Strong participation by NGEE Arctic scientists in annual AGU meetings

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) meetings are held each fall in San Francisco, CA. This meeting attracts more than 18,000 attendees and has become an important destination for scientists studying a broad range of topics in the earth and space sciences.

http://sites.agu.org/

Last year the NGEE Arctic team had a strong presence in the meeting and this year that trend continued with outstanding participation in the meeting. More than 60 abstracts were submitted for poster and oral presentations on topics that ranged from geophysics, hydrology, geomorphology and landscape evolution, plant physiology and vegetation dynamics, biogeochemistry, and data management. There were many excellent posters and presentation on multi-scale modeling, including fine-scale simulations of polygons to global-scale feedbacks due to a changing climate in the Arctic. In addition to the efforts of NGEE Arctic to showcase their science, our team proposed and organized 10 sessions. Many of these focused exclusively on Arctic ecosystems or otherwise addressed topics that our team is dealing with specifically in areas, for example, of scaling and remote sensing.  These are important topics for all ecosystems, not just the Arctic, and it was good to get input on how scientists working in other locations around the world are tackling this common challenges.

Finally, several members of the NGEE Arctic team participated as judges for the Outstanding Student Poster and Presentation awards. This was a great opportunity to learn about research being conducted by our next-generation of scientists. I found myself interested in several posters, in particular those that combined an interesting scientific question with innovation in either measurements or modeling as tools to address that question. I walked away from poster and oral presentations with a good sense of how young scientists are tackling important questions in various fields.

The NGEE Arctic team developed a booklet of abstracts and session descriptions. That booklet can be downloaded here....

Logistical Provider UMIAQ Enjoys Great Visibility at AGU

The NGEE Arctic team had a strong presence at the recent AGU meetings in San Francisco. While our team was busy throughout the week with posters, presentations, special sessions, and Town Halls, it was great to see that UMIAQ, our logistical provider in Barrow was also enjoying a great time over in the exhibition hall. Their booth was well-positioned and staffed by people we have come to know and respect over the last few years including Karl Newyear (Chief Scientist), Dominique Fox (Project Coordinator), Brower Frantz (Field Logistics Supervisor), Cindy Shake (Marketing and Communications Manager), and Nagruk Harcharek (Science Logistics Manager). Karl, Brower, and Dominique have helped us with permitting, lodging, vehicles, laboratory space, and technical support in Barrow for the last three years and have played a big part in getting our science off to a strong start. We have always felt safe and well-supplied thanks to their involvement with our NGEE Arctic team. Cindy and Nagruk are relatively new to UMIAQ but we look forward to working with them in the coming year. As the pictures kindly provided by UMIAQ show, the booth was well designed to engage those walking through the exhibition hall, and all the staff were welcome to talk about science and logistical support in Alaska and the North Slope. Everyone enjoyed seeing a glimpse of the Arctic in San Francisco. I saw numerous UMIAQ backpacks, brochures, and Barrow snow globes throughout the week.  I visited the booth several times just to say “hi” and get a head start with some of our planning for the upcoming field season that will begin for us in April.