| Summary: | The recent improved access to the Russian Arctic provides unparalleled opportunities to gain a pan-Arctic understanding of environmental processes and events and relation to global issues. However, there has been little coordination within the North American scientific community and with European colleagues on research priorities in the Russian half hemisphere of the Arctic. With support from the Arctic System Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation the workshop was organized to define key scientific questions related to processes and environmental change of the Russian arctic continental shelves and adjacent lowlands. The workshop focus is on defining interdisciplinary and circumarctic research priorities to elucidate land/shelf interactions from the present through the Cenozoic. Of particular interest is understanding the linkages between processes and events from the watershed to and across the continental shelf. Discussions focus on defining major oceanographic, terrestrial, and atmospheric processes that presently control and, in the past, altered the distribution of biota, sea-ice, permafrost, glaciers, and river discharge. A unifying theme is how the Arctic contributes and is affected by global change. The ultimate goal is to provide improved boundary conditions for climate models and the needed insight into the role of the Arctic in modulating global climate and human migration. U.S. National Science Foundation, Arctic System Science Program.
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