Kongsfjorden Ecosystem-new views after more than a decade of research: Workshop-2, March 2014

The Kongsfjorden Ecosystem Workshop 2014 will be held at Hamn i Senja, Norway, from 10-17 March. It will gather 70 national and international participants, from 11 countries, with research interests and data from Kongsfjorden, Svalbard. The results of the workshop will be published in the form of several research in a special issue of Polar Biology and review papers in Advances in Polar Ecology (Springer Book Series). This Workshop and forthcoming publications will motivate scientists to collaborate and thereby contribute to national initiative, e.g. Svalbard Science Forum (SSF) strategic objectives, to improve national and international cooperation. This will be very important for future Arctic marine research and collaboration in Svalbard, and particu larly in Kongsfjorden with the international research facility in Ny-Ålesund. This workshop will be important summarizing and publishing research conducted in many national and international projects in Kongsfjorden and Ny-Ålesund, and will set the stage for future research initiatives by identifying gaps and research needs in Svalbard waters.

Scientific data from Kongsfjorden have been sampled for more than 100 years, but it was not until the year 2000 that the first Kongsfjorden Ecosystem Workshop, with 40 participants, was held at the University Centre in Svalbard. The results of this worksh op were published in two well-recognized reviews focused on the physical environment of Kongsfjorden-Krossfjorden (Svendsen et al. 2002) and the ecosystem of Kongsfjorden itself (Hop et al. 2002). Within the last decade, a lot of new and important data ha ve been obtained from the growing research community in Ny-Ålesund, now comprising 18 research stations from 11 nations. Clearly, these enormous research efforts should be summarized in a compact manner so that they will become easily accessible as a base line for future research and management. Thus, we propose a second Kongsfjorden Ecosystem Workshop to be held in Hamn i Senja, 10-17 March 2014. This workshop will involve about 70 national and international participants conducting research in different f ields related to the specific location of Kongsfjorden-Krossfjorden. The results of the workshop will be published in the form of several review papers. The Editor of the international scientific journal Polar Biology, Prof. Dr. Dieter Piepenburg, Univers ity of Kiel, has invited Christian Wiencke and Haakon Hop to act as guest editors of a Special Issue entitled Kongsfjorden Ecosystem - new views after more than a decade of research. The target for submitted papers would be end of 2014. In addition, revie w papers will be published in Advances in Polar Ecology-Springer Book Series (Series Editor: Prof. Dr. Dieter Piepenburg), which have been booked via Publisher Editor Environmental Sciences, Margaret Deignan at Springer.