Expressions of Intent for International Polar Year 2007-2008 Activities

Expression of Interest Details

PROPOSAL INFORMATION

North Slope Science Initiative  (NSSI)

Outline
The North Slope Science Initiative (NSSI) was established in 2003 to develop a science-based program that integrates inventory, monitoring, and research activities to support resource management decisions on the North Slope of Alaska. NSSI member organizations include Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, Minerals Management Service, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, and the North Slope Borough. The NSSI provides a means to ensure that inventory, monitoring, and research activities are systematically integrated across disciplines and individual projects or programs. The NSSI adopts a strategic framework to provide natural resource managers with the data and analyses they need to evaluate multiple simultaneous goals and objectives related to land stewardship and legislative mandates for energy resource exploration and development on the North Slope. The NSSI will utilize and complement the information produced under other North Slope science programs, where appropriate. The NSSI also provides a strategy in which information sharing can occur among agencies, non-governmental organizations, industry, academia, and members of the public to increase communication and reduce redundancy among science programs. The goal of the NSSI is to foster science-based decision making that ensures the sustainability of healthy and biologically diverse ecosystems while permitting appropriate human uses of North Slope resources. To support this goal, the primary objectives of the NSSI include: • Develop an understanding of informational needs for regulatory and land management agencies, local governments, and the public; • Identify and prioritize informational needs for inventory, monitoring, and research activities to address the impacts of past, ongoing, and anticipated developmental activities on the North Slope; • Coordinate ongoing and future inventory, monitoring, and research activities to minimize duplication of effort, share financial resources and expertise, and assure the collection of high-quality information; • Identify priority informational needs not addressed by existing agency science programs, and develop a funding strategy to address those needs; • Maintain and improve public and agency access to accumulated and ongoing research and to contemporary traditional and local knowledge; and, • Ensure, through appropriate peer review, that the science conducted under the oversight of the NSSI and by participating NSSI agencies and organizations is of the highest technical quality.

What significant advance(s) in relation to the IPY themes and targets can be anticipated from this project?
The NSSI focuses entirely on the inventory, monitoring, and research needed to inform the resource-management decisions of member agencies on the North Slope. Thus, the NSSI is an applied science program with a very specific niche among the array of science programs relevant to the North Slope. The NSSI, with other science programs relevant to the North Slope, will improve the understanding of North Slope terrestrial, aquatic, and near-shore marine ecosystem dynamics and enhance the ability to forecast and respond to the effects of natural and anthropogenic change on the basis of a scientific understanding of causal relationships.

What international collaboration is involved in this project?
A website has been established: www.northslope.org This website will invite international involvement in NSSI.

FIELD ACTIVITY DETAILS

Geographical location(s) for the proposed field activities:
North Slope of Alaska, North of the Brooks Range.

Approximate timeframe(s) for proposed field activities:
Arctic: 12/2003 through 12/2010            
Antarctic: n/a

Significant facilities will be required for this project:
Fixed rotary wing aircraft support; temporary field station facilities

Will the project leave a legacy of infrastructure?
May have temporary impacts to the local environment from human uses.

How is it envisaged that the required logistic support will be secured?
National agency
Military support
Commercial operator
Own support

USDI, Bureau of Land Management has a statewide logistical support facility located in Anchorage for inventory, monitoring and research

Has the project been "endorsed" at a national or international level?
Secretary of the Interior and the U.S. Arctic Research Commission have endorsed NSSI.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND STRUCTURE

Is the project a short-term expansion (over the IPY 2007-2008 timeframe) of an existing plan, programme or initiative or is it a new autonomous proposal?
Exp

NSSI was started as an initiative by the Department of the Interior, State of Alaska and North Slope Borough in 2003. The executive oversight group has been established and the science technical group is currently being solicited.

How will the project be organised and managed?
NSSI will use a system-based conceptual framework to select North Slope natural and human attributes that will be the subject of inventory, monitoring, and research projects. The framework involves a careful examination of interactions between system elements (drivers and receptors) and their position within a system hierarchy consisting of the following levels of increasing complexity: populations, communities, ecosystem processes, landscape patterns, and human systems. The system-based framework ensures consideration of how resource-development actions affect the North Slope as a system of interrelated components. Hierarchical levels capture relevant phenomena at several temporal and spatial scales.

What are the initial plans of the project for addressing the education, outreach and communication issues outlined in the Framework document?
The NSSI program will require a method to share and disseminate information among agency participants, the scientific community, and the public. It will be necessary to design and implement an information system that can accommodate a wide variety of information types, including spatial data, inventory and monitoring results, and traditional knowledge.

What are the initial plans of the project to address data management issues (as outlined in the Framework document?
Data interpretation and decision making will benefit from standardization of data collection methodologies, data collection protocols, and data-quality objectives.

How is it proposed to fund the project?
Funding will be contributed funds from member agencies and outside interest, including industry.

Is there additional information you wish to provide?
None

PROPOSER DETAILS

Dr John Payne
Bureau of Land Managment, Alaska State Office
222 West 7th Avenue, #13
Anchorage, Alaska
99513
USA

Tel: 907.271.3431
Mobile: 907.301.0828
Fax: 907.271.5479
Email:

Other project members and their affiliation