Scientific Cooperation: Supporting Circumpolar Permafrost Monitoring and Data Sharing

• Published in: Land
• Main Authors: Troy J. Bouffard, Ekaterina Uryupova, Klaus Dodds, Vladimir E. Romanovsky, Alec P. Bennett, Dmitry Streletskiy
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2021
• Subjects: permafrost; permafrost monitoring; permafrost data; data sharing; national security; Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/land10060590

While the world continues to work toward an understanding and projections of climate change impacts, the Arctic increasingly becomes a critical component as a bellwether region. Scientific cooperation is a well-supported narrative and theme in general, but in reality, presents many challenges and counter-productive difficulties. Moreover, data sharing specifically represents one of the more critical cooperation requirements, as part of the “scientific method [which] allows for verification of results and extending research from prior results”. One of the important pieces of the climate change puzzle is permafrost. In general, observational data on permafrost characteristics are limited. Currently, most permafrost data remain fragmented and restricted to national authorities, including scientific institutes. The preponderance of permafrost data is not available openly—important datasets reside in various government or university labs, where they remain largely unknown or where access restrictions prevent effective use. Although highly authoritative, separate data efforts involving creation and management result in a very incomplete picture of the state of permafrost as well as what to possibly anticipate. While nations maintain excellent individual permafrost research programs, a lack of shared research—especially data—significantly reduces effectiveness of understanding permafrost overall. Different nations resource and employ various approaches to studying permafrost, including the growing complexity of scientific modeling. Some are more effective than others and some achieve different purposes than others. Whereas it is not possible for a nation to effectively conduct the variety of modeling and research needed to comprehensively understand impacts to permafrost, a global community can. In some ways, separate scientific communities are not necessarily concerned about sharing data—their work is secured. However, decision and policy makers, especially on the international stage, struggle to understand how best ...