SAON News
During the meeting, it was agreed to establish a working group focused on enabling federated search between and among polar data centers and catalogues. This would build on the Arctic Data Committee's "Metadata Elements" initiative, work that SCADM has done for many years, and would be very relevant to the emerging GEO Community Portal. During that meeting it was mentioned that Halldór Jóhannssonn and his team at Arctic Portal may be able contribute significant resources towards this effort. Halldór has confirmed the availability of these resources in the form of a new postdoc who has recently joined their team.
A preliminary meeting of the joint ADC-IARPC Vocabularies and Semantic working group (https://arcticdc.org/activities/core-projects/vocabularies-and-semantics-wg) will be held on October 17th at 14:00 EST. This group is open to all and is in its formative stage, all are encouraged to join. Please contact group co-leads Øystein Godøy (o.godoy@met.no) or Ruth Duerr (ruth.duerr@ronininstitute.org).
Detailed minutes will be available here.
Breakout session on scales of Arctic Earth Observations at the 2017 Arctic Circle Assembly on 14th October
The 2017 Arctic Circle Assembly is convening in Reykjavik, Iceland, on 13-15 October.
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the Sustaining Arctic Observation Networks (SAON), the European Polar Board (EPB), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) are organizing a breakout session on Saturday, October 14th, at 17:30-19:00.
The session, entitled Scales of Observations –Connecting Arctic Data, Information and People, highlights the importance of sustained Arctic observations across both temporal and geographic scales to maximise their societal benefits and usefulness in advising decision-making.
The session starts with flash presentations that introduce participants to the range of Earth observation projects, networks and organisations. These are followed by a panel discussion focusing on integration and interoperability of arctic observations from remote sensing and ground-based observations to Indigenous-Knowledge -driven monitoring and community-based observing initiatives.
Session Programme (14th October at 17:30-19:00, room Skarðsheiði)
Introduction
Barbara Ryan, Secretariat Director, Group on Earth Observations
Flash presentations
Árni Snorrason, Director, Icelandic Meteorological Office: Large-scale Arctic climate observations (WMO)
Jan René Larsen, SAON Secretary, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme: International coordination of Arctic monitoring (SAON)
Yubao Qiu, Associate Professor, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences: Integrating Scales of Observations – an Example from High Mountain Asia (GEOCRI)
Noor Johnson, Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado Boulder & The Fletcher School, Tufts University: Community-based monitoring and Indigenous knowledge as/in Arctic observing systems
Panel
Hannele Savela, Research Coordinator, Thule Institute, University of Oulu (INTERACT)
Anders Oskal, Director, International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry (ICR)
Ola Gråbak, Applications Engineer, European Space Agency (ESA)
Stein Sandven, Research Director, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (INTAROS)
Maribeth Murray, Executive Director, Arctic Institute of North America (AINA)
Chair: Peter Pulsifer, Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center CIRES, University of Colorado
The EU-PolarNet White Paper Workshop (24th – 28th September in Miraflores de la Sierra) initiatated the drafting of five white papers touching upon the most pressing issues in the Polar Regions. A brief summary is found here
The Arctic Herald is published by
State Commission For Arctic Development
Russian Geographical Society
Northern (Arctic) Federal University
The Arctic Council 2011 Nuuk declaration decides that the Arctic Council through AMAP appoints the chair of SAON. At their meeting this week, the AMAP WG appointed Thorsteinn Gunnarsson of ‘The Icelandic Centre for Research’ (RANNIS) as the new Chair of SAON. A warm welcome to Thorsteinn!
Christine Daae Olseng of the Research Council of Norway stepped down as chair on 1st July. Thanks to Christine for your hard work!
