Plant biomass workshop in Svalbard (SvalbardBiomass)

ArcticBiomass was a Norway-USA network (RCN 227064) project funded by the Research Council of Norway (http://www.nina.no/english/Research/Projects/ArcticBiomass). The main objectives of this project were to establish a joint American-Norwegian research team dealing with research on the combination of field and satellite remote sensing quantification of above-ground plant biomass, vegetation productivity and growing season mapping in northern Alaska and in Svalbard, as well as on a circumpolar scale. The project team consisted of five institutions with eleven researchers in 2013 and was increased to eight institutions in Norway and the USA and four institutions in Europe (Finland, UK and EU-JRC-Italy). The project team has established field sites in Alaska (Toolik) and Svalbard (Longyearbyen) with ongoing monitoring and has done fieldwork mainly funded by other RCN or EEA research projects (e.g. SnoEco, WICLAP. In order to follow up the good work carried out by this network project, we want to arrange a workshop and a field campaign using UAV in Svalbard during summer 2017. We will focus on increased use of existing monitoring sites also included in the SIOS application and UAVs with a reduced environmental footprint. All data are planned to comply with SIOS data policy. This will provide a benchmark for northern remote sensing based plant biomass and productivity mapping and monitoring. Of particular interest are areas in where there has not been a positive NDVI (greening)trend and especially on the recently environmental changes in Svalbard lik winter warming effects on vegetation and landslides. We will invite members of the former ArcticBiomass-network as well as members of the EU Cost Action project Optimise(http://optimise.dcs.aber.ac.uk/) and WinterNet in order to bring together highly skilled researchers and young researchers. Also other research institutions like Lund University, UNIS and NP are involved in the workshop.