US Arctic Research Commission
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August 2, 2011

Today's Eventstodaysevents 

 

The House and Senate will continue debt negotiations. It appears that over the weekend, leaders from the House and Senate and the White House reached a deal. The compromise will lead the congressional agenda.

 


Media Reviewtodaysevents    

 

president signingDebt Deal Reached; Major Cuts Coming. President Obama announced Sunday night a hard-fought deal with congressional Republicans to slash the federal deficit by $2.7 trillion over 10 years and lift the nation's debt ceiling limit to avoid a catastrophic default. The pact includes no tax increases sought by the President. With the nation's reputation and credit rating hanging in the balance, Obama said bitterly divided U.S. leaders had finally struck a deal to "end the crisis Washington imposed on all of America." Government Executive

 

Lawmakers Eye Super Committee. Publicly, most lawmakers say they have no desire to be named to the so-called super committee tasked with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts to the deficit by Thanksgiving. But behind the scenes, some are already beginning to jockey for seats on the 12-member bipartisan panel, which many see as a historic opportunity to overhaul the Tax Code and entitlements. In the Senate, some potential candidates will soon begin to interview with leaders, who under debt-limit legislation will have the power to appoint members to the committee, comprising an equal number of Democrats and Republicans and balanced representation from the House and Senate. Politico

 

Inhofe Puts 'Hold' on Commerce Nominee. Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma put a "hold" on President Barack Obama's nominee to be Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Inhofe, the Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member, blasted Mr. Obama's pick, John Bryson, for his record on the environment and economic policy. As long as the hold is in place, the Senate won't likely vote on Mr. Bryson's confirmation. The Wall Street Journal

 

For Alaska's Alutiiq, the Future May be Found in the Past. Sven Haakanson is the executive director of the Alutiiq Museum, Kodiak's Alaska Native culture center where visitors explore 7,500 years of Alutiiq history, language, and arts. National Geographic interviewed Haakanson at the Seventh International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VII), held recently in Iceland. Organized by the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA), ICASS VII was attended by more than 400 delegates, who between them presented some 300 papers and joined discussions in dozens of workshops. National Geographic

 

Russia May Lose 30% of Permafrost by 2050. Russia's vast russian flagpermafrost areas may shrink by a third by the middle of the century due to global warming, endangering infrastructure in the Arctic zone, an emergencies ministry official said Friday. "In the next 25 to 30 years, the area of permafrost in Russia may shrink by 10-18 percent," the head of the ministry's disaster monitoring department, Andrei Bolov, told the RIA Novosti news agency. "By the middle of the century, it can shrink by 15-30 percent, and the boundary of the permafrost may shift to the north-east by 150-200 kilometers," he said. Radio Netherlands Worldwide

 

NWT Regulatory Boards Running on Empty. Nearly every regulatory board in the NWT has vacancies to fill, leaving them without the expertise and power to function properly, according to Dennis Bevington, MP for the Western Arctic. Of the territory's 13 regulatory boards, only two are functioning with full membership. Bevington said the blame for this can be placed squarely on the shoulders of John Duncan, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Northern News Service

 

Military Exercises Start in Resolute this Week. The Canadian Forces' annual summer Arctic training exercise will begin near Resolute this week, and is scheduled to include a simulated, major air disaster. Joint Task Force North will set up its headquarters in Resolute for the duration of the operation, which will include more than 1,100 personnel from the navy, army, air and special forces along with about 100 personnel from other countries. Divers, Canadian Rangers, Hercules aircrafts and coast guard ships as well as a number of federal departments are expected to participate and/or support the operation. Northern News Service

 

The Alaska Volcano Observatory Monitors Alaska Volcanoes.  Read about other notable volcanoes worldwide and beyond in Eruptions and the Human Eye at Frontier Scientists   

Legislative Actionfutureevents  

 

H.R. 50, Multinational Species Conservation Funds Reauthorization (Young, House hearings held)

 

H.R. 2580, Interior-Environment appropriations bill (Simpson, considered in the House)

 

S. 1063, Huna Tlingit Traditional Gull Egg Use Act (Murkowski, Senate hearing held)


Future Events                     

      

13th Arctic Ungulates Conference (AUC), August 22-26, 2011. The theme of the conference will be "Challenges of Managing Northern Ungulates." The theme addresses the difficulties of managing ungulate populations that are faced with the unpredictable effects of climate change and an ever-increasing human presence on the land. The conference will also focus on the challenges associated with developing recovery actions for declining caribou and reindeer populations that are an integral part of Aboriginal cultures and ways of life.

 

9th International Symposium on Permafrost Engineering, September 3-7, 2011. The Melnikov Permafrost Institute (Yakutsk, Russia), the Institute of Northern Mining (Yakutsk, Russia), the Cold and Arid Regions Engineering and Environmental Research Institute (Lanzhou, China), and the Heilongjiang Institute of Cold Region Engineering (Harbin, China) will host the Ninth International Symposium on Permafrost Engineering to be held in Mirny, Yakutia. The aim of the Symposium is to provide a forum for discussion of permafrost engineering issues, as well as for exchanging practical experience in construction and maintenance of engineering structures on frozen ground. For additional information, please contact Lilia Prokopieva. 

 

Northern Research Forum 6th Open Assembly, September 4-6, 2011."Our Ice Dependent World," organized by the Northern Research Forum and its partners as the Northern Research Forum 6th Open Assembly, will be hosted by the University of Akureyri in the town of Hveragerđi, Iceland. Addressing the three 'poles' - the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Himalayan region- the sub-themes represent different  perspectives for viewing the subject of natural ice and evaluating its importance.  The event will consider implications of ice melt on humanity, communities, minds, perceptions and knowledge on ice; International law, 'soft law' and governance on ice.

 

4th International Sea Duck Conference, seaduckconferencelogoSeptember 12-16, 2011. The Sea Duck Joint Venture has helped sponsor a North American Sea Duck Conference once every three years since 2002. These conferences provide opportunities for researchers and managers to share information and research results, conduct workshops on specific issues, and to hold related meetings. The 4th conference will officially be an international conference and will be held in Seward, Alaska, 12-16 September, 2011, with participants from the U.S., Canada, Russia and Europe, focusing on sea ducks in the North and the Arctic. It will be held at the Windsong Lodge, with three days of presentations and workshops, and there will be a chartered boat trip the last day into the Kenai Fjords to watch sea ducks. Registration is available on the website for the conference and the excursion.

 

Lowell Wakefield International Fisheries Symposium, September 14-17, 2011.The 27th Lowell Wakefield International Fisheries Symposium, entitled "Fishing People of the North: Cultures, Economies, and Management Responding to Change," will be held in Anchorage, Alaska. This international symposium will provide a forum for scholars, fishery managers, fishing families, and others to explore the human dimensions of fishery systems and growing need to include social science research in policy processes. The conference is part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant program.    

 

Advanced Workshop on Oil Spills In Sea Ice: Past, Present and Future Fermo

September 20-23, 2011. A technical workshop, organized by Dr. Peter Wadhams, on the physical problems associated with oil spills and blowouts in sea ice will be held at the Istituto Geografico Polare "Silvio Zavatti," Fermo, Italy. Scientists, engineers and policy makers are invited to address the questions of how oil is emitted from a blowout or spill, how the oil and gas are incorporated in the under-ice surface, how the oil layer evolves, how the oil is transported by the ice, and how and where eventual release occurs. The aim is to incorporate the experience of those scientists who worked in this field in the 1970s-1990s, when large-scale field experiments involving oil release were possible, and to relate this to the needs of present researchers who are seeking solutions to the problem of a sustainable Arctic oil spill management system. Registration forms are available here

 

Murmansk Arctic Forum, October 1-2, 2011.  Hosted by the Russian Geographic Society, the forum will host discussion on Arctic navigation, development of the Northern Sea Route, railway extensions, and construction of a deep-water port in Arkhangelsk.  The official website is in Russian.

  

The Arctic in Transition: Regional Issues and Geopolitics, October 3-4, 2011. The conference is organized by the Center for Geopolitical Studies of the Raoul Dandurand Chair, in collaboration with the Centre Jacques Cartier (France), ArcticNet (Universite Laval, Quebec), and the Northern Research Forum (University of the Arctic; University of Lapland, Finland). This high-level international meeting reunites political scientists, lawyers, geographers, historians and practitioners to discuss, first, the socio-economic, political and security issues of developed or developing Arctic regions, and, second, to look at the evolving relationships between these spaces, their peoples, and global affairs. The meeting mainly seeks to adress security issue(s) of the various region(s) that make up the circumpolar world. Three Arctic regions will be highlighted: a) the North-American Arctic (United States (Alaska); Canada (Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut, Nunavik) and Greenland; b) the North Pacific Rim (Alaska, Russian Far East, Beaufort Sea/Chukchi); c) the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (Nordic countries - Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland - and Russia).

  

The Tenth International Conference on Permafrost, June 2012. The conference will be held in Tyumen, Russia, and is organized and hosted by Russia. The last conference was held in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2008. Details to follow.   

 

15th International Congress on Circumpolar Heath, August 5-10, 2012. This kivalina girlevent is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Society for Circumpolar Health, and the International Union for Circumpolar Health.  The forum will consider community participatory research and indigenous research; women's health, family health, and well-being; food security and nutrition; social determinants of health; environmental and occupational health; infectious and chronic diseases; climate change-health impacts; health service delivery and infrastructure; and, behavioral health.

   

Arctic/Inuit/Connections: Learning from the Top of the World , October 24-28, 2012.  The 18th Inuit Studies Conference, hosted by the Smithsonian Institution, will be held in Washington, DC. The conference will consider heritage museums and the North; globalization: an Arctic story; power, governance and politics in the North; the '"new" Arctic: social, cultural and climate change; and Inuit education, health, language, and literature. For more information, please email Lauren Marr.

  

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