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DUE TO THE CURRENT COVID-19 SITUATION THE CONFERENCE HAS BEEN POSTPONED FROM 7-8 JANUARY 2021 TO 9-11 JUNE 2021. Due to the current COVID-19 situation, the conference will be held in a hybrid format with both physical and online attendance. To keep the number of physical participants at the required minimum, we have to limit physical attendance to include only conference presenters. However, we are happy to invite the public to follow the streaming of the conference’s plenary and parallel sessions. Participation is free of charge, but registration is required.

As we approach the year 2021, Greenland and Denmark can look back at 300 years of colonization and resistance, continuous cultural encounters and relationship-building, cooperation and conflict. Whereas in Denmark the bicentennial year 1921 occasioned colonial self-congratulation, the tri-centennial anniversary arguably calls for reflection, assessment and re-evaluation of past and current relations – not least to enable both societies to better conceive of new ways of relating to each other in the years ahead. Recent governments in Greenland have initiated commissions on both reconciliation with the past and constitutions for the future. The resonance of both initiatives with the broader Greenlandic public, however, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Danish public debates oscillate between serious attempts at introspection, attempts to find new ways to re-relate, uncritical celebration of cultural difference, self-complacent paternalistic concern, and even outright animosity. In between, new generations of Greenlanders and Danes rediscover each other anew, sometimes in the spirit of creative coexistence, but often in the shadow of received wisdom and prejudice.

Non-scholarly debate and encounters thus continue to reaffirm or reconstruct aspects of the Greenland-Denmark relationship. Hence, this is a most pertinent time also for scholars in the human and social sciences to come together and add some academic perspective: Aiming to serve as a platform for a tri-centennial stocktaking, we invite panel sessions and papers presenting and discussing analyses from across the human and social sciences for a conference on ‘GREENLAND-DENMARK 1721+300=2021’.

The conference offers itself as a platform for panels presenting and discussing thematic and disciplinary evaluations, as well as on-going projects within the overall theme. Hopefully, panels will result in a series of individual and collective publications. If feasible, select papers will be published in an English language special issue, and a separate selection will be published in a Danish language edited volume. Furthermore, we are proud to announce the inauguration of a Best Paper Award under the auspices of Forum for Arctic Human and Social Research (FAKS).The award comes with guaranteed publication of the successful paper in the well-established Arctic Yearbook. Panel conveners will carry out the initial nomination of papers, and a committee under FAKS will make the final assessment and decision. The winner of the Best Paper Award will be announced during the conference.

The organizers have particularly encouraged young scholars to initiate panel sessions, and all panel session organizers to consider involving promising, advanced students. While the core focus is on Greenland-Denmark relations, panel sessions which go beyond these to discuss Greenland in comparative perspective or as part of a region in a highly interconnected world, have also been welcomed. Keynote lectures will complete the programme. The conference will proceed in Danish/Scandinavian or English depending on the preference of the speakers in individual panels/sessions.

Please follow the link above for more information.

We are pleased to announce that the 77th Eastern Snow Conference will be held as a virtual meeting hosted by the University of Saskatchewan. A revised meeting format will be used in support of the ongoing public health and safety efforts around the world. The single-day virtual meeting will focus on student-led research.

The scientific program is open to session on theoretical, experimental, remote sensing, modeling, and operational studies of snow, ice, and winter hydrology. We anticipate including sessions on a wide variety of snow and ice themes, including in situ observations of snow, remote sensing of snow and ice, and high latitude snow processes. The ESC has only plenary oral presentation sessions, allowing time to discuss the research of each participant. You are invited to submit an abstract for an oral presentation.

An abstract of ~300 words should be submitted by 30 April 2021 to the program chair, Dr. Krystopher Chutko.

The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) invites abstract submissions for their 2nd online conference.

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

Update: Due to the current pandemic situation, the 5th OGGM workshop has been moved (again), this time to September 20 to 24 (Monday to Thursday), and will take place in Neuharlingersiel, Germany, as planned before. Registrations will remain valid. Also note that there are still a few open spots. To register, please contact info [at] oggm.org.

Note: The 5th OGGM workshop was originally scheduled to take place from June 8-12, 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic was first postponed to February 22-26, 2021, then to June 8th to 12th, 2021, and now again to Sept. 20-24, 2021.

The OGGM workshop is an annual, informal meeting for developers, users, and future users of the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM) model. The workshop is open to any interested scientist (within the limits of our capacities!).

Who can participate?

Anyone interested in the model, or in glaciological modeling in general! In particular, we would like to encourage potential users and developers to join us, to get to know each other, and to gather first-hand information about the model internals. Note that in case of high interest we might have to limit the number of participants.

If you wish to participate to the workshop or if you have questions regarding the organization please send us an e-mail at info [at] oggm.org

Alaska Climate Action Network (AK CAN!) is a hosting a webinar presented by Alaska Fire Science Consortium’s communication specialist, Zav Grabinski, highlighting the recent report ’Alaska’s Changing Wildfire Environment’.

An intensified pattern of wildfire is emerging in Alaska as rapidly increasing temperatures and longer growing seasons alter the state's environment. Both tundra and Boreal forest regions are seeing larger and more frequent fires. The impacts of these fires are felt across the state. This presentation will give a high-level overview of trends in Alaskan wildfire related to a changing climate based on the recent International Arctic Research Center/AFSC report 'Alaska's Changing Wildfire Environment'.

AK CAN! connects Alaskans from all walks of life who share a deep concern about climate change, biodiversity and our energy future. News, action alerts, events, reports, commentary and ideas related to climate change, biodiversity and energy issues that pertain directly to Alaska and Alaskans are most welcome!

Please follow the link above to register.

The 12th Annual International Science of Team Science Conference hosted by Virginia Tech aims to advance our understanding of collaborative initiatives that address multidimensional complex societal problems. We invite team science academics, leaders and members of cross-disciplinary teams, institutional leaders and administrators, and funding agencies to collaboratively rethink how science of team science research and practice may serve as a foundation for positive change and justice.

The theme of the SciTS 2021 is Science of Team Science and the Human Condition. As a point of convergence between science and practice, the conference will provide a platform to investigate contributions that team science research can make to addressing urgent contemporary challenges. This year’s conference will highlight the interface of the science of team science with challenges such as:

• Responding to megadisasters (e.g., the COVID pandemic; hurricanes and fires),
• Curtailing systemic racism and the need to create and implement anti-racist policies and practices, including technologies, and
• Grappling with challenges in large growing metropolitan regions, such as equitable economic growth, affordable housing, education, and healthcare, food scarcity, infrastructure systems (including IT systems), and the impacts of climate change.

As the host university with a growing footprint in the Greater Washington, DC region, we are eager to advance understanding of contextual conditions and collaborative processes that promote development and coordination of laws, policies, strategies, and practices that address urgent societal challenges. The conference will feature scholars, practitioners, funders, and other leaders from across the country and the globe, thereby serving as a context for engaging team science principles and elaborating the contributions of team science scholarship and practice toward improving the human condition.

We invite submissions that focus on any pertinent topic relevant to the science of team science. Please go to the Call for Abstracts page to view the complete list and for more information.

Abstract submission deadline is February 28, 2021.

The University of Alaska (UA) Museum of the North announces their upcoming Virtual Grand Opening: Bowhead Whale. This event will take place on the UA Museum of the North YouTube channel.

This spring, the University of Alaska Museum of the North has articulated and suspended a 42-foot bowhead whale skeleton from the lobby’s ceiling, the first display of its kind in a North American museum.

Join organizers for a Virtual Grand Opening. Hear from project leaders and learn more about the challenges they overcame to prepare and suspend a 1,830-pound whale skeleton from the museum ceiling. Celebrate the project completion with museum and partners.

Please follow the link above for more information.

The 28th PLC Organising Committee, with the approval of the PLC Steering Committee and the Université Laval Library administration, have made a decision, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, to postpone the event until June 5 – June 11, 2022.

This was not a decision made lightly – we looked carefully all our options and decided that postpone for two years was the best choice for health care concerns, logistical and financial reasons. ​

The conference will focus on contribution of librarians and archivists to the sharing of northern and polar cultures and knowledge. The event will be an excellent opportunity to:

• Bring together specialists in northern and polar information, from more than 15 different countries.
• Highlight the unique expertise of librarians and archivists in this field through stimulating presentations.
• Showcase the work of renowned researchers in northern or arctic studies.
• Address the issue of metadata decolonization in a special workshop.
• Discuss various issues related to the management of research data for polar studies in a panel session.
• Introduce participants to the culture of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal of northern Quebec.

Université Laval’s Library, an organization that believes in values of collaboration and sharing practices between colleagues and institutions, is proud to host the 28th Polar Library Colloquy. Here are some highlights of the Library:

• The Collections includes more than 6 million documents.
• The Library team is composed of 220 employees, including 46 librarians.
• The acquisition Budget was CAD$ 12.2 million in 2017-18.
• More than 600,000 visits in 2017-2018, an increase of 8% from 2016-17.

Université Laval’s Library owns an extensive collection of documents on northern and Arctic studies, including:

• Monographs and periodicals covering emerging multidisciplinary fields on these topics.
• Geospatial data covering the North and the Canadian Arctic areas.
• First editions of travel accounts and exploration diaries of the Arctic.
• Antique maps of the Arctic.
• Scientific, artistic and heritage objects and specimens related to northernness.
• Cutting-edge expertise consisting of librarians, library technicians and geomatics experts to support research in this field.

Please follow the link above for more information.

APECS and ARICE invites for a webinar on the project DEARice (DEvelopment of snow/ice/ecosystem models using winter-to-summer ARctic observations of coupled snow, ice, and ecosystem processes).

The ARICE supported DEARice project (DEvelopment of snow/ice/ecosystem models using winter-to-summer ARctic observations of coupled snow, ice, and ecosystem processes) took part during the MOSAiC expedition. The aim was to collect unique data on snow and sea ice over a full year to improve our process-level understanding of processes that can eventually feed into the improvement of models. The COVID-19 pandemic caused substantial changes in the leg planning after April 2020, however, the resulting data set is very close to the optimal outcome. Serendipitous luck made it possible to sample snow for all four seasons, including the mysterious summer “snow”, called surface scattering layer. The results from this project encompass all relevant spatial scales, from microstructural processes in the snowpack and at the ice surface, to ridge scale observations of snow distribution and ice thickness, to snow-atmosphere interactions and albedo processes of the sea ice cover. Understanding how these different scales interact will improve our understanding of the vulnerability of the Arctic sea ice system, and decrease uncertainties in climate projections.

Speakers are Martin Schneebeli (WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF), Ruzica Dadic (Victoria University of Wellington), Mats Granskog (Norwegian Polar Institute), Polona Itkin (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Jari Haapala (Finnish Meteorological Institute), Roberta Pirazzini (Finnish Meteorological Institute) and Henna-Reetta Hannula (Finnish Meteorological Institute).

Moderation: Franziska Pausch (ARICE, AWI & APECS).

To join the webinar, please follow the link above to register.

This webinar provides a brief introduction to the historical context of colonialism in the Arctic, focused on Alaska, and its relationship to climate change impacts on Arctic Indigenous Peoples. For researchers working in the Arctic, it will provide insight into the ways that relationships, resource extraction, compensation, and infrastructure building have been predominantly one-sided.

First contact of European colonizers in Alaska were Russian explorers in the 18th century, with the state purchased by the U.S. government in 1867. The discovery of gold and oil led to the rapid influx of settlers; local Indigenous populations were excluded from gold claims due to their lack of recognition as citizens. During these stages of economic development, the U.S. government took steps to assimilate Alaska Indigenous people such as the forced establishment of permanent settlements rather than traditional semi-nomadic camps. Barely less than a generation later, fossil fuel combustion has altered the greenhouse gas composition of the atmosphere and catalyzed climate change, resulting in dramatic changes in Arctic ecosystems and environments noted by both Arctic Indigenous Peoples and western scientists. Manifestations of Arctic climate change include, but are not limited to, diminished shorefast sea ice which acts as a barrier against storm surges and a platform for subsistence hunting. Food security and management practices are some of the most pressing issues that Arctic communities and peoples are currently facing. Current solutions are to transplant entire communities or relocate. This webinar will go into detail about this historical context.

About the Speaker

Sarah Aarons, Assistant Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Sarah is an Iñupiaq (Alaska Native) Earth scientist and Assistant Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego specializing in climate change, Earth's surface processes, isotope geochemistry, and paleoclimatology. She was born in Dillingham and raised in Anchorage, with her maternal family hailing from Unalakleet.