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SSF and SMS have jointly organized a workshop that aimed at exchange
of information and finding solutions for accessing and carrying out future
research in the least accessible, and the most logistically demanding places
in Svalbard - the East.
East Svalbard is indispensable as reference area. Its importance for
monitoring climate change in the Arctic through reference-based research
cannot be underestimated e.g. the changes in weather patterns are first
visible in the east and should be captured already there.
In many research fields the knowledge about East Svalbard is
extremely limited and therefore data is needed first before it is possible
to establish a baseline for future reference. Data collection should be
synchronized with monitoring to capture rate of change of various elements
of the environment. It became obvious during the talks that the knowledge
about natural environment in Eastern Svalbard is so limited that it is too
early for discussing specific parameters for the baseline. First a lot more
data and samples have to be collected.
The workshop was attended by 35 participants representing 27 institutions
with research interests in Eastern Svalbard and 3 observers. The
participants concluded with a set of recommendations that could serve as
guidelines for both research groups applying for permissions to conduct
their fieldwork in East Svalbard and for the management to see what criteria
are important to give permissions for access to the nature reserves.
More information, abstracts and talks are available at the
Research Access to Eastern Areas in Svalbard
workshop webpage.
Contact: SSF office (ssf@npolar.no)
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