NNA Research (Track 1)

Alaskan coastal Indigenous communities face severe, urgent, and complex social and infrastructural challenges resulting from environmental changes. Coastlines are degrading and this impacts infrastructure that communities use on a daily basis, changing how people access and hunt for food and other natural resources and conduct their lives. The magnitude and significance of impacts are unclear as is how local communities will respond to resulting disruptions and disasters.

Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) is one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas. NNA projects address convergence scientific challenges in the rapidly changing Arctic. The Arctic research is needed to inform the economy, security and resilience of the Nation, the larger region and the globe. NNA empowers new research partnerships from local to international scales, diversifies the next generation of Arctic researchers, and integrates the co-production of knowledge. This award fulfills part of that aim.

Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) is one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas. NNA projects address convergence scientific challenges in the rapidly changing Arctic. The Arctic research is needed to inform the economy, security and resilience of the Nation, the larger region and the globe. NNA empowers new research partnerships from local to international scales, diversifies, and the next generation of Arctic researchers, and integrates the co-production of knowledge. This award fulfills part of that aim.

As the Arctic thaws, new opportunities for resource exploration and the opening of new trade routes are expected. Increased passage of commodities through these routes and the related industrialization of the Arctic will introduce both opportunities and risks. These will require international agreements and rules of governance to maintain global stability and protect not only the commercial viability of the U.S. Arctic, but also the local peoples, environment, and natural resources.

Permafrost is ground that remains frozen for at least two consecutive years. It occurs under approximately one fourth of the northern hemisphere's land surface. In the far north, the permafrost is continuous across the landscape and contains large amounts of ice in its upper few meters. Thawing of permafrost has been observed at several locations across the Arctic in recent decades, yet the pan-Arctic extent of ice-rich permafrost and permafrost degradation is not fully described. This is because it is difficult to directly measure permafrost.

Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) is one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas. NNA projects address convergence scientific challenges in the rapidly changing Arctic. The Arctic research is needed to inform the economy, security and resilience of the Nation, the larger region and the globe. NNA empowers new research partnerships from local to international scales, diversifies the next generation of Arctic researchers, and integrates the co-production of knowledge. This award fulfills part of that aim.

Ice accretion over cold surfaces is a topic of great concern for numerous engineering applications, including airplanes, wind turbines, and marine vessels sailing near polar seas. However, a strategy of de-icing (detaching ice from cold surfaces) with minimal power input is not well-established yet due to the lack of answers to many fundamental questions, such as how does the ice shed from a metallic surface and what controls the conversion of fracture type from adhesive (fracture at an ice-metal interface) to cohesive (fracture within ice itself) cracking?

The Arctic is warming on average twice as rapidly as the rest of the planet, which is leading to significant changes in sea ice to which local communities must respond. Beringia, a region of the Arctic encompassing US and Russian territory, is expected to experience some of the highest variability in sea ice conditions in the coming century. This project focuses on the question: how do we design better and more flexible governance and infrastructure to adapt to changing Arctic conditions?

Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) is one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas. NNA projects address convergence scientific challenges in the rapidly changing Arctic. The Arctic research is needed to inform the economy, security and resilience of the Nation, the larger region and the globe. NNA empowers new research partnerships from local to international scales, diversifies the next generation of Arctic researchers, and integrates the co-production of knowledge. This award fulfills part of that aim.