The Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic, or SLiCA, is an international joint effort of research and indigenous people to measure and understand living conditions in the Arctic. This website is intended to promote the use and understanding of SLiCA data.

Environmental changes and degradation pose a threat to the integrity of the traditional food system and the health of Aboriginal Peoples in the Circumpolar North. The overall objective for this proposal is to develop a comprehensive food monitoring program and environmental health research program for Aboriginal communities that will integrate information on toxicology of environmental contaminants, food composition and nutrient requirement, food availability and effects of environmental changes, local and traditional ecological knowledge, cultural and socioeconomic factors. Education and communication initiatives are also planned to assist individuals in making their own informed decisions on food choice. The participatory nature of the research will ensure Aboriginal Peoples’ involvement and/or training in all stages of research projects, including the initiation, planning, implementation, and results communications.

The overall objective of IPY Arctic GOOS to develop and implement operational monitoring and forecasting systems in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas. The systems will be based on state-of-the-art remote sensing, in situ observations, numerical modelling, data assimilation and dissemination techniques. Several components of Arctic GOOS are presently in operation, producing daily information that can be downloaded from web sites.

The objective of The Economy of the North is to present a comprehensive overview of the economy of the circumpolar Arctic, including the traditional production activities of the indigenous people. The report discusses the importance of the Arctic economy from a global perspective, with particular focus on the natural resources in the Arctic region. Finally, likely effects of climate change on the Arctic economy are discussed.

Recent changes in surface elevation and discharge speed in outlet glacier systems along the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet have provided examples of dramatic localized shifts in the balance of ice discharge, surface melt, and accumulation. These rapid changes are in sharp contrast to relatively slow variations in surface elevation in the interior, which have been tied to accumulation and firn compaction variations on a decadal timescale. The challenge of documenting and attempting to understand the processes involved has motivated a large collection of proposed research projects aimed at this problem. These range from expansions of ongoing efforts to new projects, and from individual investigators to consortia from a number of nations. They utilize a range of observational and modeling techniques and exploit evolving capabilities in atmospheric modeling, remote sensing for measurement of ice motion and surface conditions, and surface-based and aircraft-based measurement techniques.

Rapid Climate Change (RCC) has serious consequences for indigenous peoples in the north with respect to ethnic mobilization and conflict, change of life style and resource utilization, also their agency on the world stage to secure land and resource rights. Through a combination of research and education in partnership with northern indigenous peoples of Russia, the CLUE initiative has been designed to grasp the resource/ethnicity relation of indigenous circumpolar societies confronting RCC. Although the CLUE project concentrates on the Russian field, material from Fennoscandia and Alaska will serve a comparative purpose. In some respects Fennoscandia, and in other respects Alaska, have carried much further discourses concerning some of the issues which are still in their infancy in Russia.