A Convergence Science Approach to Understanding the Changing Arctic

Abstract Science, engineering, and society increasingly require integrative thinking about emerging problems in complex systems, a notion referred to as convergence science. Due to the concurrent pressures of two main stressors—rapid climate change and industrialization, Arctic research demands such...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Earth's Future
Main Authors: Valeriy Y. Ivanov, Peter S. Ungar, John P. Ziker, Svetlana Abdulmanova, Gerardo Celis, Andrew Dixon, Dorothee Ehrich, Ivan Fufachev, Olivier Gilg, Mary Heskel, Desheng Liu, Marc Macias‐Fauria, Valeriy Mazepa, Karl Mertens, Pavel Orekhov, Alexandria Peterson, Olga Pokrovskaya, Aleksey Sheshukov, Aleksandr Sokolov, Natalia Sokolova, Marcus Spiegel, Matt Sponheimer, Florian Stammler, Tyeen Taylor, Alexandra Terekhina, Victor Valdayskikh, Alexander Volkovitskiy, Jingfeng Wang, Wenbo Zhou
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2024
Subjects:
Abrupt/rapid climate change
climate impacts
impacts of global change
human impacts
new fields
convergence science
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Ecology
QH540-549.5
Climate change
Tundra
Yamal Peninsula
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EF004157
https://doaj.org/article/df875f384e804a2e806b056aa475f279
Description
Summary:Abstract Science, engineering, and society increasingly require integrative thinking about emerging problems in complex systems, a notion referred to as convergence science. Due to the concurrent pressures of two main stressors—rapid climate change and industrialization, Arctic research demands such a paradigm of scientific inquiry. This perspective represents a synthesis of a vision for its application in Arctic system studies, developed by a group of disciplinary experts consisting of social and earth system scientists, ecologists, and engineers. Our objective is to demonstrate how convergence research questions can be developed via a holistic view of system interactions that are then parsed into material links and concrete inquiries of disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature. We illustrate the application of the convergence science paradigm to several forms of Arctic stressors using the Yamal Peninsula of the Russian Arctic as a representative natural laboratory with a biogeographic gradient from the forest‐tundra ecotone to the high Arctic.

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