There are over 4 million wild and 1.8 million domestic reindeer and caribou inhabiting the earth’s arctic regions. This keystone species has been an economic and cultural mainstay of nearly every indigenous group in the Arctic. Recent profound changes have been occurring in the North with the potential to jeopardize the relationship forged over countless generations between Rangifer, the land and the people. The CARMA Network network defines its mission:

To monitor and assess the impacts of global change on the human/Rangifer system across the Arctic through cooperation, both geographically and across disciplines.

East Antarctica is the least explored part of the Antarctic continent. Its massive thickness of layered ice contains the Earth's oldest natural archive of past atmospheric composition and climate. Even subtle recent changes in climate over this large area will be significant for affecting sea level change. The TASTE-IDEA program will investigate present and past accumulation rate and climate variability, survey the inner and coastal unexplored part of the continent, obtain a chronological linkage between the ice core drilling sites in East Antarctica, and obtain geophysical and glaciological surveys required to identify the location of the longest coherent climate record in Antarctic ice and information about subglacial lakes. TASTE-IDEA is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor, involving glaciology, atmospheric chemistry, meteorology, climate, paleoclimatology, geophysics, geology, remote sensing and a variety of other disciplines. The program provides the opportunity to explore unknown parts of our planet, to help in answering crucial questions related to sea level, present-past and future climate variability, and cryosphere-atmosphere interactions.

The Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP) is a global network working together to harmonize and integrate efforts to monitor the Arctic’s living resources.

We have an opportunity before us to vastly improve our understanding of change in the Arctic. While the North experiences growing pressure from climate change and resource development, our current monitoring is fragmented and uncoordinated, reducing our ability to understand what’s going on and therefore, effectively respond.

Arctic nations spend over half a billion dollars monitoring biodiversity – and yet, the return on our investment is poor. The CBMP is working with over 60 global partners to boost our current monitoring effort and deliver the most cutting edge information on Arctic change. Maintaining healthy Arctic ecosystems is a global imperative as the Arctic plays a critical role in the Earth’s physical, chemical and biological balance.

The central idea of NOMAD is the establishment of a mobile observation platform. This is facilitated by a nomadic tent camp that houses an interdisciplinary group of researchers. They follow the annual migration of semi-domesticated reindeer in Kola Peninsula, Northwest Russia. This is a novel effort, putting social and other scientists on the reindeer trek on a long-term basis. By positioning themselves in close contact with migrating reindeer herds the researchers observe the delicate ecology and conditions of renewable resource use in the subarctic. Updates on the progress of the project, photographs and fieldwork diary entries can be found on this website.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently undergoing rapid change, in particular over the Amundsen Sea Emabayment (ASE) region, and this may lead to accelerated future sea-level rise. Previous aerogeophysical investigations over the Siple Coast reveal that the geology of the West Antarctic Rift System may strongly modulate the dynamics of fast-flowing glaciers that drain the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. But what are the interplays between the virtually unknown sub-ice geology and the apparently thinning and retreating ASE glaciers, such as Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier? We will utilise new airborne geophysical data collected by UK, US and German teams over the ASE region to provide a unique window on the lithospheric cradle for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and to study the geodynamics of the largest glaciated rift system on Earth.

Project is offered by Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. The main task of the project is development and introduction of the program of complex monitoring and system of PAs information supply. Ecological researches are planned on the territory of the reserves heavily affected by pollution: the Kostomukshskii and the Pasvik nature reserves. The importance of ecological monitoring in the Arctic and Subarctic zones is connected with a low level of stability of the Arctic, Sub arctic and northern Taiga ecosystems under the pressure of anthropogenic load. The social importance of results consists in with improvement of quality of Pas management.

International Team Collects New Information about Ice Sheet Growth and Collapse With a Long-range Aircraft in East Antarctica Our international team will conduct an airborne survey over the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS), which has been nearly inaccessible until now. We will use a long-range aircraft to fly from a US base deep into the interior of the EAIS over a two-year period. The team will use radar and other airborne instruments to image the EAIS’ internal features and the bedrock below the ice. The observations will allow our team to study ice sheet formation and decay, as well as subglacial lakes, subglacial geology, and changes in ice accumulation through time.

Understanding environmental change in national parks and protected areas of the Beringian Arctic This proposal outlines a suite of integrated activities to be implemented by the US National Park Service, cooperating agencies, institutions, and individuals during International Polar Year 2007-2009. These projects are focused on the Beringian Arctic, including Alaska and adjacent areas of Chukotka and the Yukon Territory. Resources of several existing NPS programs, and possibly other programs to be identified, will be coordinated and focused to accomplish the projects described herein. Implementation planning is underway for several projects described above, including Vital Signs monitoring, science conferences in Alaska and Chukotka, and one focused journal issue. Several additional projects will be selected through competitive review of funding proposals beginning in the fall of 2005 (one to two years prior to project implementation).