Theme 4: Outreach and Capacity Building

An ICARP III Town Hall was held at the Eighth International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VIII) on 23 May 2014. The purpose of the event was to provide an opportunity to solicit input from social scientists, humanities scholars and other participants at the Congress. ICASS, convened triennially, is the premier gathering of Arctic and Sub-arctic social science and humanities scholars, attracting academics from a wide range of disciplines, as well as a significant number of indigenous northerners, government and NGO representatives and other participants. ICASS VIII attracted 468 delegates from 26 countries and at least 15 northern indigenous groups.

Over 350 delegates attended the ICARP III town hall, hosted by the IASC SHWG. The event was also live-streamed, to ensure its availability to those IASSA members not able to attend ICASS VIII. After a short welcome by Gail Fondahl (IASSA President and IASC SHWG Co-Vice Chair), ICARP III Chair David Hik presented an overview of the aims and goals of ICARP-III. Peter Schweitzer, Chair of the IASC SHWG, described the Working Group’s ICARP III initiatives, recent and planned. Chris Southcott provided a short summary of UCCARP activities on behalf of UArctic, and Gerlis Fugmann, Executive Director of APECS, described APECS involvement in ICARP III. Peter Sköld (IASC SHWG Co-Vice Chair) then moderated a 45-minute discussion period. Participants highlighted a number of areas that they felt were important and/or potentially lacking from the outlined activities, addressing both particular focus areas of importance to social sciences and humanities, and the outlined process for ICARP III. The input from this town hall, along with the input from similar events over the next months, will inform a White Paper to be delivered for ICARP III at ASSW 2015.

When establishing priorities for Arctic science for the coming decade it is essential to prepare and retain early career researchers (ERS) to ensure that research will be continued well into the future . To help maintain the continuum of knowledge in polar sciences that was established during the 2^nd International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP) and the International Polar Year (IPY), it is of great importance to continue to support the next generation of researchers. Many organizations are working on initiatives that allow early career Arctic researchers to discuss their ideas, work together, and exchange information with an international and renowned group of Arctic scientists. Yet, the evaluation of how effective these initiatives are is still lacking.

As part of the ICARP III process, the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) and the Climate and Cryosphere project (CliC) have launched the Where are they now? project. It is a case study to assess the value of international travel support for early career researchers; how past support has influenced early career Arctic researchers and potentially enhanced their future opportunities.

Project investigated the subsequent career paths of early career researchers that received travel funding from IASC since the start of the most recent IPY (2007-2008) until 2013. IASC provided travel support for 287 early career researchers during this time. A survey was sent to each of these researchers and 134 people responded. Results from the survey indicate that 90% of these researchers are still active in Arctic work. Preliminary qualitative results indicate that travel support was beneficial to both the research and careers of the early career scientists responding.

Responses from survey participants provided details on the specific impacts of travel support to various meetings and included suggestions on how funds could be better used in the future. Results will help form new standards for supporting the next generation of Arctic researchers. Results will be written into peer-reviewed paper which is to be ready and submitted by early 2015.

A large workshop involving over 100 young researchers and lecturers was organized aside from the Fourth European Conference on Permafrost (EUCOP4) held in Evora, Portugal in June 2014. The major focus of the workshop was to determine future avenues of permafrost research from a young researchers‘ perspective. This activity was mentored by IASC, which is leading the ICARPIII and the International Permafrost Association (IPA) which is coordinating permafrost activities within ICARP III. Several members of the IASC working groups (Cryosphere and Terrestrial) acted as mentors in this effort. An online questionnaire was set up prior to the workshop and was made available to all Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) and APECS members (ca. 5,000) including the young researchers from PAGE21 and ADAPT. All answers were compiled and grouped according to research topics that had been distributed before the on-site activity, which was conducted in the format of a World Café. More than a dozen small moving groups worked on the predefined research questions in an iterative process of discussing, reformulating and narrowing these questions. In the end, a voting system with a predefined hierarchy allowed all participants to synthesize the most important future issues in permafrost research. The outcome will be a young researcher contribution to IASC and to the IPA activities for ICARP III (in particular to PRP, which is explained below) termed the “Permafrost Priority Sheet” that will summarize discussions from the forum. This Priority Sheet will be a short document, which will also contribute to an assessment of research priorities from an early career researcher perspective piloted by the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS). It will feed into the final ICARP III meeting in Toyama, Japan in April 2015, together with contributions from other initiatives (e.g. Arctic in Rapid Transition). The workshop was supported financially by IASC, CliC, the IPA and the Bolin Centre for Climate Research.

Parallel to the workshop, the IPA organized a series of events related to its flagship activity for ICARPIII, the Permafrost Research Priorities project (PRP), which is organized together with the Climate and Cryosphere project. The aim of the PRP process is to establish a concise set of research priorities as agreed on by researchers (primarily permafrost researchers) for the next ten years. A well-attended townhall meeting was organized during the conference, during which preliminary results from the young researcher workshop were presented. The PRP effort is ongoing and will present its first results at the ICARP III Toyama Conference in April 2015.

APECS and the Climate and Cryosphere Project (CliC) are encouraging all ICARP III partner organisations and sponsored projects to create a FrostByte, a 30-60 second soundbyte of cool research, for all ICARP III events (such as focused sessions, sypmposia and townhall meetings at conferences) as well as initiative and projects. We have prepared instructions on what is needed to produce the FrostBytes and the CliC video editor will provide the technical support to produce the video with pictures and sound, capturing the central message of the ICARPIII project. The ICARP III – FrostBytes will be showcased on the APECS, CliC and ICARP III websites, as well as through Facebook, iTunes and more. We are also working with the ASSW 2015 organizers to find ways of displaying the ICARP III-FrostBytes on site in Toyama, Japan and especially use it as a tool to inform the general public about ICARP III.

The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) will organize a thematic workshop: Goals of ICARP III – the future of Arctic research from the early career researchers’ point of view on Sunday 26^th of April 2015 as part of the ASSW 2015 and ICARP III program in Toyama, Japan. The workshop will work as an umbrella incorporating key aspects from different Arctic research areas identified by the early-career researchers at the ISTAS workshop (organized by Arctic in Rapid Transition (ART) in 21-24 October 2014, Plouzané, France), Permafrost Young Researchers Workshop (organized by Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) at EUCOP-4 conference in 18 June 2014, Évora, Portugal) and an online questionnaire available to all APECS members (ca. 5,000) into the larger interdisciplinary discussion. The preliminary program also includes a panel discussion on developing international collaborations and working on the international level.