wp.arcticportal.org

Tag: polar

Eurofleets 2 Calls are now open

EUROFLEETS2 which is a EU funded project providing scientists with 200 fully funded days of ship-time and 104 fully funded days of marine equipment to carry out ship-based research activities within any field of marine sciences.

The project has now opened for proposals under three different categories: Polar and Sub polar Call – which is a ship time application to carry out research in the polar and sub Polar Regions. Deadline for applications is 24^th of May 2013.

Super – Integration Call – seeks to identify a truly cross cutting proposal, able to prove its scientific excellence, i.e. mobilizing private and public funding structures on top of EUROFLEETS funding.

Visit www.eurofleets.eu and submit an “Expression of Interest” until the 15^th of May 2013. The “Expression of Interest” is not binding but desirable. Logistically accepted pre-proposals will be invited to submit a full proposal from the 14 th of June till the 16th of September 2013.

Embarked Equipment Call 2013: Equipment time is offered within participating scientific marine equipment (2x 3D HD TV Cameras, 2x ROV and MARUM-MeBo) to be deployed from RVs or from underwater vehicles funded by other sources than EUROFLEETS2. The call will open in June 2013.

For more information, please visit the Project’s Website.

Source

EUROFLEETS

April 8, 2013
Dinosaurs in the Arctic

It may come as a surprise to many that dinosaurs are known to have lived in the high north. Paleontologists have over the years found remains in Canada’s and Alaska’s Arctic regions establishing that the region once had a Jurassic era. And possibly challenging existing theories claiming that dinosaurs died out due to a meteorite causing darkness witch led to the dinosaurs demise.

Alaska’s North Slope was home to eight types of dinosaurs during the period they lived there, from 75 million to 70 million years ago, say paleontologists including UAF’s Roland Gangloff and Tony Fiorillo of The Dallas Museum of Natural History. Four of the dinosaurs ate plants, and four others ate the plant eaters and other creatures, Fiorillo wrote in a recent Scientific American article. The most common far-north dinosaur was the duck-billed Edmontosaurus, a plant-eating hadrosaur that weighed between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds.

How could these cold-blooded creatures have survived on Alaska’s North Slope? As I type this in early February, it’s -20 F at the weather station closest to the fossil beds on the Colville River. By examining fossil pollen, leaves, and wood, scientists have found that northern Alaska was a much warmer place at the time of the dinosaurs, possibly with average annual temperatures well above freezing, Fiorillo wrote.

Even though northern Alaska was warmer then, it was still probably cold enough for occasional snow and was farther north than it is today, so the sun didn’t rise for weeks in midwinter. Today, the North Slope’s grizzly bears are tucked away in hillside dens, but it’s tough to picture a 35-foot hadrosaur hibernating, Fiorillo wrote. Dinosaurs may have dialed down their metabolism to require less food, and some researchers have suggested they might have migrated south during the deep dark of midwinter. To check the migration hypothesis, Fiorillo and Gangloff compared bone length and body masses of hadrosaurs to the north’s master of migration, the caribou. They decided that juvenile hadrosaurs were relatively much smaller than juvenile caribou, and that it was unlikely the hadrosaurs migrated.

If dinosaurs remained on the North Slope during the winter, biologists expect their bodies would show some adaptations to darkness. Numerous scattered teeth of the meat-eating Troodon found in Alaska suggest it was a common dinosaur, and one of Troodon’s main characteristics was a set of very large eyes, possibly an adaptation to low light.

September 17, 2009
Polar Law Symposium: Russia’s Arctic Policy

The 2^nd Polar Law Symposium was held at the University of Akureyri the past weekend, September 10-12. This years Symposium was environment oriented having an indication of environment in all four themes. The themes this year were New Shipping Routes and Environmental Implications for the Polar Regions, Effective Environmental Governance, The Exploration and Exploitation of Resources and Human Rights and Polar Regions.

Many distinguished speakers discussed the issues from different perspectives, but perhaps the most interesting or rather most anticipated information being shared at the Symposium was about the new Arctic policy of the Russian Federation by H.E. Victor Tatarintsev, Ambassador of the Russian Federation in Iceland.

Due to the new environmental developments in the Arctic and the international attention the area has gained in the past few years in international politics the Russian Federation has adapted a new Arctic Strategy to 2020 and beyond.

The importance of the Arctic for the Russian Federation can not be undermined knowing the fact that it contains 1% of the Russian population and 18% of the territory, but produces 20% of the GDP and 20 % of Russia’s total export.

According to H.E. Victor Tatarintsev the peace and international cooperation are the key issues in the Arctic in coming years. Russia will emphasize the cooperation through already existing framework, namely the Arctic Council and the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and does not aim at increasing its military presence in the area.

The Arctic sea route will be of high importance for Russia as a strategic national transport route and reconstruction of the existing infrastructure on the Arctic coast-line will be one of the main tasks on national level. The sea route will not be important only because of the immense oil and gas production in the Russian north but also because of the development gap between the north and south, which must be cut down for the benefit of the people living in the area. New ports must be built to the remote areas to enable import of new technology and development and new kind of tourism in these areas must be made possible.

Arctic Indigenous peoples play also a role in the new Russian Arctic Policy Russia committing itself to the existing international standards for the protection of indigenous livelihoods and will follow.

Despite the fact that Russia is very committed to the existing cooperation regime and intends to obey the international law in all matters, H.E. Victor Tatarintsev reminded people not to simplify the situation too much. Certain unresolved legal and political issues remain in the Arctic and cooperation should be enhanced to abolish uncertainties around these issues. As an example he pointed out the Russian flag in the bottom of the Arctic sea incident, which according to him was purely scientific expedition and did not imply the political contention as it taken by the international community.

As a conclusion, it can be said that the Russian Arctic policy aims to intensify the national development with the utmost goal of protecting legitimate aspirations of the Russian Federation while working within the international community.

September 10, 2009
Polar Law Symposium 2009
Between September 10-12 The Second Polar Law Symposium 2009 Will be held at the University of Akureyri Iceland to present and debate current legal challenges in the polar regions. The First Polar Law symposium was held September 7-10 2008 and brought together several of the world’s leading Polar lawyers and senior scientists and coincided with the launch of a new Masters program in Polar Law at the University of Akureyri.

The symposium gathered over 60 participants, from a variety of institutions including distinguished guests Dr. Bakary Kante, Director of the Division of Environmental Law and Conventions at the United National Environmental Programme (UNEP), and President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, Republic of Iceland.

The symposium was divided into four themes, which addressed the legal challenges of protecting polar UNAK Lake Myvatn biodiversity, improving sustainable development in the North, re-evaluating environmental governance and questions surrounding emerging jurisdictional claims in the Polar Regions. One particular concern for researchers was the need for developing a new legal framework to address the Arctic environment. The Symposium was regarded as a success and the upcoming symposium can be expected to be similarly interesting. This years theme will be
- Theme I: New Shipping Routes and Environmental Implications for the Polar Regions
- Theme II: Effective Environmental Governance
- Theme III: The Exploration and Exploitation of Resources
It is clear that this years symposium will be just as exiting as last years and will coincide with a APECS meeting held in connection with the conference. The full schedule of the conference can be downloaded here and further questions addressed to Dr. Natalia Loukacheva natalial@unak.is

Source: UArctic, UNAK
August 29, 2009
New APECS Website

Recently the Association of Early Career Polar Scientists launched a new website.The outlook of the website has been changed and some new features have been added. The new site features a fully searchable membership directory to find colleagues and for prospective employers to search for new hires. There is also a new and improved discussion board that is refered to as the APECS Student Lounge.

APECS is an international and interdisciplinary organization for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, early faculty members, educators and others with interests in Polar Regions and the wider cryosphere. Our aims are to stimulate interdisciplinary and international research collaborations, and develop effective future leaders in polar research, education and outreach.

APECS’ goals include creating opportunities for the development of innovative, international, and interdisciplinary collaborations among current early career polar researchers as well as recruiting, retaining and promoting the next generation of polar enthusiasts.

To learn more about APECS, please visit their website www.apecs.is

May 4, 2009