Future Events  | | Fran Ulmer |
Arctic Oil and Gas Development, July 12, 2011. The Center for Strategic andInternational Studies will host a session on the Gulf oil spill and its impacts on oil and gas development in the Arctic. Topics of discussion will include Arctic nations and their development plans, oil spill risks, and the possibilities for international cooperation to reduce the risk of major accidents. Confirmed speakers include Senator Lisa Murkowski, Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes, and Chair of the US Arctic Research Commission Fran Ulmer. Tribal Energy Development at the Federal Level, July 14-15, 2011. Law Seminars International will host a seminar for attorneys, tribes, industry executives, and government officials to discuss energy development on tribal lands. Holocene Glacier Variability from the Tropics to the Poles, July 20-27, 2011. Glaciers respond sensitively to climate change. Recent (Holocene) glacier fluctuations are a valuable proxy for terrestrial interglacial paleoclimate conditions. A main challenge for interpreting paleoclimate from past mountain glacier extents is distinguishing local and regional patterns from global signals. Reconstructing Holocene glacier extents involves many disciplines including terrestrial and marine geology, geochronology and glaciology. Organizers hope to facilitate an inter-hemispheric comparison of glacier records including locations in the Tropics, European Alps, American Cordillera, Southern Alps of New Zealand, Himalaya and Polar Regions and to identify future research questions and directions. For additional information contact: Meredith Kelly. 13th Arctic Ungulates Conference (AUC), August 22-26, 2011. The theme of the conference will be "Challenges of Managing Northern Ungulates." The theme addresses the difficulties of managing ungulate populations that are faced with the unpredictable effects of climate change and an ever-increasing human presence on the land. The conference will also focus on the challenges associated with developing recovery actions for declining caribou and reindeer populations that are an integral part of Aboriginal cultures and ways of life. 9th International Symposium on Permafrost Engineering, September 3-7, 2011. The Melnikov Permafrost Institute (Yakutsk, Russia), the Institute of Northern Mining (Yakutsk, Russia), the Cold and Arid Regions Engineering and Environmental Research Institute (Lanzhou, China), and the Heilongjiang Institute of Cold Region Engineering (Harbin, China) will host the Ninth International Symposium on Permafrost Engineering to be held in Mirny, Yakutia. The aim of the Symposium is to provide a forum for discussion of permafrost engineering issues, as well as for exchange of practical experience in construction and maintenance of engineering structures on frozen ground. For additional information, please contact Lilia Prokopieva.
Northern Research Forum 6th Open Assembly, September 4-6, 2011."Our Ice Dependent World," organized by the Northern Research Forum and its partners as the Northern Research Forum 6th Open Assembly, will be hosted by the University of Akureyri in the town of Hveragerđi, Iceland. Addressing the three 'poles' - the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Himalayan region- the sub-themes represent different perspectives for viewing the subject of natural ice and evaluating its importance. The event will consider implications of ice melt on humanity, communities, minds, perceptions and knowledge on ice; International law, 'soft law' and governance on ice.
4th International Sea Duck Conference,  September 12-16, 2011. The Sea Duck Joint Venture has helped sponsor a North American Sea Duck Conference once every three years since 2002. These conferences provide opportunities for researchers and managers to share information and research results, conduct workshops on specific issues, and to hold related meetings. The 4th conference will officially be an international conference and will be held in Seward, Alaska, 12-16 September, 2011, with participants from the U.S., Canada, Russia and Europe, focusing on sea ducks in the North and the Arctic. It will be held at the Windsong Lodge, with three days of presentations and workshops, and there will be a chartered boat trip the last day into the Kenai Fjords to watch sea ducks. Registration is available on the website for the conference and the excursion. Lowell Wakefield International Fisheries Symposium, September 14-17, 2011.The 27th Lowell Wakefield International Fisheries Symposium, entitled "Fishing People of the North: Cultures, Economies, and Management Responding to Change," will be held in Anchorage, Alaska. This international symposium will provide a forum for scholars, fishery managers, fishing families, and others to explore the human dimensions of fishery systems and growing need to include social science research in policy processes. The conference is part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant program. Advanced Workshop on Oil Spills In Sea Ice: Past, Present and Future  September 20-23, 2011. A technical workshop, organized by Dr. Peter Wadhams, on the physical problems associated with oil spills and blowouts in sea ice will be held at the Istituto Geografico Polare "Silvio Zavatti," Fermo, Italy. Scientists, engineers and policy makers are invited to address the questions of how oil is emitted from a blowout or spill, how the oil and gas are incorporated in the under-ice surface, how the oil layer evolves, how the oil is transported by the ice, and how and where eventual release occurs. The aim is to incorporate the experience of those scientists who worked in this field in the 1970s-1990s, when large-scale field experiments involving oil release were possible, and to relate this to the needs of present researchers who are seeking solutions to the problem of a sustainable Arctic oil spill management system. Notably, the workshop will be attended by the oil spill work package of the EU ACCESS project (Arctic Climate Change and its Effect on Economic Systems). Registration forms are available here. Murmansk Arctic Forum, October 1-2, 2011. Hosted by the Russian Geographic Society, the forum will host discussion on Arctic navigation, development of the Northern Sea Route, railway extensions, and construction of a deep-water port in Arkhangelsk. The official website is in Russian.
The Arctic in Transition: Regional Issues and Geopolitics, October 3-4, 2011. The conference is organized by the Center for Geopolitical Studies of the Raoul Dandurand Chair, in collaboration with the Centre Jacques Cartier (France), ArcticNet (Universite Laval, Quebec), and the Northern Research Forum (University of the Arctic; University of Lapland, Finland). This high-level international meeting reunites political scientists, lawyers, geographers, historians and practitioners to discuss, first, the socio-economic, political and security issues of Arctic developed or developing regions, and, second, to look at the evolving relationships between these spaces, their peoples, and global affairs. The main focus of the meeting seeks to adress security issue(s) of the various region(s) that make up the circumpolar world. Three Arctic regions will be highlighted: a) the North-American Arctic (United States (Alaska); Canada (Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut, Nunavik) and Greenland; b) the North Pacific Rim (Alaska, Russian Far East, Beaufort Sea/Chukchi); c) the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (Nordic countries - Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland - and Russia).
The Tenth International Conference on Permafrost, June 2012. The conference will be held in Tyumen, Russia, and is organized and hosted by Russia. The last conference was held in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2008. Details to follow.
15th International Congress on Circumpolar Heath, August 5-10, 2012. This  event is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Society for Circumpolar Health, and the International Union for Circumpolar Health. The forum will consider community participatory research and indigenous research; women's health, family health, and well-being; food security and nutrition; social determinants of health; environmental and occupational health; infectious and chronic diseases; climate change-health impacts; health service delivery and infrastructure; and, behavioral health.
Arctic/Inuit/Connections: Learning from the Top of the World, October 24-28, 2012. The 18th Inuit Studies Conference, hosted by the Smithsonian Institution, will be held in Washington, DC. The conference will consider heritage museums and the North; globalization: an Arctic story; power, governance and politics in the North; the '"new" Arctic: social, cultural and climate change; and Inuit education, health, language, and literature. For more information, please email Lauren Marr.
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Coast Guard's Louis St-Laurent icebreaker left St. John's, Newfoundland this past weekend for a four-month trip along the Atlantic coast and into the Arctic Ocean. Its mission: to help map and survey the continental shelf, with the goal of bolstering Canada's claim over the Arctic Ocean's rich resources. 
Murkowski received a letter from the United States Coast Guard notifying her that the 110-foot U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Chandeleur will be headed to Ketchikan in early 2012, in an effort to fill the void created by the decommissioning of the USCGC Acushnet in March. "The Acushnet was the 'Queen of the Coast Guard Fleet,' and they're replacing it with a 110-foot island class patrol ship that will have difficulty making it far out into just the Gulf of Alaska," said Murkowski. "Alaska demands more, and America deserves more to protect our vast northern waters and interests." Until its decommissioning four months ago, the USCGC Acushnet was the longest serving cutter in the U.S. Coast Guard, with a record dating back to World War II. Its duties entailed search and rescue, homeland security, Maritime Law enforcement and environmental protection - and had range to the Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea, North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska. According to the Coast Guard, vessels like the Chandeleur are used in relatively calmer southern waters for drug enforcement, port security and illegal alien interdiction.
on Friday questioned Shell Alaska Vice President Pete Slaiby about his company's Arctic oil spill response and cleanup capabilities while about a dozen reporters and photographers watched. If the unusual senatorial briefing at Shell's Anchorage headquarters felt a bit staged that's because it was -- at least sort of -- although Murkowski insisted the approach was simply an attempt at full transparency. She said she really has never had a detailed look at Shell's plan and wanted one, especially as new reports come out on the scientific information available about the Arctic.
vanish in the next generation, it won't be because people didn't try hard to keep them alive, says Gary Holton. "There are significant efforts with Yup'ik immersion schools and teacher training programs," said Holton, associate professor of linguistics in the Alaska Native Language Center and director of the Alaska Native Languages Archive at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He pointed to an ongoing documentation effort, dictionaries and teaching of the endangered Deg Xinag and Han Athabascan dialects. Even Eyak, technically extinct, is benefiting from a language revival program that recently held workshops in Anchorage and Cordova, he said. But he admits that the situation is critical for many of the state's indigenous languages. 
