Periodic Reporting for period 2 - INTERACT (International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-07-01 bis 2022-12-31
Planet Earth is facing unprecedented environmental changes that will affect all members of society. Arctic climate warming is three times the global rate and unpredictable extreme events are causing major impacts on people and ecosystems. As the Arctic is connected to the rest of the world through atmospheric and ocean circulations, changes in the Arctic cause extreme events and societal damage in other latitudes. The Arctic and global scale of the multiple changes need cooperative international research and monitoring to understand, predict, adapt and mitigate. Mitigation and adaptation require societal action but this will only be successful if public perceptions of change and attitudes are modified throughout the world by outreach and empowerment of the next generation that needs to be equipped to live in a different world.
INTERACT III innovates a pan-arctic network of 89 research stations in 16 northern countries to provide a fully integrated, advanced infrastructure now able to meaningfully address major societal challenges and provide services and connections for 155 global and regional networks and 25 000 visiting scientists each year. Furthermore, the global reputation of INTERACT has attracted world-leading partners and enterprises to participate in reducing the impacts of hazardous change while maximizing the opportunities arising from new technologies. Station managers' actions, transnational access and joint research activities cooperate to address major societal challenges in a fully integrated infrastructure while the resulting data and understanding are made globally available through exceptional outreach, education and policy briefings to decision makers.
Specifically, INTERACT III provides proactive, responsive and comprehensive coordination of 65 partners and 89 research stations. The station managers design best practices to facilitate safe, efficient and excellent research and monitoring throughout the Arctic. INTERACT III builds on an extremely successful transnational access program that has already populated the Arctic with more than 1000 researchers to further provide often ground breaking science while reducing the environmental footprints of researchers through designing and promoting remote and virtual access opportunities. The access transnationality ensures new collaborations, new science innovations and enhanced educational resources freely available throughout the world. These successes have attracted attention at government levels and represent science diplomacy in action at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions.
INTERACT III innovates a pan-arctic network of 89 research stations in 16 northern countries to provide a fully integrated, advanced infrastructure now able to meaningfully address major societal challenges and provide services and connections for 155 global and regional networks and 25 000 visiting scientists each year. Furthermore, the global reputation of INTERACT has attracted world-leading partners and enterprises to participate in reducing the impacts of hazardous change while maximizing the opportunities arising from new technologies. Station managers' actions, transnational access and joint research activities cooperate to address major societal challenges in a fully integrated infrastructure while the resulting data and understanding are made globally available through exceptional outreach, education and policy briefings to decision makers.
Specifically, INTERACT III provides proactive, responsive and comprehensive coordination of 65 partners and 89 research stations. The station managers design best practices to facilitate safe, efficient and excellent research and monitoring throughout the Arctic. INTERACT III builds on an extremely successful transnational access program that has already populated the Arctic with more than 1000 researchers to further provide often ground breaking science while reducing the environmental footprints of researchers through designing and promoting remote and virtual access opportunities. The access transnationality ensures new collaborations, new science innovations and enhanced educational resources freely available throughout the world. These successes have attracted attention at government levels and represent science diplomacy in action at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions.
To work toward our overall objective during the first reporting period and during the CURRENT global crisis of the covid-19 pandemic, INTERACT has responded and achieved the following:
1) compensation for limited physical access to the Arctic:
a) converting, when possible, projects requiring transnational visits into remote access
b) transferring physical meetings to online meetings/webinars/seminar series
b) developing and establishing the new INTERACT Data Portal (virtual access) to ensure that the research community around the world could still access data from the stations.
c) lowering the research carbon-footprint for the future
d) providing new educational material at all levels as the pandemic has severely disrupted education from universities and schools. INTERACT is at the forefront of offering free educational material about the Arctic and
environmental change.
2) Identification of the biases in modelling and forewarning of potential hazardous extreme events, identified by local people and conservationists. This has involved:
a) reviewing the impacts of extreme weather events on biodiversity
b) using citizen science to identify the impact of extreme weather events on Indigenous livelihoods.
c) improving forecasting to enable timely adaptation to extreme weather events
3) Identification of AI and Machine Learning applications for making INTERACT tasks more efficient and implementing pilot studies.
To prepare for a FUTURE, in which travel to the Arctic for researchers and tourists becomes possible again, INTERACT has been proactive in:
1) Collating and publishing online legal regulations and permitting required to access each Arctic country and to import and export equipment and samples for the first time
2) Designing best practices for tourist organisations to minimise disturbance of local people and ecosystems and to maximise mutual benefits for local people and tourists.
3) Identifying chemicals of emerging Arctic concern that need to be monitored
1) compensation for limited physical access to the Arctic:
a) converting, when possible, projects requiring transnational visits into remote access
b) transferring physical meetings to online meetings/webinars/seminar series
b) developing and establishing the new INTERACT Data Portal (virtual access) to ensure that the research community around the world could still access data from the stations.
c) lowering the research carbon-footprint for the future
d) providing new educational material at all levels as the pandemic has severely disrupted education from universities and schools. INTERACT is at the forefront of offering free educational material about the Arctic and
environmental change.
2) Identification of the biases in modelling and forewarning of potential hazardous extreme events, identified by local people and conservationists. This has involved:
a) reviewing the impacts of extreme weather events on biodiversity
b) using citizen science to identify the impact of extreme weather events on Indigenous livelihoods.
c) improving forecasting to enable timely adaptation to extreme weather events
3) Identification of AI and Machine Learning applications for making INTERACT tasks more efficient and implementing pilot studies.
To prepare for a FUTURE, in which travel to the Arctic for researchers and tourists becomes possible again, INTERACT has been proactive in:
1) Collating and publishing online legal regulations and permitting required to access each Arctic country and to import and export equipment and samples for the first time
2) Designing best practices for tourist organisations to minimise disturbance of local people and ecosystems and to maximise mutual benefits for local people and tourists.
3) Identifying chemicals of emerging Arctic concern that need to be monitored
In response to the commitment of partners in the INTERACT process, many contributions of considerable added value have been achieved:
- To sustain INTERACT into the future, the INTERACT Non-Profit Association has been launched formally with external financial support
- New observer stations have joined INTERACT to add to the geographical coverage of the network and new MoUs have been signed with various international organisations
- INTERACT has produced a Communication and Navigation Guidebook
- A special issue of Ambio on Siberian environmental change has brought together 93 authors from 20 countries contributing (including TA Users).
- An API has been developed to allow metadata harvesting from the INTERACT data portal by other portals to improve the findability and accessibility of Virtual Access
- An INTERACT Machine Learning Algorithm (IMLA) has been developed to sort datasets in the INTERACT Data Portal into topic categories.
- A range of different types of educational resources have been developed.
- A freely available INTERACTive e-book has been published containing many of these resources.
- To sustain INTERACT into the future, the INTERACT Non-Profit Association has been launched formally with external financial support
- New observer stations have joined INTERACT to add to the geographical coverage of the network and new MoUs have been signed with various international organisations
- INTERACT has produced a Communication and Navigation Guidebook
- A special issue of Ambio on Siberian environmental change has brought together 93 authors from 20 countries contributing (including TA Users).
- An API has been developed to allow metadata harvesting from the INTERACT data portal by other portals to improve the findability and accessibility of Virtual Access
- An INTERACT Machine Learning Algorithm (IMLA) has been developed to sort datasets in the INTERACT Data Portal into topic categories.
- A range of different types of educational resources have been developed.
- A freely available INTERACTive e-book has been published containing many of these resources.