Activity Description:
The cumulative effects of Arctic climate change and expanding infrastructure have received relatively little scientific research despite increasing evidence that anthropogenic activities and climate change are interacting in complex ways to alter large areas of the Arctic and the communities and industries that live and work there.
During the ICARP III-decade 2014–2023, the IASC-endorsed "Rapid Arctic Transitions due to Infrastructure and Climate change (RATIC) initiative resulted in eight RATIC workshops and meetings at Arctic Science Summit Weeks (ASSWs), a series of Arctic Infrastructure Science Talks, and several Arctic RATIC-related papers published in a T-MOSAiC special issue of Arctic Science.
Research on RATIC-related themes needs to continue into the next decade. For ICARP IV, we propose: (1) a white paper to the ICARP IV Steering Committee titled "Review of the cumulative effects of Arctic infrastructure and climate change and adaptation strategies"; (2) a science session for ASSW 2025 devoted to RATIC-related themes, and (3) a 2-day RATIC workshop.
The white paper and workshop would:
- emphasize the need for a union of the social- and natural-sciences to study the cumulative consequences of infrastructure expansion and climate change to Arctic social-ecological systems;
- develop an interdisciplinary IASC Infrastructure Action Group or other appropriate body of interdisciplinary scientific expertise that includes interested members from all IASC working groups, APECS, and the broader international community of infrastructure-related social and natural scientists, engineers, land-use planners, residents of Arctic communities, and Arctic industries; and
- identify scientific goals that can be achieved in the next decade that include but are not limited to: (a) developing a network of infrastructure—climate-change observatories; and (b) establishing a set of protocols to measure and monitor the effects of infrastructure and climate change so that the results can be compared across different climate, geo-ecological, and socio-economic settings.
Website: https://www.geobotany.uaf.edu/ratic/
Main Organiser:
Donald A. "Skip" Walker and Jana Peirce (University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA), Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer (University of Vienna, Austria); Howard Epstein, University of Virginia (USA); Ming Xiao (Pennsylvania State University, USA); Annett Bartsch (b.GEOS, Koenensburg, Austria); Vera Kuklina (George Washington University, USA)
Type of Activity:
- Workshop,
- Webinar,
- Project,
- Science sessions,
- White paper
Dates and Locations:
-
Workshop during the ASSW 2025 / ICARP IV Summit 2025 in Boulder, Colorado, USA from 20 - 28 March 2025.
-
The extended Infrastructure-related activity would occur during the next 10 years as part of ICARP IV science plan
Open / Closed Activity:
In-Person, Open