Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program is an interdisciplinary program
with the principal goals to
(1) understand the physical, geological, chemical, biological, and socio-cultural
processes of the arctic system that interact with the total Earth
'
s system and
thus contribute to or are in
fl
uenced by global change, in order to
(2) advance the scienti
c basis for predicting environmental change on a seasonal-
to-centuries time scale, and for formulating policy options in response to the
anticipated impacts of global change on humans and societal support systems.
The following four scienti
c thrusts include central aims of ARCSS:
to understand the global and regional impacts of the arctic climate system
and its variability;
to determine the role of the Arctic in global biogeochemical cycling;
to identify global change impacts on the structure and stability of arctic
ecosystems;
to establish the links between environmental change and human activity.
ARCSS has four linked ongoing components: Ocean/Atmosphere/Ice Interac-
tions (OAII); Land/Atmosphere/Ice Interactions (LAII); Paleoenvironmental Stud-
ies (including GISP2, Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two), and Paleoclimates of
Arctic Lakes and Estuaries (PALE); Synthesis, Integration, and Modeling Studies
(SIMS), and Human Dimensions of the Arctic System (HARC).
Aagard (1998) discussed basic problems with a multidisciplinary look at the
Arctic Ocean, including: physical and chemical studies; biological studies; con-
taminant studies; measurements of the properties and variability of the ice cover and
of the surface radiation budget; studies of atmospheric chemistry; geological
observations.
LAII research has three main goals:
(1)
to estimate important
fluxes in the region, including the amount of carbon
dioxide, and methane reaching the atmosphere, the amount of river water
reaching the Arctic Ocean, and the radiative
fl
fl
ux back to the atmosphere;
(2)
to predict how possible changes in the arctic energy balance, temperature and
precipitation will lead to feedback affecting large areas; this incorporates
changes in water budget, duration of snow cover, extent of permafrost, and
soil warming, wetting, and drying; and
(3)
to predict how the land and fresh-water biotic communities of the Arctic will
change, and how this change will affect future ecosystem structure and
function.
A major LAII research project is the Flux Study; its principal purpose is a
regional estimate of the present and future movement of materials between the land,
atmosphere, and ocean in the Kuparuk river basin in northern Alaska.
Of the nineteen LAII projects, three are part of the International Tundra
Experiment (ITEX), which looks at the response of plant communities to climate
change. Three others are concerned with atmosphere processes, including weather
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