The future of permafrost research: a contribution from early career researchers to ICARP III and beyond.

• Main Authors: Morgenstern, Anne, Fritz, Michael, Deshpande, Bethany, Bouchard, Fréderic, Högström, Elin, Malenfant-Lepage, Julie, Nieuwendam, Alexandre, Oliva, Marc, Paquette, Michel, Rudy, Ashley, Siewert, Matthias, Sjöberg, Ylva, Weege, Stefanie
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic; Association of Polar Early Career Scientists; IASC; International Arctic Science Committee; International Permafrost Association; permafrost; SCAR; Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41230/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41230/1/Abstract_ICOP2016_MFritz.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48163; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48163.d001

Over the past two decades, the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) have organized activities focused on international and interdisciplinary perspectives for advancing Arctic and Antarctic research cooperation and knowledge dissemination in many areas (e.g. Kennicutt et al., 2014). For permafrost science, however, no consensus document exists at the international level to identify future research priorities, although the International Permafrost Association (IPA) highlighted the need for such a document during the 10th International Conference on Permafrost in 2012. Four years later, this presentation, which is based on the results obtained by Fritz et al. (2015), outlines the outcome of an international and interdisciplinary effort conducted by early career researchers (ECRs). This effort was designed as a contribution to the Third International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP III). In June 2014, 88 ERCs convened during the Fourth European Conference on Permafrost to identify future priorities for permafrost research. We aimed to meet our goals of hosting an effective large group dialogue by means of online question development followed by a “World Café” conversational process. An overview of the process is provided in Figure 1. This activity was organized by the two major early career researcher associations Permafrost Young Researchers’ Network (PYRN) and the Association of Polar Early career Scientists (APECS), as well as the regional research projects PAGE21 (EU) and ADAPT (Canada). Participants were provided with live instructions including criteria regarding what makes a research question (Sutherland et al., 2011). The top five questions that emerged from this process are: (1) How does permafrost degradation affect landscape dynamics at different spatial and temporal scales? (2) How can ground thermal models be improved to better reflect permafrost dynamics at high spatial resolution? (3) How can traditional environmental ...