News

At the IASC Council Meeting at the Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) in Helsinki, Finnland, on 7 April 2014, the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the International Permafrost Association (IPA) renewed their longstanding partnership with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the next five years. The three organisations share common goals of working internationally and across disciplines to increase our understanding…

ICARP III workshop *Permafrost and Indigenous Land Use*, Helsinki, 6-7 April (in connection with the ASSW 2014, http://www.assw2014.fi) The workshop was chaired by PD Dr. Joachim Otto Habeck from the Siberian Studies Centre, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany (habeck@eth.mpg.de) and Prof. Hiroki Takakura from Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Japan (hrk@m.tohoku.ac.jp). The workshop was supported by the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and endorsed b…

At the 8th International Conference on Geomorphology of the International Association of Geomorphologists in Paris 2013, the International Permafrost Association (IPA) signs a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG).Joint activities between IPA and IAG foster international exchange in both fields of research and promote international opportunities of the members of both organizations. To that effect the organizations will promote the following acti…

EUCOP 4, will be held in Évora, Portugal 18-21 June, 2014. IPA members are actively participating in the conference chairing various sessions and presenting the latest research. Please find the final program in pdf for download here. One day before the official conference opening the IPA will have its 24th IPA Council Meeting, taking place on Wednesday, June 18 from 10 am to 3.30 pm. The Council Meeting is open for all IPA members to attend as an Observer. Please click here to see the agenda. The Glob…

The IPA is pleased to announce that three of the activities it proposed to the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) as part of the ICARP III activities will be funded. These activities are: 7 April 2014: cross-cutting workshop *Permafrost and Indigenous Land Use*, Helsinki, Finnland (http://www.assw2014.fi/?page=splinters)The workshop is an ICARP activity and will be hosted in connection with the Arctic Sciences Summit Week. (http://www.assw2014.fi/). The workshop will be supported by the Inte…

The IPA is pleased to introduce the call for funded Action Groups in 2014. Action Groups are an element in the IPA structure and are meant to fund targeted groups working towards the production of well-defined products. Action Groups will be funded on a competitive basis at up to 2500 € per year (maximum of 5000 € over the life of an Action Group). Up to 10 000 € per year of the IPA total budget will be devoted to Action Groups. These groups will have limited terms and will need to focus on clear…

From the 19th to the 23rd of February 2014 a GTN-P Database Workshop is held in Akureyri, Iceland. Boris Biskaborn (Data Manager of GTN-P) and Karina Schollän (Executive Director of the IPA) met Jean-Pierre Lanckman and colleagues from the Arctic Portal to discuss the dissemination of the new GTN-P database. The team discuss the most important provisions of the current state of the GTN-P database and the workload that needs to be accomplished before the official GTN-P database launch coming soon.

In 2010, the International Permafrost Association introduced the IPA Lifetime Achievement Award. The Award acknowledges the lifetime contribution of an individual for outstanding research in permafrost science or engineering, and/or for exceptional contributions to the international permafrost community. A maximum of one award is made every two years, at the Regional and International conferences on permafrost. The first of these awards was made during the European Conference onPermafrost (EUCOP III) i…

Our dear friend and colleague Dan Riseborough passed away on 26 December 2013 at the age of 58. Dan was an accomplished permafrost scientist and an integral part of the permafrost research group in Ottawa. He took all his degrees at Carleton University, with theses supervised by Michael Smith. He spent two summers in the field at Mayo, Yukon, in the 1980s, and worked for several years as a project manager for the Canada-France Ground Freezing Project both in Caen, Normandy, and at home here in Ottawa. …

The International Permafrost Association (IPA) is delighted to announce that Ms. Karina Schollän has been appointed as IPA Executive Director. She started working for the IPA Secretariat in Potsdam (Germany) on 15 November 2013. The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research agreed to continue to host the Secretariat from 2013-2016. The IPA Executive Committee is grateful to Prof. Karin Lochte, director of the AWI and Prof. Hans-Wolgang Hubberten, director of the research …