Past Events

There are 24 different indigenous peoples that base their lives on herding domesticated reindeer today. These nomadic reindeer herders live across the entire circumpolar Arctic and Sub-Arctic region, including areas in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia, China, Mongolia, and US/Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Scotland. These groups currently herd around 2,5 million domesticated reindeer, and are altogether close to 100 000 people, all included.

Every 4th year, all reindeer herding peoples of the world have their own Assembly –The World Reindeer Herders’ Congress- which is the most important meeting arena for world reindeer herders. These congresses represent the superior body of Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH), the international indigenous peoples’ organisation for all reindeer herding peoples.

This important international event is hosted by Sáminuorra, Renägarförbundet, Svenska Samernas Riksförbund and Jokkmokk Municipality, together with Association of World Reindeer Herders. The Congress generally contains 3 parts: An official part, with the formulation of declarations, reports and elections; A professional part, focusing on important issues for sustainable reindeer husbandry; and a cultural part, with display of the unique cultural heritage and expressions of reindeer herding peoples. The 6th Congress will include a focus on human health issues, biodiversity and protected areas, industrial development and food culture.

Since 1990, world reindeer herding peoples have built their own transboundary people-to-people collaboration, and created their own worldwide CSO/ NGO in 1997. Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH) has been a Regular Observer to the Arctic Council since 2000, and has had UN EcoSoc Consultative Status since 2010. In 2005 one has also established International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry (ICR), a professional institution for world reindeer herders and a member of University of the Arctic. ICR has the responsibility to coordinate the professional parts of the Congress.

SEARCH Permafrost Action Team Lead, Ted Schuur, will be presenting a plenary talk on permafrost synthesis at
the conference.

MEC (former NBE) is an informal and friendly conference which participants attend to exchange ideas and information dealing with media education, educational use of ICTs and learning environments. MEC is organized by the Centre for Media Pedagogy at the University of Lapland and will take place at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland, 27-28 November 2017.

The first international NBE Conference was held in 2005 and the second one, NBE 2007 Conference, The Power of Media in Education in 2007. The third NBE conference was held in connection with the ISATT 2009 Conference. These three conferences were organized at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland. The fourth NBE Conference, The Social Media in the Middle of Nowhere, NBE 2011, was organized in Sallatunturi, Salla and the fifth, Media Education in No Man’s Land, in 2013 as well as the sixth, In the Light of the Midnight Sun in 2015 in Pyhätunturi, Finland.

In 2017 the conference returns to Rovaniemi and it is organized right before the FERA Conference on Education, which offers you the excellent opportunity to combine these two events.

Deadline for abstract submissions: 21 August 2017

Notification of acceptance sent to authors by: 2 October 2017

Deadline for early-bird registration: 16 October 2017

Join us for a PolarConnect Event with PolarTREC teacher Rebecca Harris and the research team studying Arctic Glacial Lakes.

This is a real-time event with Utah teacher Rebecca Harris and the Arctic Glacial Lakes Research Team looking at the natural variability of hydrology and sediment transport in Arctic glacial lake systems. Rebecca will discuss their field season near Lake Peters, what they sampled and observed, and what it is like to live in a remote field camp. You can read more about Rebecca's expedition, Arctic Glacial Lakes, as well as read her journals and see her photos on the expedition webpage:

https://www.polartrec.com/expeditions/arctic-glacial-lakes

This event is free and hosted through the PolarTREC PolarConnect program. Participants will have a chance the learn from the scientists, ask questions, and chat with others during the presentation.

The Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) will host a webinar on the Fulbright Arctic Initiative. This webinar will be hosted via Zoom Video Conferencing and open to the public.

The Fulbright Arctic Initiative provides a platform for scholars from across the Arctic region to engage in collaborative thinking, analysis, problem-solving, and multi-disciplinary research. At its core, the Fulbright Arctic Initiative creates a network to stimulate international scientific collaboration on Arctic issues while increasing mutual understanding between people of the United States and the people of other countries. During the U.S. chairmanship of the Arctic Council (2015-2017), the Fulbright Arctic Initiative brought together 16 scholars from across the Arctic region.

Using a collaborative model to translate theory into practice, the scholars collectively addressed public policy research questions relevant to the Arctic nations' shared challenges in energy, water, health, and infrastructure.

During this webinar, co-lead scholars, Mike Sfraga and Ross Virginia, and other scholars will reflect on their experiences and the impacts of this variation on the Fulbright model.

For questions, contact:
Jessica Rohde
Email: jrohde [at] arcus.org

The conference is being held in association with the 11th Rectors’ Forum of the University of the Arctic. The goal of the conference is to celebrate the University’s emergence as a world-leading centre for interdisciplinary research on the circumpolar North.

The conference will be fully interdisciplinary, with themes including:

• The Anthropocene in the Arctic
• Movements and encounters of northern peoples in the long term
• Health, demography and culture change in the North
• Land, sovereignty and indigenous rights
• Political regimes and international relations in the circumpolar North

A call for abstracts, for both oral and poster presentations, is now open, with a submission deadline of February 14th 2017.

Full instructions for submission, along with details of the conference theme, programme and registration, are available at the link above.

This Summer School will provide Ph.D. students and junior scientists specializing in sea level research with a basic introduction to the dynamics of current and future sea level change and to state-of-the-art tools to measure and project it. The different contributors to global and regional sea level change will be presented by world-leading experts. The School has a strong component on “hands-on” learning, with practical exercises on the observation and modelling of sea level change, its contributors, and forcing mechanisms. Participants will also receive a training on science communication.

This Summer School will cover the most important physical processes contributing to sea level change. The main focus is on the dynamics of these processes, how they are modelled, what the available constraints and current model limitations are, and how they are used for sea level projections.

The school is open to PhD students and junior post-doc researchers working on sea-level related subjects. The registration fee is EUR 400 and includes full board, excursion and course material (EUR 200 without accommodation).

There are 30 places available. To register, please send an e-mail to Secr-grs-citg [at] tudelft.nl, specifying “Sea-level Summer School” in the subject, before 31 May 2017.

Your application should include a PDF document containing a statement why you want to participate in this course, your affiliation and name of supervisor, a short description of your research project (max 200 words) and a curriculum vitae. After this date you will receive notification whether your application has been accepted and instructions about how to wire the registration fee, which needs to be received before arrival in Delft. Accommodation is in shared twin rooms: if you want to share a room with somebody specific, please make this known upon registration.

​The Conference is arranged as a part of the MARPART projects (www.marpart.no) and will serve as a meeting place for academia, emergency professional and governmental bodies and institutions that work in the area of maritime preparedness and emergency management. The conference will also include participants from the UArctic network on Arctic Safety and Security:
http://www.uarctic.org/organization/thematic-networks/arctic-safety-and…

Themes and topics for the conference will be in line with MARPART projects’ task studying Arctic region’s overall maritime activity, the preparedness resources and cooperation challenges with special focus on emergency management competence acquisition and knowledge transfer.

The following topics will be covered at the conference:

• Maritime risk areas in the Arctic and emergency management competence needs
• Educational programs for emergency management competence development
• Concepts and tools for simulation, training and exercises
• Framework for table top and functional large scale testing of exercise concepts

If you want to participate at the conference, please, register here:
https://response.questback.com/nord/marpart-conf2017

Registration deadline is 31 July 2017

Navigating the combined challenges of climate change, globalization, and a shifting geopolitical landscape requires leadership at all levels and in all sectors of society. The rapidly changing Arctic illustrates the complexity of the task, with issues ranging from safeguarding human security in the Arctic and globally to managing a transition to a post-petroleum future. Central to the challenge are the close links between Arctic change and global processes. Navigating them will require insights about these connections, along with leadership skills and networks for working together across national and cultural contexts.

The aim of this workshop is to increase the capacity of individuals who may become the next generation global leaders to understand and act on the new security and governance challenges that are developing in the context of global environmental change. It will bring together a small group of young professionals with leadership aspirations with the specific task of using Arctic change as a starting point for defining what global security and governance might entail in the next 20-30 years and to explore their own roles in addressing them.
The workshop will be hosted by University of Lapland’s Arctic Centre, Rovaniemi, Finland. It is supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra), the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS), the University of Lapland’s Arctic Center, and the project Arctic Governance and the Question of Fit in a Globalized World funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas. Convener is Dr. Annika E. Nilsson, Mistra-Arctic Fellow at GMFUS and Senior Research Fellow at Stockholm Environment Institute.

We invite young professionals (age 20-35) with aspirations for leadership roles in relation to politics, community development, or research to apply to the workshop. The workshop is free of charge and local costs are covered by the organizers. Some funding is available for travel support, but we also encourage participants to look for other ways to cover travel costs. If you need support for travel costs, please provide motivation and a budget. We aim for a final selection of participants that will reflect a diversity of experiences and perspectives from within and outside the Arctic.

The application should include cover letter with:

• Short presentation of yourself
• Motivation: How you and others would benefit from your participation
• Some words about how you see global-local interactions in your area of interest
• Some words about where you see yourself as a leader in five to ten years from now
• Optional: Request for travel support with budget
• CV

Application deadline: 20 April 2017

For further information, please contact: annika.nilsson [at] sei-international.org

PolarTREC staff will host a webinar for both teachers and researchers. The informational webinar will give an overview of the PolarTREC program, its goals and objectives, program components, the application process, and will address frequently asked questions. To attend, please fill out the following information on the linked page and register. You will be sent information on how to join the event. If you miss the webinar, an archive of the event will be posted here for your viewing.

This conference will be held at the Institute of Linguistics RAS, Moscow, Russia from 27-29 October 2017.

The circumpolar world includes the Arctic as defined by AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program) with adjacent areas. This vast territory has a number of common features that set it apart from any other part of the world: extremely harsh climate conditions, low population density, large distances between speakers of different languages or even of the same language, seasonal migrations for hundreds of miles, prevalence of hunter-gatherers with absolutely no traditional farming, etc. While language contact has been a popular topic of linguistic research in the last couple of decades, there have been few studies that would concentrate on the circumpolar region and specifics of language contact in the area.

The ‘Language contact in the circumpolar world’ conference will bring together researchers studying language contact in the North, and discussions of any aspect of the topic are welcome. Of particular importance is the question of whether language contact in the circumpolar world is different from that of other areas, and if so, in which particular respects.

The conference will feature papers selected by the Organizing committee, invited lectures by leading international experts specializing in the topic, and two extended tutorials on particular parts of the circumpolar world, ‘Language Contact in Arctic Canada & Greenland’ by Michael Fortesque (University of Copenhagen) and ‘Language Contact in Arctic Europe’ by Jussi Ylikoski (The Arctic University of Norway & University of Oulu).

We welcome abstracts from colleagues working on a variety of topics pertaining to language contact in the circumpolar region that include but are not limited to:

• Language change conditioned by language contact
• Mixed languages
• Linguistic areas or Sprachbund’s
• Reconstructing the past through linguistic data
• Patterns of traditional or modern multilingualism
• Northern varieties of larger languages that are not restricted to the region (e.g. dialects of Russian, Swedish, English, etc.)
• Cartography of language contact areas
• Methodology of language contact studies which takes into account specific features of the region

The conference is organized by a new research group on Language Contact in the Circumpolar World at the Institute of Linguistics, supported by the Russian Science Foundation.

The conference will be held in English. Organizers will assist participants in finding accommodation in the vicinity of the conference location.

The extended deadline for abstract submission is August 31, 2017.

Notifications of acceptance or non-acceptance will be sent via email soon after that date. Please submit an anonymous abstract of no more than 1 page (excluding references) by email to circumpolar.conference2017 [at] gmail.com; include a title, authors, and affiliations in your email.

A key challenge for the meteorological and climatological communities is how best to harness the wealth of data now available – both observational and modelled – to generate and communicate effectively relevant, tailored, and timely information, ensuring the highest-quality support for users' decision-making.

This is relevant for the whole spectrum of users: from specific user groups such as the emergency management agencies, local planners and enterprises that are weather sensitive, to individual members of the general public. Realizing the value of meteorological and climate information to government, industry, and all sectors of society is the focus of this conference.

Some of the prevalent issues to be discussed include:

• Observation data
• Instrumentation
• User focus and support tools
• Big data
• Open data
• Communication
• Decision-making under uncertainty
• Weather and climate predictions and projections

Abstract submission deadline is 21 April, 2017.

For more information, please go to the website above.

Symposium themes include:

1. Permafrost as foundation, enclosing and construction material.
2. Physical, thermal and mechanical properties of permafrost and their changes due to external loads.
3. Control of engineering properties of permafrost soils during construction and service life of projects.
4. Urbanization in permafrost regions: experience, problems and prospects.
5. Construction, operation and maintenance of linear, mining and hydro-engineering structures on permafrost: case studies, problems and prospects.
6. Engineering site investigations and construction technologies for permafrost regions.
7. Regional climate changes and permafrost response.

Abstract submissions are due by 29 December 2016.

Lancaster Data Science Institute are hosting a one-day training course on Tuesday September 5th in conjunction with the International Glaciological Society British Branch 2017 meeting. Quantitative analysis relies on numerical methods, however methodological developments in the ‘data sciences’ (e.g. maths/computing) are not often brought directly into polar research. This training event aims to encourage the adoption of cutting-edge data science methods by polar researchers. The day will provide an overview of statistical and computational methods which can be employed by polar scientists and will deliver in-depth practical sessions on the application of changepoint analysis and extreme value theory to polar data. There will also be an opportunity to develop ideas around the application of data science techniques to your own data with feedback given by Lancaster's experts in Environmental Data Science. The course also offers the opportunity to develop skills in analysis using R, and working in a cloud-based environment, through the practical components of the course.

The workshop will be held from 09:00 – 17:45 on Tuesday 5th September in Lancaster Post-graduate Statistics Centre. Note that this is the day preceding the British Branch 2017 meeting. Registration is free via the eventbrite link above, but places are limited; priority will be given to PhD students but other early career researchers are encouraged to apply. For those arriving the day before (Monday 4th September), on-campus en-suite B and B accommodation has been reserved at a cost of £38.50 per night.

Prior knowledge of R is not required, but attendees should have a basic statistical awareness, for example an understanding of linear regression and the concept of a probability distribution. If you have any questions please contact Amber on a.leeson at lancaster.ac.uk.

Follow the Eventbrite link above to register for the course.

Theme:
Past and present changes in the mass balance of the Earth's glaciers and ice caps induce present-day deformation of the solid Earth on a range of spatial scales, from the very local to global. Of principal interest are geodetic observations that validate, or may be assimilated into, models of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) and/or constrain models of present-day ice mass change through measurements of elastic rebound. Using geometric measurements alone, elastic and viscoelastic deformations cannot be separated without additional models or observations. The conference will focus on resolving these issues and work on dissemination of these measurements within the glaciological community.

• Session 1. Observations of present-day changes in glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets and the associated Earth deformation
• Session 2. Measurement and Models of Elastic Rebound
• Session 3. Glacial isostatic adjustment on a Heterogeneous Earth
• Session 4. Reconciling models and observations of GIA

Both Oral and Poster sessions will be held.

Abstract submission deadline: June 16, 2017

Final detailed programme: June 30, 2017

Application deadline for early career scientists travel support: July 1st, 2017

Registration deadline: August 2nd, 2017

Lancaster Environment Centre and Lancaster Data Science Institute are pleased to announce that we will be hosting the 2017 British Branch meeting of the International Glaciological Society.

The conference will follow the traditional format of oral and poster presentations, spread over two days, on a wide range of snow and ice research and we have three keynote speakers scheduled to present on topics including ice core science, glacier and ice sheet hydrology and glacio-volcanism. Delegates from overseas are very much welcome to attend.

Keynote talks will be given by:

• Dr. Robert Mulvaney, British Antarctic Survey
• Prof. John Smellie, University of Leicester
• Prof. Jemma Wadham, University of Bristol

We also hope to deliver a one-day workshop on Tuesday the 5th September aimed at postgraduate students and postdocs on the theme of data science for cryospheric research.

There will be an ice-breaker barbeque at the Lancaster Environment Centre on Tuesday the 5th September and the conference dinner will take place at Lancaster Brewery on the evening of Wednesday 6th. En-suite accommodation has been reserved on-campus and a number of other accommodation options are available for those who wish to make their own arrangements.

The 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM), co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), and The Oceanography Society (TOS), will be held 11-16 February 2018 in Portland, Oregon.

The OSM is an important venue for scientific exchange across broad marine science disciplines. Sessions will include all aspects of oceanography, especially multidisciplinary topics, as well as presentations that reflect new and emerging research on the global ocean and society, including science education, outreach and public policy. The OSM originated in 1982 as a joint effort between AGU and ASLO; TOS joined as a regular co-sponsor in 2004.

Increasing evidence of multiple human impacts on the oceans makes this a critical time for the largest international assembly of ocean scientists, engineers, students, educators, policy makers, and other stakeholders to gather and share their results on research, application of research, and education.

Abstract submission deadline: 11:59 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Wednesday, 6 September 2017.

Increasing focus on the Arctic region due to climate change and natural resources such as oil and minerals has made Greenland a hot topic recently and it is of course an excellent place to meet and discuss polar and alpine microbiology.

The theme of PAM 2017 will be: Coming in from the Cold: Microbial Roles in the Warming Cryosphere

This theme should reflect that PAM 2017 will place emphasis on novel research showcasing the roles of microbes in the rapidly changing polar and alpine environments. Greenland-related research will of course be prominent throughout the conference.

We hope you will join us for an interesting conference and look forward to welcoming you to Greenland in 2017.

The aim of the conference is to present recent results that address still open questions in understanding the sensitivity of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and its contribution to past and future sea level and climate change (http://www.scar.org/horizonscan Kennicutt M.C. Chown S. et al., Nature, 2014).

An important development in understanding and predicting Antarctic ice-sheet behaviour has been the validation and testing of ice sheet models on past climates with boundary conditions that are relevant to future projections.

While the focus of the conference will be on the latest developments in paleo-ice sheet and climate reconstructions using data and models, we also invite researchers and students from geodynamical, climatological, glaciological, oceanographic, ecosystem and ice cores communities, since their work is crucial for understanding the processes and dynamics of the integrated system.

All presentations will be in plenary oral and poster sessions, and each day will end with a plenary discussion to enable the maximum interaction of different groups and disciplines.

Abstract deadline: May 10th, 2017.

For more information please follow the conference's link above.

The United States is hosting the 5th Northern Oil and Gas Research Forum from October 11-13, 2017, in Anchorage, Alaska. This meeting will feature current research and highlight information needs for management of petroleum activities in the US and Canadian Arctic. Abstracts for poster presentations on research and how research is used in management actions are presently being solicited. Please visit the Forum's website for additional details.

Deadline for abstract submission is September 10.

There is no registration fee for the Forum. Please use the website link above for information on registration, agenda, lodging and transportation.