ARCSS Program | Overview

Xiaoju Pan hauls in an active optics package on the icebreaker USCGC Healy during the May 2004 Shelf-Basin Interactions (SBI) cruise.

The NSF Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program

What's New?

11 April 2008 - Launch of new Synthesis of Arctic System Science (SASS) Website

17–20 March 2008 - Arctic Observation Integration Workshops - representatives from SEARCH, ARCSS, and other U.S. and international efforts met to advance an integrated Arctic Observation System responsive to environmental arctic change.

ARCSS Overview

The Arctic is highly complex, with a tightly coupled system of people, land, ocean, ice, and air that behaves in ways that we do not fully comprehend, and which has demonstrated a capacity for rapid and unpredictable change with global ramifications. The Arctic is pivotal to the dynamics of our planet and it is critical that we better understand this complex and interactive system. The goal of the NSF ARCSS Program is to answer the question: What do changes in the arctic system imply for the future?

To address this question, researchers must:

• Advance from a component understanding to a system understanding of the Arctic.
• Understand the behavior of the arctic system–past, present and future.
• Understand the role of the Arctic as a component of the global system.
• Include society as an integral part of the arctic system.

Max Holmes, TREC teacher Amy Clapp, and other researchers from the NSF-funded PARTNERS project, teach Russian children sampling protocols on the Lena River, Siberia in June 2004.

In the twenty years since its inception, ARCSS Program research has evolved toward an increasingly integrative, rather than disciplinary, approach to studying the arctic system. Now, building on the solid foundation of more than a decade of observation, modeling, and process studies, the ARCSS Program has undertaken a synthesis effort aimed at achieving system level understanding of the Arctic.

More information about ARCSS activities can be found through the links on the left.

More information about NSF's Division of Arctic Sciences, including arctic funding opportunies, can be found through the NSF Arctic Sciences website.