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 by the International Permafrost Association (IPA).
The idea for this workshop on “Permafrost Dynamics and Indigenous Land Use” is owed to a conspicuous gap between different disciplines’ research agendas: there is substantial expertise on permafrost (and related hydrological and soil processes) on the one hand, and on indigenous forms of land use that utilise thermokarst, on the other hand; but the two have rarely been integrated. This workshop showed in an exemplary manner how these different domains can be proficiently connected. The workshop draw on local knowledge about mid-term and short-term changes in terrestrial and cryospheric conditions; asked to which extent these have been induced by humans; and provided a basis for assessing the prospects for renewable resource use under conditions of more rapid change in future years.
