Search Events

Please join the US Permafrost Association for an engaging discussion on the unique experiences and challenges faced by families in permafrost science and engineering fields. Our panelists will share their personal experience, insights, and strategies for balancing career aspirations with family life.

USPA members and non-members are welcomed and encouraged to join this discussion. If you are able, we suggest a donation of $5-10 to the USPA Family Care Program to support families in permafrost-related fields.

This panel is being coorganized with the USPA DEI Committee and the Polar Science Early Career Community Office (PSECCO).

Date: April 11, 2024 (Thursday)

Time: 2:00 to 3:00pm EST (10:00am to 11:00am AK)

Panelists:
Melissa Ward Jones, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Jessica Ernakovich, University of New Hampshire
Sarah Evans, Appalachian State University
Eva Stephani, USGS
Liz Hoy, NASA

Join 1,000+ leading government officials, politicians, business executives and investors, indigenous leaders, scientists, military officials, and guests from 25+ countries at the Arctic Encounter in Anchorage, Alaska. The flagship event is hosted annually in the spring, and international events are co-hosted with strategic partners worldwide.

Confirmed Speakers

• Ambassador Bergdís Ellertsdóttir, Ambassador of Iceland to the United States (Iceland)
• Ambassador Takewaka Keizo, Ambassador for International Economic Affairs and Arctic Affairs (Japan)
• Dr. Brendan Kelly, Executive Director & Chief Scientist, Study of Environmental Arctic Change (United States)
• Dr. Michael Sfraga, Chair, U.S. Arctic Research Commission; Chair & Distinguished Fellow, Polar Institute, Wilson Center (United States)
• Ms. Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer, Director of Climate Initiatives, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (United States)

The Polar Science Early Career Community Office (PSECCO) announces their upcoming three-part leadership workshop series for polar early-career scientists. The tools introduced in this series will be applicable to polar research environments in both the lab and the field. The three workshops include:

Getting Back to the Basics: 21 February 2024, 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. MT

The Leadership Toolbox: Team-building and Navigating Conflict: 13 March 2024, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. MT

Leadership from Above and Below: Building Safe and Constructive Work Atmospheres: 3 April 2024, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. MT

For more information, go to: https://psecco.org/events

CryoSkills is a fully funded, week-long practical field course in Haugastøl (Norway), geared towards PhD candidates and early-career scientists. Participants will learn to design, build, and deploy sensors and instrumentation for cold regions. Participants can expect both relevant theory and the honing of practical skills for glaciological fieldwork, taught by experts in the field.

The course will take place from 2 April 2024 until 10 April 2024. Applications are open now and close on 29 October 2023.

For more details on the workshop and application procedure, please see https://www.cryoskills.com/

The 16th Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference (WAISC) brings together people invested in sharing information important to rural communities in Western Alaska through Western Alaska knowledge and science.

The 2024 conference will highlight needs to maintain strength, health, and subsistence lifestyles while moving forward during rapid transitions within the environment, ecology, and industries of Western Alaska. A conference priority is the continued sharing of knowledge across cultural boundaries.

WAISC topics include (but are not limited to):

Climate and weather
Oceans, lakes and rivers
Ecology and wildlife
Resource development
Reindeer herding
Human and community health
Sharing knowledge and communications

This talk will explore the Arctic as a case study of the intersection of actorless threats-- such as climate change and ecological upheaval-- with conventional threats posed by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and tensions with China. Climate change is commonly referred to as a threat multiplier because of the way it intersects with already existing vulnerabilities to exacerbate fragility. The Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the global average with immense implications for global security due to its outsized potential to contribute to sea level rise, extreme weather, and biosecurity hazards, among other hazards. However, the nature of actorless threats differs in significant ways from actor-based threats, and as such demands a different analytical lens in order to effectively address the dimension of risk they pose.

Marisol Maddox is a Senior Arctic Analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an Operational Research Analyst at PolArctic, LLC. She is an adjunct professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School where she teaches an Executive Masters course on Environmental Security.

Ms. Maddox's research considers the Arctic nexus of climate change, security, and geopolitics. She is particularly interested in convergence, and how the growing presence of actorless threats-- such as climate change and biodiversity loss-- interplays with traditional security challenges and strategic thinking.

Ms. Maddox is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident research fellow at the Center for Climate & Security. She regularly teaches at the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies and the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

Ms. Maddox previously contributed Arctic expertise through work with the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats and the Newport Arctic Scholars Initiative at the U.S. Naval War College. She frequently publishes and speaks on Arctic security, climate change, and geopolitics. Her commentary has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Business Insider, and Science among other outlets. Ms. Maddox holds an M.A. in International Security with a concentration in Transnational Challenges from George Mason University’s Schar School. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Ecosystems from Binghamton University.

The Arctic Research Consortium of the US (ARCUS) invites registration for the next Arctic Research Seminar featuring Christopher Marianetti (Found Sound Nation) and Yaari Walker (Alaska Pacific University). The presentation, titled Sounds of Beringia, will be held via Zoom on Thursday, 28 March 2024 at 9:00 a.m. AKDT (1:00 p.m. EDT).

Seminar Abstract:

This webinar explores some of the more fascinating sounds happening in the region of Beringia - from the extraordinary communications of Bowhead whales to Buryat throat and overtone singing - by way of some of the latest cultural and scientific research and oral histories. This research is the subject of an upcoming documentary (in production by the presenters Yaari and Chris) that seeks to spotlight the Beringia region - its cultures (human and nonhuman), ecology, and environmental history - as a powerful and evocative force in the world.

The 7th biennial AOS will be held March 27-29, 2024 in Edinburgh, UK as part of Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) 2024. The AOS draws a wide range of participants from across the spectrum of Arctic observing—Indigenous experts, operational agency representatives, scientists, and others—from around the world. Much of the summit is organized around discussions led by working groups on particular themes (Regional to global observing, Data sharing, System implementation/SAON ROADS, Observing System Benefits). In addition to plenary and working group sessions, this year organizers will include additional breakout sessions.

The U.S. Permafrost Association (USPA) is pleased to announce the USPA Technical Training Webinar Series. The webinars are offered on Zoom. Each webinar is 1 hour long, including a 50-min lecture and 10-min Q&A. Certificate of Professional Development Hours (PDH) will be provided to participants who request it after each webinar. The webinars are free for USPA members and all students. For non-USPA members who are not students, the registration fee is $20 for each webinar.

Registration link: https://uspa.memberclicks.net/webinar4

Date and Time: Wednesday, March 27, 2024. 2:00 to 3:00pm ET (10:00 to 11:00am AKT)

Instructors: Ed Yarmak, P.E. (Arctic Foundations, Inc., Anchorage, AK); and Dr. Anna Wagner (Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), Fairbanks, AK)

Content of Webinar: Introduction to the use of two-phase thermosyphons to maintain or augment permafrost in a variety of applications. Operation and deployment history of various thermosyphon design milestones will be presented. Several configurations of thermosyphons will be discussed as well as good practices for design. Current research and projections for the future will be presented.

Brief Introduction of Instructors:
Ed Yarmak, PE is the President of Arctic Foundations, Inc. and has 43 years of passive and active ground freezing experience. He has managed deployment of hundreds of projects using thermosyphon cooling systems in and out of Alaska. He is a past president of the US Permafrost Association, a past chair of ASCE’s Cold Region Engineering Division, and is currently on the Executive Committee of the International Permafrost Association.

Dr. Anna Wagner is an environmental engineer at CRREL and works across a broad spectrum of science and engineering projects primarily focused on Alaska and cold regions studies. She has worked on thermosyphon research projects including several installations in Fairbanks, AK. She was the USPA President in 2023.

Format: The webinar is offered on Zoom. The webinar will be moderated. The seminar will be recorded and uploaded on the USPA website.

The Arctic Data Center invites applications to participate in their upcoming in-person workshop, Scalable and Computationally Reproducible Approaches to Arctic Research. This workshop will take place 25-29 March 2024 in Santa Barbara, California.

This workshop at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) will provide researchers with an introduction to advanced topics in computationally reproducible research in Python, including software and techniques for working with very large datasets. This includes working in cloud computing environments, docker containers, and parallel processing using tools like parsl and dask. The workshop will also cover concrete methods for documenting and uploading data to the Arctic Data Center, advanced approaches to tracking data provenance, responsible research and data management practices including data sovereignty and the CARE principles, and ethical concerns with data-intensive modeling and analysis.

Support to travel and/or lodging may be available.

Application deadline: 22 December 2023

Apply here

For questions, contact:
Angie Garcia
Email: agarcia [at] nceas.ucsb.edu