Date

Request for Input
Permafrost Research Priorities Survey
International Permafrost Association
Climate and Cryosphere Project

Submission deadline: 20 September 2014

To take the survey or for additional information, please go to:
http://permafrostpriorities.org

For questions, please contact:
Karina Schollaen, Executive Director of the IPA
Email: karina.schollaen [at] awi.de

Jenny Baeseman, Director of CliC
Email: jbaeseman [at] gmail.com


The International Permafrost Association (IPA) and the Climate and
Cryosphere project (CliC) seek the Arctic community's input via a survey
on Permafrost Research Priorities.

This survey is part of the Permafrost Research Priorities (PRP) process,
coordinated by IPA and CliC, which aims to identify the top priorities
in permafrost research. The process will span much of 2014 engaging the
research community and will result in a short publication listing and
putting into context research priorities. The document shall become the
benchmark against which permafrost research should be gauged starting in
2015. It will form one of the outputs of the International Conference on
Arctic Research Planning (ICARP III). The final document of priorities
will be sent to national and international funding agencies,
international organizations, policy makers, and others with interests in
supporting permafrost research.

IPA and CliC are interested in collecting forward-looking research
questions (max. 3) from individuals with professional interests in
understanding physical, biogeochemical, ecological, and social processes
that affect permafrost areas in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and mountain
regions.

The survey and detailed background information on the PRP process are
available at: http://permafrostpriorities.org.

The survey will take approximately 10 minutes of your time if you think
about the questions in advance. Guidelines for creating a good question
are below:

1. Need to be answerable through a realistic research design (which
can rely on future technological developments);
2. Need to have a factual answer that does not depend on value
judgments;
3. Need to address important gaps in knowledge and/or technology;
4. Need to have a spatial and temporal scope that could reasonably
be addressed by a research team or a consolidated research program;
5. Should not be formulated as a general topic area (e.g.
geomorphology, ecology);
6. Should not be answerable with 'it all depends';
7. Except if questioning a precise statement ('does the Earth go
round the sun?'), should not be answerable by yes or no (i.e. not
'is X better for permafrost than Y'); and
8. If related to impact and interventions, should contain a subject,
an intervention, and a measurable outcome.

After the deadline has passed, the PRP Core Group will work to group
questions into various themes. Once that is complete, the next step in
the process will involve voting by the community to help select the most
important questions. If you enter your email when you submit your
questions, you will receive an invitation to help rank the priorities.

Submission deadline: 20 September 2014

To take the survey or for additional information, please go to:
http://permafrostpriorities.org

For questions, please contact:
Karina Schollaen, Executive Director of the IPA
Email: karina.schollaen [at] awi.de

Jenny Baeseman, Director of CliC
Email: jbaeseman [at] gmail.com


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