Polar and Alpine Community News

The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) invites applications from SIOS member institutions for a funding opportunity focused on acquiring aerial and imagery hyperspectral data over Svalbard.

To continue discussions initiated at our 2020 Annual Meeting, ARCUS announces a call for nominations for members to serve on a new ad hoc committee
that will focus on building the Arctic research community’s capacity for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.

Committee members will serve a 1-year term and will play an important role in developing the initial goals and direction of this new group’s efforts, and provide input to ARCUS’ activities around this topic.

Inspiring Girls Expeditions EUROPE is expanding and offers three expeditions in summer 2021:

• Girls on Ice Austria (in german)
• Girls on Ice Suisse (in frech)
• Girls on Ice Schweiz (in german)

We seek 16 and 17 year old girls* for a tuition-free research expeditions to immerse in glaciology, art and mountaineering.

We are pleased to announce the release of Quantarctica’s new version which is adapted to QGIS’s latest version 3.16. Quantarctica is a collection of Antarctic geographical datasets for research, education, operation and management in Antarctica, and let you explore, import, visualize, and share Antarctica data. It is distributed with the CC-BY4.0 license and works with a multi-platform free GIS software QIGS.

https://www.npolar.no/quantarctica/

We invite European Polar research projects to take part to this online survey on on-going and planned stakeholder and rightholder engagement in European Polar Research (Arctic and Antarctic).

The survey  is open until February 28^th, 2021. 

NSF recently funded 17 projects totaling $26.7 million, which will directly support 69 investigators across 21 different institutions in addition to funding students and postdoctoral scholars. These projects focus on multi-discipline research across the social, natural, and built environment including those with the potential for engagement with Arctic communities. NSF is also partnering with University of Colorado Boulder, Alaska Pacific University and University of Alaska Fairbanks on a five-year, nearly $5 million cooperative agreement for a Navigating the New Arctic Community Office.

Read more at https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/announcements/020121.jsp.

Arctic family and friends will meet from February 1-4 2021, for the 15th edition of our annual Arctic Frontiers conference. This year under the banner of Building Bridges, we have created four thematic days that bridge both plenary and science topics

• Monday 1 Feb: Wellbeing and Societal Health
• Tuesday 2 Feb: Building the Future
• Wednesday 3 Feb: Ocean meets Coast
• Thursday 4 Feb: Business Solutions

The International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) is pleased to announce the availability of registration fee support for the online Arctic Science Summit Week 2021 (19 - 26 March 2021). 

Please submit your application by no later than 10 February 2021 via this form: https://forms.gle/SrzgHV7KAPUL5uScA

A new publication, titled "Antarctic ecosystems in transition – life between stresses and opportunities", has been published in Biological Reviews. The study is the outcome of SCAR's 2012-2020 Scientific Research Programme "Antarctic Thresholds - Ecosystem Resilience and Adaptation" (AnT-ERA).
25 international experts, led by AnT-ERA chief officer Prof. Julian Gutt from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), analysed and compiled hundreds of articles on the Antarctic published in the past ten years. The result is a comprehensive assessment of the present and future of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean region.
Read more.

Appplications for the Antarctic Science Bursary 2021 are now open.

Submission deadline is Friday 19th March, 24:00 GMT.

Antarctic Science supports the development of the careers of promising young scientists, working in any field of Antarctic science, and from any country. Grants of up to £6000 are awarded to extend the scope of an existing research project, through: