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IPY: Collaborative Research on Carbon, Water, and Energy Balance of the Arctic landscape at Flagship Observatories and in a PanArctic Network
Relevance to IPY and to SEARCH. The NSF IPY solicitation focuses “on the efforts needed to develop and deploy a PanArctic observing system that will enable SEARCH by measuring the full range of continuing changes now underway.” This proposed research establishes two observatories, in the U.S. and Russia, and forms a PanArctic network of observatories where coordinated measures of landscape-level carbon, water, and energy balance are carried out and results made available in a unified database. The overarching goals of the IPY and of the NSF solicitation are met, in the short term (the years 2007-2009), by providing a comprehensive description of the state of the regional Arctic System, its overall regulation and controlling features, and its interactions with the Global System; the goals are met in the long term by establishing during the IPY a legacy of data, a network of observing platforms, and a set of clear protocols for long-term observation and further analysis. In parallel with these goals, this proposed research would provide, in the short term, detailed descriptions of C/water/energy fluxes at two sites and a PanArctic database for multiple sites; in the long term it would establish a network of C/water/energy observatories and a network database as well as a platform for the development of a larger suite of SEARCH-related observations in the future.
Intellectual Merit of Proposed Activity. The proposed research (1) establishes observatories at two existing sites of research on landscape-level carbon, water, and energy balance at Toolik Lake (Alaska) and Cherskii (Siberia) and (2) forms a network of observatories across the Arctic where similar long-term observations of carbon, water and energy variables are made or proposed as part of IPY. These collaborating sites are Toolik, Cherskii, Abisko (Sweden, the main site of the ABACUS project), Zackenberg (Greenland), and several sites in Arctic Canada.
This four-year proposal to NSF would fund instruments and personnel at Toolik and Cherskii as well as international workshops and visits among the five sites that would ensure that data and instrumentation are easily comparable. Rather than studying one process at a time, this proposal focuses on simultaneous measurements of carbon, water, and energy fluxes of the Arctic terrestrial landscape at hourly, daily, seasonal, and multiyear time scales. These are major regulatory drivers of the Arctic System, forming key linkages and feedbacks between the land surface, the atmosphere, and the oceans. Observations and interpretation of carbon, water, and surface energy exchanges will be based on carbon dioxide and methane flux and micrometeorological tower measurements, as well as measurements of plant growth, stream flow, and carbon in flowing water (dissolved organic and inorganic carbon).
The data collected can only become a legacy if the methods and data sets are comparable among observatories, and if data are quickly and broadly available and safely archived. The data management protocols and archives used for nearly 20 years by the NSF Arctic LTER project (based at Toolik Lake) will be used; data will be archived in the Arctic LTER database and through links to NSIDC will be available to all interested researchers. All international and domestic collaborators are agreed that comparability of methods and availability of data is a long-term goal, including compatibility with existing Arctic networks such as CEON and SEARCH-related databases stored at NSIDC, and with flux networks such as AMERIFLUX and EUROFLUX. This goal will be accomplished through data and modeling workshops and reciprocal site visits.
Broader Implications of Proposed Activity. The proposed measurements, fluxes of energy, carbon, and water from terrestrial ecosystems across the Arctic, are major contributors to the feedbacks on global climate change that may develop in arctic regions. Understanding the present environment and the controls on these changes are vital to answering larger societal questions about the role of the Arctic in global environmental change. Education of students about these issues will be enhanced through a new UAF offering, a “Field Course in Arctic Science”, providing undergraduate and graduate students with unique opportunities to participate in ongoing arctic research in the field, in modeling and scaling exercises, and in analysis and synthesis of the data.
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