Interactions of environmental and land surface change, animals, infrastructure, and peoples of the Arctic

NSF Award # 1927793 & 1928014

This grant supported a Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) Track-2 planning project aimed at building an interdisciplinary team of earth system scientists, engineers, ecologists, and anthropologists to develop a larger proposal  for funding to document and explain the impacts of climate change and the expansion of industrial infrastructure on the plants, animals, and indigenous peoples of the Arctic.

The team worked together to review expert knowledge in specific scientific fields and to outline interactions among the key elements of the Arctic systems of interest: abiotic, biotic, social, and built environment. The team aimed to bridge disciplinary and international boundaries to develop together a convergence research approach to study the Yamal region of western Siberia – an ideal natural laboratory that presents a continuous gradation of habitat types from boreal forest in the south to high Arctic tundra in the north, a rich diversity of endemic and invasive plant and animal species, a large population of traditional peoples (the Nenets), and economically critical natural resources. Yamal was considered as a small-scale and manageable model for the Arctic as a whole, wherein changes in climate and their effects on temperature, precipitation, landform, plants, animals, peoples, and infrastructure need to be understood and related to one another.

Due to COVID restrictions, our group met biweekly online for the entire duration of the project, culminating on a week-long online workshop and one in-person workshop held in Chicago.  In the end, the team generated, submitted, and had funded an NNA Track I grant proposal for transdisciplinary convergence science research to be conducted in Yamal.  Unfortunately, before our research was set to start,  war broke out in Ukraine, so we spent the remainder of our Track II grant time and effort not just writing up our activities, but also developing a plan to pivot from Yamal Peninsula in Russia to the Varanger Peninsula in  Arctic Norway.  Varanger has many of the same issues as Yamal (expansion of energy infrastructure, climate change in a tundra setting, impacts on plants, animals and indigenous reindeer herders), and the fundamental core goals were preserved.

The Intellectual Merit of this project included establishment of a team of scientists with very different backgrounds and traditions (both disciplinary and national) to work together on questions related to impacts of climate change in the Arctic.  The approaches to collaboration developed provides a framework for future convergence science work.  We chronicled our activities and approaches in a presentation given at the 2022 American Geophysical Union meeting and in a manuscript currently being considered for review by editors at Nature Climate Change.  A second area of intellectual merit resulting from the establishment of these new collaborations was initial pilot studies that led to a new method for using teeth of endemic Arctic animals (e.g., foxes and rodents) to infer aspects of diet and food choice in different habitats and under different conditions.  This resulted in a presentation at the International Arctic Fox Biology Conference in 2022 and four publications (in Polar Biology, Mammalian Biology, and the Canadian Journal of Zoology). 

Broader impacts of this project included several key elements. An inter-institutional , international, and interdisciplinary online “Arctic Climate Change Forum” course team-taught by project investigators and other researchers across the US, western Europe, and the Siberian Arctic was developed and offered twice, with students registered at the University of Arkansas, Boise State University and Macalester College. This course introduced students to the impacts of climate change on the Arctic in the past, present, and future and used the Yamal Peninsula of Western Siberia as an example demonstrate how global warming and extreme weather impact high-latitude plants, animals, and traditional people.   In addition, several graduate students and undergraduates were mentored and trained during the course of this project (from the University of Arkansas, University of Michigan, and Boise State University).  Finally, the team also developed (led by the University of Michigan PI) media products targeted toward broad audiences: a film “Cultures of Ice” tying together Arctic science and Michigan winter outdoor life was developed as a “teach-out” activity for the 2020 Earth Day:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YY7J5Uj56s.

NSF Award # 1927820, 1927840, & 1927861

This project aims to form a transdisciplinary team of earth-system scientists, engineers, ecologists, and social system scientists focused on developing a Track I NNA proposal. The main goals of research resulting from the proposed activities are i) to address the complexity and adaptation of biotic and abiotic systems to climate in the Yamal region of Russia?s Arctic, ii) to understand society's role and response to the dynamics of these systems, and iii) to assess the significance of feed-forward and feedback mechanisms modulating their mutual co-evolution in the Arctic region. To achieve these goals, specific project objectives include (1) monthly virtual conferences, (2) workshops with stakeholder and indigenous community engagement, (3) international research capacity-building, (4) student engagement in synthesis activities and an inter-institutional, transdisciplinary team-taught course, and (e) the development and submission of Track I proposal as a result of these activities.  

The team at Kansas State University (KSU) took an active part in biweekly to monthly virtual meetings with the other teams from the US, Norway, Russia, and other participating countries. The KSU team worked with the University of Michigan team (a lead organization) and others in preparing and submitting the NNA Track I proposal, specifically on the components of climate, weather, hydrology, and permafrost. The KSU team has expertise in permafrost  thermodynamics, land-surface hydrology, hydrometeorology, climate change, and computer modeling and was a part of Earth Science Systems team and focused on the abiotic component of the proposal. The team worked on planning a field experiment, model simulations, and theoretical and data analysis of the effects of increased summer heating, contribution of snowmelt and soil ice thaw during winter, impacts of rain-on-snow events, and changes in snowpack structure and seasonality. The documents prepared by the KSU team were integrated into the NNA Track I proposal.  The KSU students worked on literature reveiw of publications on permafrost degradation, GIS mapping, remote sensing datasets, and hydrologic modeling. The Track I NNA proposal was submitted and awarded a grant.

The KSU team participated in the ?Arctic Forum? team-talk (under)-graduate course led by the PI Ungar at the University of Arkansas. This multi-institutional and interdisciplinary course was offered for credit at the University of Arkansas and Boise State University and virtual lectures  were presented by the team members from the US, Europe, and the Siberian Arctic Research Center with follow-up discussions. The course introduced students to the impacts of climate change on the Arctic and covered various facets of impacts through abiotic, biotic, built environment, and social systems. The KSU team was responsible for introducing the topic on permafrost dynamics and degradation.

The entire US-based team organized and held a two-day in-person workshop in Chicago, Illinois in December 2022 to finalize the Track II project results and finish the write up of a synthesis/perspective paper. That involved synthesizing the massive literature review conducted by the graduate students and postdocs during the project (both on integrative Artic studies in general and on Yamal in particular). The manuscript is entitled "A convergence science approach to understanding the changing Arctic" and presents our framework for breaking down disciplinary silos and bringing together social scientists, natural scientists, and engineers along with the stakeholders affected by climate change to understand its impacts, particularly, on the Yamal Peninsula of Western Siberia. We also began planning our Track I project during the workshop, particularly discussing the proposed pivot to Norway.