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SSF-Svalbard Science Forum

The Terrestrial Ecosystem Flagship in Ny-Ålesund: From workshops to research projects

Awarded: NOK 0.50 mill.

The Ny-Ålesund Terrestrial Ecosystem Flagship focuses on ecosystem-based research on tundra, fresh water and soil in and around Ny-Ålesund (Coulsen et al. 2010; Pedersen et al. 2016). The Terrestrial Ecosystem Flagship group has in the past 3 years successfully organized and held workshops aimed at bringing researchers together to collaborate on writing a joint review manuscript of terrestrial research activities in Ny-Ålesund (Pedersen et al. in review). This highlighted key knowledge gaps currently existing in terrestrial research in and around Ny-Ålesund. This new proposal aims at building on the network and collaboration already established within the Terrestrial Ecosystem Flagship group at Ny-Ålesund and progress from literature review to multi-party and multi-disciplinary collaborative research projects in the field. With a combined network and workshop project, our primary objective is to bring together national and international researchers to develop existing and initiate new collaborations, and to start and conduct a small pilot study. The pilot study revolves around existing herbivore exclosure sites and permanent monitoring stations accessible from Ny-Ålesund, which offer the potential for development of a large and timely multidisciplinary project, utilizing the diverse expertise in the Flagship group. It is our objective that this enhanced collaboration and the joint pilot study will lead to the development of a new joint external grant application (e.g. Horizon 2020). To achieve this we will organize two workshops and one network meeting. The first workshop is planned to be held back-to-back with the Svalbard Science Conference in Oslo, 2 and 3 November 2021, while the network meeting and pilot study will be conducted at Ny-Ålesund in the summer of 2022. The second, and final, workshop will focus on possible calls for external funds to create a joint research proposal for a larger project based on the lessons learned from the small pilot study.

Funding scheme:

SSF-Svalbard Science Forum