Past Events

A new series of Arctic Academic eTalks begins with presentations from Troy Bouffard and Dr.Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek and a discussion on the topic of the Russian Chairmanship of the Arctic Council. Mr. Bouffard is the Director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a NAADSN Coordinator. Dr. Smieszek is a Planning Coordinator at the University of Tromso. This event will help grow the dialogue and understanding of the importance of the chairmanship for Russia.

This will be a 90 minute event with 30 minutes of presentations and an hour of open, moderated discussion.

Academic Arctic eTalks is an academically-focused bimonthly forum for open discussion (non-attribution) on key issues affecting the Circumpolar Arctic for scholars and practitioners from Canada, Finland, Iceland, Kingdom of Denmark (Greenland and Faroe Islands), Norway, Sweden, and the United States.

Arctic Academic eTalks is hosted by “The Watch” Command Magazine, United States Northern Command, United States European Command, United States Indo-Pacific Command, and The North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN), with support from the following event partners:

• Center for Arctic Security and Resilience (CASR) - University of Alaska Fairbanks
• Defence Science and Technology Laboratory United Kingdom (Dstl)
• George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies (Marshall Center)
• Joint Task Force (North) Canadian Armed Forces (JTFN)
• Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom (UK MOD)
• NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom)
• Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS)
• Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)
• Royal Danish Defence College (fak.dk)
• United States Coast Guard (Arctic)
• William J. Perry Center, National Defense University (NDU)

Subsequent events will include alternating academic presentations and open discussions, like this event on May 7th, as well as invite-only activities in which academic experts will be asked to tackle specific challenge questions related to the Arctic information environment.

Please follow the link above for more information and to register.

This webinar mini series has been initiated by the SIOS remote sensing service as a response to the new challenges posed by COVID-19 and will take place approximately every month.

Several speakers will present recent observations and opportunities in relation to remote sensing platforms, leaving room for discussion and creating a social experience within the research community.

The aim of this webinar series is to keep you updated, provide a social experience, help to engage the Svalbard research community, and offer you an anchor point to a drifting world!

The next webinar in the SIOS webinar series is going to be about terrestrial research in Svalbard. Join us to learn about current research on terrestrial biology in Svalbard as well as knowledge gaps.

Tentative Programme: (All times in CEST)

• 10:00 - 10:05 Shridhar Jawak (SIOS): Welcome and updates from SIOS-KC
• 10:05 - 10:20 Maren Hansen (UNIS/University of Bergen/SIOS): Spatial ecology of the Svalbard reindeer
• 10:20 - 10:35 Stephen Coulson (UNIS): The invertebrates of Svalbard
• 10:35 - 10:50 Karina Wieczorek (University of Silesia): Feed, breed & die - the amazing life cycle of Svalbard aphids
• 10:50 - 11:05 Maarten Loonen (University of Groningen): Why do barnacle geese migrate to the Arctic to breed?
• 11:05 - 11:20 Peter Convey (British Antarctic Survey): Integrated approaches to understanding Svalbard's terrestrial ecosystems
• 11:20 - 11:30: Open for questions

Note: The 3rd Arctic Science Ministerial was originally scheduled for 21-22 November 2020, but was rescheduled to 08-09 May 2021.

In order to engage with Arctic scientists and knowledge holders on multiple levels, the ASM3 organizers plan to engage researchers at the several science meetings throughout 2020. These meetings will give the research community an opportunity to shape and develop the science-to-policy process resulting in the Arctic Science Ministerial Joint Statement to be signed in Tokyo.

Since the last Arctic Science Ministerial in 2018, changes in the Arctic ecosystem and the resulting impacts locally and globally have been severely felt. While the reasons for these changes in climate largely stem from activities outside of the Arctic, the Arctic is warming at a rate of nearly double the global average.

The ASM3 organizers would like to hear directly from the research community about what matters most in international Arctic science collaboration.

How are geopolitics and environmental change experienced on the ground? How can you find out, let alone represent those experiences? Ruth Maclennan will discuss her films and other artworks made in and about the Russian Arctic and how they emerge from her research and a kind of fieldwork involving open questions, formal experimentation, and improvisation. She will show excerpts from her films Cloudberries, Call of North, and Hero City, and also discuss new possibilities and plans for collaborative practice and fieldwork in light of the pandemic and the ecological emergency.

Maclennan filmed Cloudberries (2019) while travelling with an anthropologist, each conducting their own research and exchanging ideas about fieldwork and practice. Cloudberries was filmed on the Kola Peninsula in a small fishing village along the Northern Sea Route during the hottest summer on record. The village has taken on geopolitical significance because it is situated at the nearest point on land from the Shtokman gas field. But lives go on below the radar. The narrator – the filmmaker – is “just visiting” with her camera. She sits chatting in kitchens, meeting villagers and visitors, listening to the sounds of wildlife and the sea, a music festival, and an abandoned schoolhouse full of life.

Cloudberries, Call of North, and Hero City will be available free to view online before the event via a temporary password-protected link to registered participants.

Idowu (Jola) Ajibade, Assistant Professor of Geography, Affiliated Faculty, Black Studies, Portland State University

Dr. Idowu (Jola) Ajibade’s research focuses on how individuals, communities, and cities respond to global climate change and their different capacities for adaptation and transformation. She explores adaptation in the context of resilience planning, eco-industrialization, eco-gentrification, uneven development and managed retreat. Ajibade’s research draws on urban political ecology and environmental justice lenses to interrogate both conventional as well as alternative approaches to adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and sustainability.

AlexAnna Salmon, Igiugig Village Tribal Council President

President AlexAnna Salmon was raised in the village of Igiugig, Alaska, and graduated from Dartmouth College with a dual major in Native American Studies and Anthropology. As the Igiugig Tribal Council president, Salmon works closely with her community, academic interests, and partners throughout the state as she leads local initiatives for renewable energy and sustainability and advocates for revitalization of Yup’ik language and culture. In 2015, Salmon was invited to President Obama’s roundtable discussion with Alaska Native leaders during his state visit.

Mary and Peter R. Dallman 1951 Great Issues Lecture, sponsored by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding (Dartmouth). Made possible by a gift from Mary and Peter R. Dallman ’51.

Events are free and open to the public.

Please mark your calendars for the 7th ABoVE Science Team Meeting (ASTM7), to be held virtually May 11th & 13th, 2021. Our notion is for the sessions on Tuesday and Thursday to focus on plans for the field season and airborne remote sensing, presentations from partner organizations, updates from the Working Group leads, and reports from the ongoing Synthesis Activities. There will be parallel sessions on each day to feature research highlights from individual projects. Each day will end with social hours for casual conversations.

Registration and abstract submission will open on 5 April. We especially encourage abstracts from early career researchers.

Abstracts should be submitted no later than 19 April.

The next once-a-month virtual seminar series on Sea Level, GIA and Ice Sheets will be on the theme of "Perspectives from the modern sea level and ice sheet modeling communities".

Aimée Slangen, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and a lead author of the IPCC AR6 report, will discuss advances in modern sea level research and coastal risk and Fiamma Straneo from SCRIPPS Institution of Oceanography (UCSD) will discuss the ISMIP6 effort and offer her perspective on how to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Seminar attendance is open to all. Please follow the link above to register.

Please join us to learn more about the recently released book, Drivers of Landscape Change in the Northwest Boreal Region. This book, co-authored by 65 experts in Alaska and northwest Canada, addresses what is driving change in our lands, waters, and wildlife, and includes impacts, future projections, information gaps, and implications for management and ways of life for Indigenous and rural communities. Topics include climate change, wildfire, permafrost thaw, land cover change, invasive species, resource extraction, socioeconomic drivers, and practices of co-production of knowledge. Six of the book’s contributors will provide highlights from the book and how this valuable tool can inform your work in land management, resource stewardship, and research.

Speakers

• Amanda Sesser, 21Sustainability
• Torre Jorgenson, Alaska Ecoscience
• Scott Slocombe, Wilfrid Laurier University
• Nancy Fresco, International Arctic Research Center
• Annette Watson, College of Charleston
• Douglas Clark, University of Saskatchewan

The two-hour-long program of the webinar will be opened with an introductory speech by H. E. Hynek Kmoníček, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States of America, explaining the Czech Republic´s application for Observer Status in the Arctic Council.

The historical and scientific part of the webinar will start with Amb. Jaroslav Olša, Jr., historian and writer and Consul General of the Czech Republic in Los Angeles, and Amb. Zdeněk Lyčka, polar explorer, writer and translator from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, introducing their forthcoming exhibition and a book “Czechs and Alaska. From the Heart of Europe to the Northern Edge of America”. Prepared on the occasion of the 230th anniversary since the botanist Thaddäus Haenke became the first person from the historical Czech Lands who set foot on Alaskan soil in Yakutat Bay. Both panelists will present the activities of Czechs in the US state of Alaska and its Aleutian Islands, as well as the connections and observations of the inhabitants of the country in the heart of Europe with respect to this farthest part of the United States.

The working language of the webinar is English.

Registration is required. To receive the link to join, please register by following the link above.

Who this conference is for: We invite polar and alpine researchers from around the world and from various academic levels to present stories related to the polar and alpine regions that happened in 2020. We hope to hear both success stories and stories of learning from failure. The ultimate goal of the project is to unite the ECR community in a collegial and learning experience organized under the 7th annual APECS Online Conference.

This conference has been organised with the support of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS).

Summary:

The theme is designed to encourage contributions from those whose research has been impacted by Covid-19 and had to develop new directions with their research. It also acknowledges that some were able to carry out fieldwork, and so also gives a space for them to showcase their research. The conference will be an opportunity for new research to be presented and connections to be made across polar research. After what has been a difficult year for everyone around the world, we would like to celebrate and learn from your stories related to the polar and alpine regions that happened in 2020. We hope to hear both success stories and stories of learning from failure. The ultimate goal of the project is to unite the ECR community in a collegial and learning experience organized under the 7th annual APECS Online Conference.

Submissions:

The form for submitting an abstract for a talk or a poster is available via the APECS website on the link below. Abstracts must be < 300 words and the submission deadline has been extended to Wednesday, 14th April 2021.

Attendance:

We welcome anyone, of any academic or professional background, interested in Polar science to attend the conference.

Conference registration form to follow up soon!

International Glaciological Society Global Seminar:

Speaking: Martin Schneebeli, WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, Davos, "Seeing Snow on Sea Ice During the MOSAiC Expedition"

Please register in advance for the seminars. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the seminar.

The seminar will also be available afterwards on the Friends of the International Glaciological Society Facebook page so that you can watch it there if technology fails or you can't make it.

Update: The Faculty of Earth Sciences and Spatial Management, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the Polar Research Center in cooperation with The Committee on Polar Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Polar Consortium jointly organise the 38th International Polar Symposium "Environmental changes in polar regions: New problems - new solutions" to be held on 18-20 November 2021.

Note: The 38th International Polar Symposium was originally scheduled to take place October 15-17, 2020, and then May 13-15, 2021.

The Faculty of Earth Sciences and Spatial Management, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the Polar Research Center in cooperation with The Committee on Polar Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Polar Consortium jointly organise the 38th International Polar Symposium.

The IPS is a recurrent bi-annual scientific conference on widely understood polar topics. The conference has been very popular within the research communities in Poland and abroad for years. Now it gives again a great opportunity to exchange experiences, to discuss and to integrate experts from various fields who conduct their research in the Arctic, the Antarctic and elsewhere in the world.

The IPS in 2020 is exceptional, since accompanied with a plenary meeting under an umbrella of the European Polar Board. We expect researcher from numerous countries, who will be participating in special topic sessions.

Last but not least, the 45th anniversary of the NCU Polar Station on Spitsbergen will be celebrated during the IPS.

Please mark your calendars for the 7th ABoVE Science Team Meeting (ASTM7), to be held virtually May 11th & 13th, 2021. Our notion is for the sessions on Tuesday and Thursday to focus on plans for the field season and airborne remote sensing, presentations from partner organizations, updates from the Working Group leads, and reports from the ongoing Synthesis Activities. There will be parallel sessions on each day to feature research highlights from individual projects. Each day will end with social hours for casual conversations.

Registration and abstract submission will open on 5 April. We especially encourage abstracts from early career researchers.

Abstracts should be submitted no later than 19 April.

The 13th annual Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference (WAISC) aims to bring together local and indigenous knowledge of subsistence–based communities and other scientific research relevant to Western Alaska; including economic, ecological, social, and health issues important to rural communities. This year’s conference focuses on the future threats and opportunities in the face of a changing climate.

Topics:

• Social and ecological effects of climate change
• Water and soil sciences
• Sustainable energy
• Topics in rural education
• Sustaining community: local arts, culture, and economy

Thanks to a generous sponsorship from Alaska EPSCoR, we are pleased to announce complimentary registration for the first 100 attendees to sign up for this year’s conference.

Those who have already registered and paid before April 8 will also receive complimentary registration, and will automatically receive a refund of fees paid before the end of April.

The registration fee after the first 100 registrants is $15. Residents of the Bristol Bay region can enter code bristolbay during checkout to have the registration fee waived.

The 2021 meeting of the Assembly has been rescheduled to May 14th, 2021, just prior to the start of the 2021 UArctic Congress, in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Co-host UArctic members, the University of Iceland, Agricultural University of Iceland, Bifröst University, Hólar University, Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavik University, University Centre of the Westfjords, and the University of Akureyri are happy to invite all member representatives to participate in the 2nd annual meeting of the Assembly of UArctic.

The 2021 Assembly meeting will be held online and will begin in the afternoon (Iceland time). The meeting will be recorded and posted afterwards on this page.

There is no registration necessary to attend the meeting, however the voting process for all agenda action items will be limited to one representative vote per member institution.

Please follow the link above for more information.

In its eleventh year running, the APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE) is an annual award hosted by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Policy Partnership for Science, Technology, and Innovation (PPSTI) that recognizes young scientists who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in scientific research and cross-border collaboration.

For 2021, the ASPIRE prize will promote innovative research that advances society through “Diverse Knowledge for a Sustainable Future.”

This theme focuses on researcher insights from indigenous and ethnic minority cultures and communities to help inform new frontiers in science, technology, and innovation. This may include research that explores interactions between traditional and contemporary approaches to knowledge and science, as well as applications such as better management of natural resources, healthcare, and agricultural systems. Nominees should demonstrate a commitment to excellence in scientific research and cooperation with scientists from other APEC member economies in subjects such as: biology, chemistry, environmental science, physics, mathematics and other relevant fields.

Each APEC economy may nominate one individual under 40 years of age in its region for the ASPIRE Prize. The nominees will be judged on their excellence in research and cross-border collaboration with peers from other APEC economies. Nominees should demonstrate a commitment to excellence in scientific research and cooperation with scientists from other APEC member economies in subjects such as: biology, chemistry, environmental science, physics, mathematics and other relevant fields.

The deadline for U.S. nominees is May 14, 2021. Young scientists from the United States who are engaged in research and/or product commercialization in line with the theme noted above are strongly encouraged to put forward applications or nominate their peers.

Please follow the link above for more information.

As an area of emphasis for Iceland, gender equality was included as one of the priority issues of its Arctic Council Chairmanship program in 2019-2021. Gender Equality in the Arctic (GEA), dating back to 2013, is an international collaborative project intended to raise visibility and understanding of diverse gender topics in the region. A major component of Gender Equality in the Arctic Phase III (GEAIII), launched in 2019, has been the development of a pan-Arctic report to identify priorities and concrete strategies to increase diversity and gender balance in policy- and decision-making processes.

Please join us for the virtual launch event on the Pan-Arctic Report on Gender Equality in the Arctic, hosted by the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Iceland, the Icelandic Arctic Council Chairmanship, the Icelandic Arctic Cooperation Network, the Stefansson Arctic Institute, the Directorate of Equality in Iceland, and the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth. The report provides an overview of gender-related issues in the Arctic, including Law & Governance; Security; Gender and Environment; Migration and Mobility; Indigeneity, Gender, Violence, and Reconciliation; and Empowerment and Fate Control.

Introductory Remarks & Moderator

Michael Sfraga
Director, Polar Institute // Director, Global Risk and Resilience Program

Embla Eir Oddsdóttir
Director, Icelandic Arctic Cooperation Network (IACN)

Speakers

Marya Rozanova-Smith
Associate Professor, Admiral Makarov State Maritime Academy and Head of the Center for Civil, Social, Scientific, and Cultural Initiatives

Andrey Petrov
ARCTICenter Director and Associate Professor of Geography, University of Northern Iowa

Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek
Project coordinator, UiT Arctic University of Norway; Researcher, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland in Finland

Tahnee Lisa Prior
Killam Postdoctoral Fellow, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

Jennifer Spence
Executive Secretary, Sustainable Development Working Group, Arctic Council

Panelists

Hjalti Ómar Ágústsson
Project Manager, Gender Equality in the Arctic Project, Phase III; Special Advisor, Directorate for Equality in Iceland

Juno Berthelsen
Board Member, Youth Advisory Board, Gender Equality in The Arctic

Gunhild Hoogensen Gjörv
Research Professor, The Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), Oslo, Norway

Tonje Margrete Winsnes Johansen
Adviser, Arctic and Environmental Unit, Saami Council

Friðrik Jónsson
Iceland‘s Senior Arctic Official to the Arctic Council

Bridget Larocque
Policy Advisor and Researcher, Arctic Athabaskan Council

Laurel Katchatag
Administrative Advisor, Norton Sound Health Clinic, Alaska; Arctic Youth Ambassador

UArctic Congress 2021 takes place May 15-18, 2021 primarily online with limited local participation in Reykjavik, Iceland for the opening and closing plenaries. The event is hosted by all UArctic higher education members in Iceland.

The Congress is part of Iceland’s chairmanship of the Arctic Council and organized in conjunction with the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting. The themes of the Congress follow from the Icelandic chairmanship's priorities:

• Arctic Marine Environment - Climate and Green Energy Solutions
• People and Communities in the Arctic
• UArctic a platform of joint education and research

The UArctic Congress 2021 brings together institutional leaders, indigenous representatives, academics, scientists and students from around the Circumpolar North and beyond. It is an excellent platform for all UArctic members to engage with each other and promote cooperation in circumpolar science and higher education. Together with partners, policy makers and other actors, the UArctic Congress strives to take the Arctic agenda forward by creating and strengthening collaborations that produce new findings and solutions for the future of the Arctic.

The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) invites abstract submissions for their 2nd online conference. This conference will take place 8-10 June 2021.

The conference will focus on applications of Earth observation (EO), remote sensing (RS), and geoinformation (GI) in Svalbard. Researchers at all career stages, especially Early Career Researchers (ECRs), are invited to present their work to an international audience of researchers working in Svalbard and the Arctic.

The aim of this online conference is to:

• Review the state-of-the-art EO/RS/GI applications in Svalbard
• Promote the PhD students, postdocs, researchers, senior scientists, and academics to contribute actively in the SIOS's special issue on EO/RS/GI
• Provide social experience to the Svalbard scientific community during the pandemic time

The conference will be online via Zoom and there will be opportunities to engage with new science through talks, networking, and social events.

Abstract submission deadline: 15 May 2021

This conference was originally scheduled to take place 14-18 September 2020, and then 16-21 May 2021, but has been postponed again due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new dates are 13-17 September 2021.

The symposium provides a platform for the exchange of current applied research and best practices, the presentation of new technology and further innovation, and the advancement of international cooperation in the circumpolar regions of the world. We look to build on the more than 100 participants and the record 50% attendance by students and early career researchers at the 15th ICRSS!

This symposium deals specifically with remote sensing applications in the polar environments, both Arctic and Antarctic. Earth’s Polar Regions feature cold-climate environments characterized by unique landscapes, biota, and processes. Many of these features and dynamics are Cryosphere-driven and either are already subject to or have the potential for fundamental and rapid changes in a warming world. Earth observation technologies provide crucial tools to understand and quantify these changes.

This symposium will be of interest to scientists, scholars, and industry and government professionals involved in studying and quantifying Arctic and Antarctic Change, renewable and non-renewable resource management, and development of new technologies and methods targeting remote sensing observations of polar environments. The symposium will provide a platform for the exchange of current applied research and best practices, the presentation of new technology and further innovation, and the advancement of international co-operation in the circumpolar regions of the world.

The theme of the 16th ICRSS is Convergence at the Poles – Addressing urgent research questions and management needs through remote sensing in the Arctic and Antarctic.

The 16th ICRSS is being hosted at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Oral presentations will take place in the Wood Center Ballroom and various conference activities will be scattered through the greater University and Fairbanks community.