PPS Arctic: Present day processes, Past changes, and Spatiotemporal variability of biotic, abiotic and socio-environmental conditions and resource components along and across the Arctic delimitation zone. PPS Arctic investigates the causes and consequences of changes in the circumarctic treeline zone, using fieldwork and remote sensing to study and model temporal and spatial aspects of ecological, social and cultural factors. Changes in the zone affect Arctic ecosystem processes, resource availability and the entire Arctic climate through changes in tree and shrub cover and in albedo, with global consequences.

Three terrestrial components of the cryosphere: snow cover, permafrost, and small glaciers will be studied as well as their interactions with society and potential feedbacks to the Global Earth System. Within each area of research the foci of studies will be on the models’ development and creation of conditions for seamless their implementation to improve understanding and projections of environmental change and to serve numerous practical applications.

Polar field stations have been a key part of polar research for the past two centuries and one of the most tangible legacies of previous IPYs, yet they have been little studied. This novel project will look at field stations, both as sites of production of scientific knowledge in the field, and as flag carriers and symbols of geopolitical and diplomatic conflict and cooperation.

The proposed project focuses the efforts of 20 scientists in 9 countries to produce a series of benchmark data sets for the International Polar Year. Those data sets culminate in the first quantification of the total rate of ice loss by flow from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. This work will be conducted by young scientists mentored by professional scientists to help train the next generation of scientists in the use of remote sensing data of the polar regions. Satellite data include ICESat laser altimetry, Landsat optical imagery and various European and Canadian synthetic aperture radar data.

The Network for ARCtic Climate and Biological DIVersity Studies (ARCDIV) is a multidisciplinary international research initiative. The project explores the diversity of ecosystem on Arctic archipelago Svalbard, central part of Isfjorden, Billefjorden and Petuniabukta, by integrating existing and new intensive measurements of key biological and physical variables and processes.

DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) is an integrated ice-atmosphere-ocean monitoring and forecasting system designed for observing, understanding and quantifying climate changes in the Arctic. DAMOCLES is specifically concerned with the potential for a significantly reduced sea ice cover, and the impacts this might have on the environment and on human activities, both regionally and globally.

We know that the Arctic exerts a critical influence on the Earth's climate and has done so for millions of years. Locked in Arctic ice and sediments are vital records of what the Earth's environment was like in the past. To more accurately predict the future of the Earth's climate, we need to know more about the extremes. Finding out how hot and how cold the Earth was in the past, and how much, as well as how little of it was covered by ice are key questions that APEX hopes to help answer.

The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the Earth’s three most rapidly warming regions: most of the glaciers there are in retreat and large ice shelves have broken up. This project investigates the impact of these changes on the plants and animals that live on the land, the shore and coastal sea around the Antarctic Peninsula. Organisms are facing a barrage of complex effects including warming, decreased ice and snow cover, increased iceberg grounding, sedimentation and freshening. A wide range of apparatus and techniques will be used from remote operated vehicles (ROV) and simple underwater light meters to satellite imagery and counting microscopic life. ClicOPEN scientists from 15 countries will study changes in the environments and organisms around a number of retreating glaciers of the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Most of Antarctica's very rich biodiversity lives nowhere else in the world and we know little about how it will responding to such exceptional and unprecedented warming.

Sámi -- their lives and culture -- have been depicted as objects throughout history both in images and texts. This project explores representations of Sámi made by four prominent nineteenth-century researchers who travelled in the north of Sweden, Norway, Finland and to Spetsbergen. Working in Sweden, these scientits (Göran Wahlenberg (1780-1851), Lars Levi Læstadius (1800-1861), Sven Lovén (1809-1895) and Axel Hamberg (1863-1933)) had degrees in or did research in geology, botany, ocenography and zoology.

Within natural science at that time, "objectifiation" was quite common: researchers identified, mapped and explained plants, animals, rock, snow, glaciers, weather conditions such as snow and wind. Sámi were similary objectified in the researchers' writings. Nevertheless were the researchers sometimes interested in the knowledge the Sámi had and also used them as reindeer herders when transporting the researchers and their equipment, when going animal hunting, or used them as guides.

The result of the field science the researchers carried out was the foundation of new scholarly fields; a natural scientific Sámi anthropology and a natural scientific Sámi ethnography. Even if the scholarly fields were new -- it was not that common for natural scientists to do research on Sámi -- much of the so-called knowledge about the Sámi within theses fields was based on references to art, missionaries' and priests' descriptions of Sámi, and even from the Icelandic sagas. Thus the natural scientists constructed an image, a representation, of Sámi or even a Sámi culture that was based on older representations of the Sámi. This process was linked to the industrialisation in Sweden where forests, minings and water power were developed. Science developed at the same time as a tool for this industrialisation explotation. Thus the new scholarly fields with Sámi as research objects became a part of that Swedish-Nordic colonisation of the North."