Arctic Climate and Terrestrial Ecosystems Summer Workshop - 2004

View photos from this workshop.

A two-week workshop on Arctic Climate and Terrestrial Ecosystems was held 1-14 August 2004. The workshop was offered by the International Arctic Research Center (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) and the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA).

The workshop was intended to provide graduate students and early-career scientists with an overview of the controls of ecosystem variability in northern Alaska, from the Alaskan interior to the Arctic, and an illustration of the interplay between data collection and modeling. As the primary control, climate combines with topography and disturbance to produce a wide variety of ecosystems in this area, ranging from the boreal forest to coastal tundra. The ecosystems are changing and these changes can, in turn, affect climate through feedbacks involving changes in albedo, permafrost, hydrology, trace gas exchanges with the atmosphere, and other processes. The workshop gave students an understanding of the scientific underpinnings of the controls and feedbacks of climate-related changes in arctic ecosystems and included first-hand exposure to ongoing research.

The first week of the workshop was spent in the Fairbanks area and consisted of lectures and discussions at the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) and visits to various research sites in and near Fairbanks. During the second week, the group traveled to the North Slope and visited the Toolik Lake field site in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range. Research scientists at Toolik demonstrated the techniques and models used to study Arctic terrestrial ecosystems in the context of a changing climate. The two-week experience enabled students to bridge classroom material and cutting-edge research in the field. For more information, please see the MBL web site
( http://www.mbl.edu/education/courses/other_programs/arctic.html).

Camp panorama taken from the access road, May 15, 2004. Photo courtesy of J.Walsh.