The Senate will consider legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration.  The House will consider FY 2011 spending legislation.

Definition of "Rural." The Rural Development, Research, Biotechnology and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee will hold a hearing to review the definitions of "rural" applied under programs operated by the Department of Agriculture.

Fish and Wildlife Nomination. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Daniel Ashe to be the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

War Over Spending Kicks Off in Earnest. Republicans blasted President Barack Obama for bypassing the nation's fast-growing entitlements in his $3.7 trillion fiscal 2012 budget blueprint Monday - but they now have to figure out how bold they will be on the issue. While the administration contended that the president's plan returns the deficit to sustainable levels by the middle of the decade after spiking to a record $1.65 trillion this year, Republicans argued the budget fails to deal with fast-rising costs for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Roll Call

Chances Up for Federal Shutdown. The chances of a government shutdown are on the rise. With less than three weeks to strike a deal before government funding for the year is scheduled to expire, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are moving in opposite directions. Lawmakers from both parties stress they want to avoid a rerun of the stalemate that led to a shutdown in late 1995 and early 1996. But the rhetoric on spending has escalated, and Democratic and GOP officials are already prepping for the blame game. The Hill  

Russia Embraces Risky Offshore Arctic Drilling. The Arctic Ocean is a forbidding place for oil drillers. But that is not stopping Russia from jumping in - or Western oil companies from eagerly following. Russia, where onshore oil reserves are slowly dwindling, last month signed an Arctic exploration deal with the British petroleum giant BP, whose offshore drilling prospects in the United States were dimmed by the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year. Other Western oil companies, recognizing Moscow's openness to new ocean drilling, are now having similar discussions with Russia. New York Times

International Arctic Climate Study to Start. Canada and its Arctic allies will launch a major study this spring to help northern nations cope with the irreversible effects of climate change. The speedy melting of polar ice is the driving force behind the Arctic Council's decision to announce the wide-ranging study. The project, called the Arctic Change Assessment, will be disclosed when Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and his seven counterparts meet this May in Greenland. CBC News

Arctic Food Subsidy Defended by Ottawa. The federal government is defending its changes to the way food prices are subsidized in remote northern communities, after photographs revealed $29 cheese spread and $77 breaded chicken in a Nunavut hamlet. The photographs, released last week by Nunavut MLA Ron Elliott, showed sky-high grocery prices at the Northern Store in Arctic Bay, a community of about 700 in the territory's High Arctic region. Elliott, who represents Arctic Bay, Resolute and Grise Fiord, said he has heard concerns from constituents about the federal government's changes to its Food Mail Program, which was rebranded as Nutrition North last year. CBC News  

Coast Guard Official Raises Concerns About Spill Response Capabilities in the Arctic. In testimony to Congress, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen stressed that the lack of functioning icebreakers in Alaska would make it difficult to response to an oil spill in the Arctic.  Allen spoke to the House Transportation subcommittee on Friday about the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and he brough up concerns about the state of the Coast Guard fleet as it related to rescue and response in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. KUCB 

One Inuit Language, Many Inuit Dialects: Arctic language experts grapple with standardization. People from every region of Nunavut gathered in Iqaluit this past week to confront a thorny problem that's bedeviled linguists and educators for more than half a century:  how to create a form of the Inuit language that's understandable in all regions of the territory. "We have to be understandable in all dialects to everyone, from Kugluktuk to Sanikiluaq," Elijah Erkloo, chair of the Inuit Uqausinginnik Taiguusiliuqtiit language authority, said Feb. 10 at a discussion session on language standardization. Nunatsiaq Online 

Tuberculosis in Nunavut: a century of failure. In 1911, when CMAJ began publishing, the seriousness of tuberculosis was such that CMAJ devoted six articles to the topic in its first volume. Among them was the journal's first editorial on tuberculosis, which prophetically noted the then-novel recognition of the role of childhood latent infection in later clinical disease. A century later, Nunavut has recorded the largest tuberculosis outbreak in the territory's 10-year history. At least 100 new active cases were documented in 2010, a population rate 62 times the Canadian average. Worse still, the outbreak involves adolescents and young adults, a pattern consistent with active community transmission. Proper public health measures are in place in Nunavut, but they are under-resourced. School children are screened in kindergarten, grade six and grade nine, and routine screening has been implemented in high-risk facilities such as homeless shelters and prisons. However, for the rest of the population, screening is implemented less successfully, particularly among young people who often have minimal contact with the health system. Directly observed therapy is used for active cases with high completion rates. At present, contact tracing is just as labor and resource intensive. Canadian Medical Association Journal 

Obama Budget Cuts into Alaska Programs: TARGETED: Heating bill aid, Denali Commission, and airports take hits. President Barack Obama's proposed budget for next year calls for a number of spending cuts in Alaska, including up to $10 million in cuts to health care construction overseen by the Denali Commission. The White House on Monday unveiled a $3.7 trillion federal spending plan for the next fiscal year starting Oct. 1. It's expected to reduce the deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next decade. The budget has $33 billion in domestic cuts, including to programs that are important in particular to Alaskans. Among them: $2.5 billion in cuts to a program that helps poor people pay heating bills, a $1 billion cut to money for community water treatment plants and a $1 billion cut to airports. The budget also calls for ending an $18 million grant program for rural electric service that serves Alaska, as well as cutting in half a $34 million Bureau of Land Management program that conveys land to Alaska Natives. Another small program that ensures the subsistence needs of rural Alaskans are met would be shifted to the National Forest System. Anchorage Daily News

Fiscal 2012 Budget: Energy Department, February 16.  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on the fiscal 2012 budget request for the Department of Energy.

Murkowski Alaska State Legislature Address, February 24. Senator Murkowski will deliver her annual address to the Alaska State Legislature.

Canada's Arctic Policy, February 24-25.  The Institute of the North will host a policy discussion on Canada's Arctic Policy with Consul Jennifer Loten.  The policy forum will consider infrastructure deficit, circumpolar environmental response capacity, and Arctic marine traffic systems.

Fiscal 2012 Budget: Interior Department, March 2.  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on the fiscal 2012 budget request for the Department of Interior.

Fiscal 2012 Budget: Forest Service, March 3.  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on the fiscal 2012 budget request for the U.S. Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture.

International Conference on Arctic Marine Science, International Law and Climate Protection, March 17-18. The German Federal Foreign Office is hosting an event that will take place on the Berlin premises of the Federal Office. The event is co-hosted by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, with additional support from prominent research institutes. The Conference will discuss the legal framework for marine scientific research in the Arctic Ocean at present and in the future. Scholars, scientists and diplomats with an interest in the Arctic Ocean are invited to attend. For more information, please contact 504-s@diplo.de.

Arctic Dialogue & Study Tour, March 22-24, 2011. For the past four years Norway's Bodø University Graduate School of Business, the High North Centre for Business and Governance (affiliated with the University), the International Institute of Energy Politics and Diplomacy (MIEP) at MGIMO University in Moscow, Russia, and HBW Resources have hosted an annual Arctic Dialogue and Study Tour.  The tour brings together stakeholders from all Arctic nations (government, industries, academic, native and local peoples) to discuss issues involving resource development in the Arctic, and share common experiences, best practices and solutions. For more information contact Andrew Browning.

Arctic Science Summit Week, Seoul, March 28-April 1, 2011. The purpose of the Arctic Science Summit Week is to provide opportunities for international coordination, collaboration, and cooperation in all fields of Arctic science. The Arctic Science Week 2011 is supported by the Korean government, the Korean Research Council of Fundamental Science & Technology, and the Seoul Tourism Organization, among other groups.  

The Arctic as a Messenger for Global Processes- Climate Change and Pollution, May 4-6, 2011. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), the University of Copenhagen, and Aarhus University. The conference will include talks by invited keynote speakers, oral presentations selected on the basis of submitted abstracts, poster presentations, and short oral presentations of selected posters. A panel discussion will develop messages to be communicated to the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting that will take place in Greenland one week after the conference. 

  
Sixth International Conference on Arctic Margins, May 31-June 2, 2011 at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks.  The International Conference on Arctic Margins (ICAM) will examine current geological and geophysical research on the Arctic. Topics include: hydrocarbon potential and gas hydrates; science issues relating to UNCLOS Article 76; geodynamic significance of Arctic magmatism; vertical motions in the Arctic, tectonic, and glacial; geology and palaeogeography of the Arctic continental margins; evolution of the Arctic Ocean basins, including plate reconstructions, magmatism, and sedimentology; modern Arctic environments, including geological, climatic, and oceanographic processes; recent advances in Arctic research technology. More information email.
 
7th Congress of the International Arctic Social Sciences, June 22-26, 2011.  The 7th Congress, "Circumpolar Perspectives in Global Dialogue: Social Sciences Beyond the IPY," will be held in Akureyri, Iceland. The International Congress of the Arctic Social Sciences is held every three years. 
 
Holocene Glacier Variability from the Tropics to the Poles, July 20-27, 2011. Glaciers respond sensitively to climate change. Recent (Holocene) glacier fluctuations are a valuable proxy for terrestrial interglacial paleoclimate conditions. A main challenge for interpreting paleoclimate from past mountain glacier extents is distinguishing local and regional patterns from global signals. Reconstructing Holocene glacier extents involves many disciplines including terrestrial and marine geology, geochronology and glaciology. Organizers hope to facilitate an inter-hemispheric comparison of glacier records including locations in the Tropics, European Alps, American Cordillera, Southern Alps of New Zealand, Himalaya and Polar Regions and to identify future research questions and directions. For additional information contact: Meredith Kelly.
 
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 i s to provide a forum for discussion of permafrost engineering issues, as well as for exchange of practical experience in construction and maintenance of engineering structures on frozen ground. For additional information, please contact Lilia Prokopieva.
 

4th International Sea Duck Conference, September 12-16. The conference is held to provide researchers and managers with opportunities to share information, research, and conduct workshops.

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.   

Operating in the Arctic: Supporting the US Coast Guard Challenges Through Research, Sept. 21-23, 2010. This workshop, held on at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and co-sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security and the US Arctic Research Commission, explored and identified ways in which scientific research and development can improve the ability of the U.S. Coast Guard to operate and carry out its statutory missions in the Arctic region. Participation in this event included state, local and international stakeholders, academics and researchers, and USCG and other federal agency officials. A funding opportunity associated with this activity is described here.

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.  More details to follow.   

American Meteorological Society Summer Policy Colloquium, June 5-14. This policy colloquium brings together a group to consider atmospheric policy.  The colloquium will cover policy creation basics, interactions with congressional staff, and information on the current atmospheric policy issues.