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The inaugural Anchorage Security and Defense Conference (ASDC) will convene defense and security practitioners to discuss challenges and opportunities in the circumpolar Arctic and neighboring regions that have international security implications. By providing a forum for dialogue, the ASDC will develop potential solutions and actionable recommendations for practitioners. This year’s theme is drawn from the US National Security Strategy which identifies the 2020s as a “decisive decade.” The inaugural ASDC is an opportunity to examine the geopolitical shifts of the 2020s and their nexus in the Arctic, the North Atlantic, and the North Pacific.

The Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the Earth. News of the alarming loss of ice now reaches around the world, but we don’t hear enough about what is happening to Arctic land that is no longer covered by ice and snow — it is becoming green. “Arctic greening” describes this alarming increase of vegetation around the Northern world, which accelerates global warming and permafrost thaw. But greening in the Arctic also inspires economic, political, and imaginative innovation among local and Indigenous Arctic peoples, who are “experts of change,” as Mininnguaq Kleist (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Greenland) affirmed at the Arctic Circle Assembly of 2023.

“Greening” thus means different things to different people. For social scientists, it is a deliberate introduction of plants into built environments. Ecologists and geographers each observe plants transforming Arctic lands through different lenses, with different results. For Arctic farmers, the increasing ability of plants to grow brings both new opportunities and unpredictability. How do we make sense of these different visions of greening? This panel discussion will examine the dramatic expansion of plant life across the Arctic from a variety of viewpoints, considering the sciences and arts, and farms, forests, and tundra together.

Join Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute for the next Zoom webinar in the Arctic Environmental Humanities Workshop Series, titled “Greening the Arctic,” on Tuesday, November 19, 2024 from 10:00-11:30 am EST (3:00-4:30 pm GMT).

Register at https://www.bu.edu/pardee/the-arctic-environmental-humanities-workshop-…

Kawerak will be hosting the 2024 Tribal Justice Summit August 26th – 29th. Representatives from the 20 Alaskan tribes in our region are invited, and there are open invitations for those interested. The purpose of the summit is to bring our communities together to learn and discuss how to strengthen our tribal courts and traditional law.

Polar Pride Day celebrates the contributions of LGBTQIA+ people to polar
science. It was launched in 2020 with participation from 49 countries,
over 4000 tweets, and a global reach of over 12.8 million people! In
2024, we want to build on this success and take the Polar Pride message
to an even bigger audience, and we need your help to do it.

A particular highlight of last year was the images of celebrations in
the field. If you plan to celebrate at either pole, at your institute,
or virtually, please make sure that you take some photos or videos to
share on the day. If you are using Twitter, please use the hashtags

Please share widely, stay in touch, and let us know what you'll be
doing!

The geopolitical landscape of the Arctic has shifted dramatically following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which paused over 25 years of traditional Arctic Council-informed and -guided cooperation with Arctic Indigenous Peoples, Arctic Nations, and Observer States. This break in Arctic diplomacy, particularly the cessation of scientific cooperation, raises crucial questions about the future of Arctic collaboration on challenges facing the Arctic and the planet. In light of this, our project seeks to present a series of informed scenarios that may help guide Arctic diplomacy and cooperation as we look toward 2032, a year that will also mark the 5th International Polar Year (IPY-5).

Panelists

• Ole Øvretveit, Manager & Researcher of Arctic Science Diplomacy Project, University of Bergen & Academia Europaea Bergen, Norway
• Volker Rachold, Head of the German Arctic Office, Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Germany
• Heather Exner-Poirot, Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute; Special Advisor to the Business Council of Canada; Research Advisor to the Indigenous Resource Network, Canada
• Matthias Kaiser, Professor Emeritus at the Center for the Study of the Sciences and Humanities (SVT) at the University of Bergen; International Science Council Fellow, Norway
• Jenny Baeseman, Arctic and polar consultant; former Executive Director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR); former Director of the Climate and the Cryosphere Project (CliC), USA

Moderated by Melody Brown Burkins, Director, Institute of Arctic Studies, Dickey Center, Dartmouth

This webinar showcases recent updates on carbon exchange between the different pools in the carbon cycle of the Arctic Ocean. Marine carbon originates from river run-off (terrestrial) or air-sea fluxes (atmospheric) and is exported to the deep through large-scale currents where it feeds benthic organisms, if there is sufficient light and other nutrients.

There will be three solicited talks with room for questions and discussions:

• Caroline Gjelstrup - Postdoc. at DTU Aqua, Denmark:
  Tracing the origins and fate of freshwater and organic carbon in the lower limb of the AMOC
• Sayaka Yasunaka - Professor at Tohoku University, Japan:
  Arctic Ocean CO2 uptake
• Karl Attard - Associate professor at University of Southern Denmark, Denmark:
  Seafloor primary production in a changing Arctic Ocean

The international initiatives CATCH, PACES, BEPSII, ASPeCt and QUIesCENT are co-organising a joint workshop bringing together scientists and stakeholders with an interest in atmosphere-ice-ocean research focussing on chemical, biogeochemical and physical processes in the Arctic and Antarctic and links to climate change. Cold regions which are seasonally or permanently covered by snow and ice, notably the Third Pole, are also of interest.

Workshop purposes are to i) present cutting-edge interdisciplinary science, and ii) jointly identify 'big picture' science questions, research priorities and implementation pathways for research activities in the field, laboratory and modelling before and during the 5th International Polar Year (IPY) 2032–2033.

Workshop outcomes will include a white paper to shape IPY32 funding calls, underpin grant applications, and influence the planning of polar research cruises, field campaigns and new long-term measurement capabilities.

The workshop will fully integrate hybrid participation from attendees both on-site and on-line. We will follow a split-day schedule, with early morning and evening sessions to accommodate participants from the global span of time zones. Workshop programme, registration and web site will be announced in early Spring 2024. Send any immediate questions to catch [at] igacproject.org.

Access to the workshop venue
Arrival for dinner on Sunday 17 Nov and departure after lunch on Friday 22 Nov.
Plane: Airports at Lyon, Turin, Geneva, Grenoble, Annecy.
Train: Modane train station (8 km from Aussois) in 4h30 from Paris, 2h from Lyon, 1h30 from Turin; workshop shuttle from station to Aussois.
Online participation: zoom/GatherTown.

Event Description
The Permafrost Discovery Gateway (PDG) invites you to join our monthly webinar series on Thursday November 14, 2024 at 9:00 am AKT. This fall, our webinar series addresses using big geospatial data and remote sensing for community planning applications across permafrost regions.

14 November 2024
Geospatial Data to Support Hazard Mitigation and Response in Alaska
Speaker: Gary Greenberg, Alaska Map Company

Abstract: Communities of Alaska are prone to natural hazards but often lack access to current and accurate geospatial data to plan for, mitigate and respond to these hazards efficiently. Regional or federal organizations may have available hazard data but local infrastructure data is often absent, creating an incomplete picture of the risk. Completing the picture will require collaboration across the various stakeholders to elevate the capacity though standards and processes making accessible tools and data otherwise missing. In this presentation, I will be going over examples of Alaskan communities using geospatial tools and common datasets required, and often absent, to respond to natural hazards from mitigation to recovery to help inform the development of a critical piece of the permafrost framework.

This webinar will synthesize four years of community-based climate services work in Southeast Alaska. A guidance framework will be presented for research co-production, regional networking, and capacity building through partnerships.

Register for this event at our website: https://alaska.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAqdOuvrDktE9O7cIbPgNufP2bEh-g….

The 2024 fire season in Alaska was compressed, with most of the area burned occurring in a few weeks in June and the first days of July. The total area burned was higher than most recent years but far below 2019 and 2022. During this webinar we will review two wildfires that impacted communities in interior Alaska and what went into the responses. The McDonald fire ignited on June 8th in a remote part of the Tanana Flats Military Training Area, about 31 miles southeast of Fairbanks. At first, the fire did not pose a threat to life or structures but the smoke impacted Fairbanks and other communities in the region. When the fire grew and burned outside the military range, a substantial effort was made to protect a cluster of remote recreational cabins. Later in the season, the Riley Creek Fire ignited near the entrance to Denali National Park during the peak of the tourist season and had an immediate impact on visitors, community members and businesses. We will discuss what goes into the interagency response to different fires like these.

Register for this online event at the ACCAP website - https://uaf-accap.org/event/wildfire_review_2024/