annual meetings of arctic organizations and presentations on arctic research being undertaken by the host country. This year and

The International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) is implementing several structural changes. The planned IASC merge with the Arctic Ocean Sciences Board (AOSB), combining the resources and scientific expertise of both organizations, was made official during Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) 2009 in Bergen, Norway.

Another change in structure—formation of Scientific Standing Committees and Action Groups as new core elements to advance IASC's mission—was presented during ASSW. Feedback received at the meeting and input from IASC member countries is currently being incorporated into the

The Obama administration released details of its FY 2010 budget request in early May 2009. The proposed NSF budget is $7.045 billion, an increase of $555 million (8.5%) over the FY 2009 budget plan of $6.49 billion. NSF received an additional $3 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (commonly called the stimulus bill; see Witness Winter 2008/2009 and page 6); this one-time appropriation is not included in the following calculations or discussion.

The Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS) and the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) sponsored a workshop on marine research and monitoring efforts in the Arctic, particularly in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, as part of the January 2009 Alaska Marine Science Symposium in Anchorage, Alaska.

            <p>The goal of the workshop, attended by 145 individuals from more than 60 organizations, was to share information and promote collaboration among the many entities with increasing activities in marine research and monitoring in the region, including the oil and gas industry, local, state, and federal</p>

Planning is underway for a large State of the Arctic Conference, which will be held 16–19 March 2010 in Miami, Florida. This open international forum will provide an opportunity to present, exchange, and discuss the latest knowledge on the state of the Arctic and future directions of arctic science and policy. Specifically, the conference will:

• review the scientific understanding of the basic functioning of the arctic system, including human subsystems;
• assess our capacity to observe and understand the system, especially in light of rapid system-scale changes in all subsystems;

The Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) Sea Ice Outlook (SIO), which provides an integrated, community-wide summary of projections of the annual arctic sea ice minimum, has launched activities for the 2009 season. Contributions are currently being accepted, and the first monthly report will be released in early June, with subsequent reports each month through September 2009.

More than 20 research groups, including scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), contributed to the 2008 Sea Ice Outlook (SIO) by providing information on current and expected states of

The latest Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program solicitation, Changing Seasonality in the Arctic System (CSAS), was released in June 2008. The proposal deadline was in October 2008. In response to the solicitation, NSF received 71 proposals representing approximately $30 million in requested funding. NSF anticipates making between 10 and 20 awards totaling $5 to $10 million. Awards are expected to be announced by July 2009.

The ARCSS Committee, which is appointed by ARCUS and offers a mechanism through which NSF can stay informed of community interests, is currently focusing on two main

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly known as the stimulus bill, includes $400 million for the NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account. From this amount, NSF plans to direct more than $100 million to the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) to support construction of the Alaska Region Research Vessel (ARRV), which was approved as a MREFC project in 2007. The final amount of the award is still to be determined.

The ARRV will be a 77 m (254 foot) ice-capable vessel designed to support a variety of research objectives in high latitudes

CH2M HILL Polar Services (CPS), logistics provider to NSF's arctic research program, is busy supporting 2009 summer fieldwork. Projects on the CPS roster continue to be largely multi-institutional, international in scope, and focused on understanding the Arctic as a system. In addition to research support, CPS has several renewable energy projects planned for the 2009 summer; these projects continue work with NSF to reduce the impact of research on the fragile polar environment.

Approximately 135 research projects are currently slated to receive CPS services in the Arctic: 61 in Alaska, 56 in

By Mead Treadwell

Over the two-year official period of the fourth International Polar Year (IPY), from March 2007 to March 2009, scientists from more than 60 nations carried out over 160 IPY projects, supported by approximately $1.2 billion, mostly from national scientific agencies. Although its full scientific legacy will evolve over the coming years, it was clear as IPY came to its successful close in early 2009 that the program had made valuable progress toward the four major goals set by the International Council for Science (ICSU) IPY planning group in 2004:

Dear Subscribers,

ARCUS has changed the format of Witness the Arctic. To provide more frequent updates and reduce printing and mailing costs and associated environmental impacts, the newsletter will now be distributed online in three or four shorter issues per year, depending on newsworthy events. Subscribers will receive an e-mail when each issue has been released, with a link to the online content.

We hope you find the new format useful and welcome your feedback on the changes. For further information, or to submit suggestions, please contact me at ARCUS (york [at] arcus.org).