International Permafrost Association

The International Permafrost Association (IPA), founded in 1983, has as its objectives to foster the dissemination of knowledge concerning permafrost

Permafrost

In geology, permafrost, cryotic soil or permafrost soil is soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Ice is not always present, as may be in the case of nonporous bedrock, but it frequently occurs and it may be in amounts exceeding the potential hydraulic saturation of...

and to promote cooperation among persons and national or international organisations engaged in scientific investigation and engineering work related to permafrost and seasonally frozen ground. The IPA became an Affiliated Organisation of the International Union of Geological Sciences

International Union of Geological Sciences

The International Union of Geological Sciences is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of geology.-About:...

in July 1989.

Permafrost

Permafrost

or perennially frozen ground is defined as earth material that remains at or below 0°C for at least two consecutive years. As such upwards of 25% of Planet Earth is underlain to some degree by permafrost and in extreme conditions reaches depths of 1500 meters. Permafrost occurs in the high latitudes and mountains and plateaus of both hemispheres. Its spatial distribution in the Northern Hemisphere is illustrated on this map http://nsidc.org/fgdc/maps/ipa_browse.html.

Objectives

The Association’s primary responsibilities are to convene International Permafrost Conferences, undertake special projects such as preparing databases, maps, bibliographies, and glossaries, and coordinate international field programmes and networks. International conferences were held at: West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.A. (1963); Yakutsk, Siberia (1973); Edmonton, Canada (1978); Fairbanks, Alaska (1983); Trondheim, Norway (1988); Beijing, China (1993); Yellowknife, Canada (1998); and Zurich, Switzerland (2003: ICOP 2003). The Ninth International Conference on Permafrost (NICOP) was held in Fairbanks

University of Alaska Fairbanks

The University of Alaska Fairbanks, located in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska System, and is abbreviated as Alaska or UAF....

, Alaska, June 29-July 3, 2008. The Tenth International Conference on Permafrost will be in Tyumen, Russia, June 25–29, 2012. Field excursions are an integral part of each Conference, and are organised by the host country. Regional conferences are organised between the main conferences (in Europe, Russia, China).

Organization and Structure

Membership is through adhering national or multinational organisations or as Associate Members in countries where no Adhering Body exists. The IPA is governed by an Executive Committee and a Council consisting of representatives from 26 Adhering Bodies having interests in some aspect of theoretical, basic and applied frozen ground research, including permafrost

Permafrost

, periglacial

Periglacial

Periglacial is an adjective originally referring to places in the edges of glacial areas, but it has later been widely used in geomorphology to describe any place where geomorphic processes related to freezing of water occur...

phenomena, seasonal frost, and artificial ground freezing. Members are: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America. News from the IPA members are posted on the IPA webpage http://www.geo.uio.no/IPA/IPA%20News%20Members.htm.

The officers of the six-member Executive Committee (2008–2012) are:

President: Prof. Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten (Germany)

Vice Presidents: Professor Antoni Lewkowicz (Canada) and Dr. Hanne Christiansen (Norway)

Members: Dr. Dmitry Drozdov (Russia), Prof. Wei Ma (China), and Professor Vladimir Romanovsky (U.S.A.)

The IPA Constitution provides for three categories of Working Group Parties: standing committees (long-term), working groups (5–10 years) and task forces (2–3 years) that organise and coordinate research activities and special projects. The first category includes a Standing Committee for Data, Information and Communication and an International Advisory Committee for the International Permafrost Conferences. There are ten Working Groups, each with two co-chairs and some with subgroups. These are:

• Antarctic Permafrost and Periglacial Environments

• Coastal and Offshore Permafrost (see: Arctic Coastal Dynamics webpage)

• Cryosol (see: http://igras.geonet.ru/cwg/)

• Glacier and Permafrost Hazards in High Mountains (see: GAPHAZ webpage)

• Isotopes and Geochemistry of Permafrost (see: http://www.awi-potsdam.de/www-pot/geo/isochem-wg.html)

• Mapping and Modelling of Mountain Permafrost

• Periglacial Landforms, Processes, and Climate

• Permafrost and Climate

• Permafrost Astrobiology

• Permafrost Engineering

Details of the Working Parties goals and activities are found on the IPA website http://www.geo.uio.no/IPA/IPA%20News%20WorkingParties.htm.

The International Secretariat is based at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research under the direction of Dr. Hugues Lantuit (Germany). Annual membership contributions are used for producing and distributing Frozen Ground, and support of Working Parties and committee activities and representations at international meetings.

Publication and Information

Proceedings of peer-reviewed papers are produced for each International Permafrost Conference by the host country, as are field trip guidebooks. A list of publications is found on the IPA website http://www.geo.uio.no/IPA/IPA%20Publications.htm. The News Bulletin Frozen Ground is published annually and has a distribution of over 2500. Current and back issues are posted online http://www.geo.uio.no/IPA/IPA%20Publications.htm.

The Circum-Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground-Ice Conditions at a scale of 1:10,000,000 was prepared by an international team and published in the Circum-Pacific map series in 1997.

The CAPS: Circumpolar Active-Layer Permafrost System, version 2.0 CD-ROM is a compilation of global frozen ground data and information.

Permafrost and Frozen Ground: Bibliography 1978 – 2003, Glaciological Data Report GD-31, is an online bibliography of the world’s literature. Both are produced in conjunction with the International Permafrost Conferences and available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

An illustrated Glossary of Permafrost and Related Ground-Ice Terms in 12 languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, and Spanish), 278 pages, was produced in 1998.

IPA cooperates with the American Geological Institute by providing literature to its Cold Regions Bibliography Project.

Major activities

The IPA coordinates and cooperates with several other major international programmes and organizations. Briefly these are:

Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) is a WMO network for monitoring of the active layer and the Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP). The IPA manages the GTN-P. The Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) program has 125 reporting stations and TSP has identified over 800 boreholes; both include a total of over 15 participating countries.

Arctic Coastal Dynamics (ACD) is a joint programme with the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and the IGBP(International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) - LOICZ (Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone) programme to estimate the organic carbon content and mineral transfer for eroding permafrost onto the Arctic shelves. The IPA is collaborating with the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA).

The IPA has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) programme of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). The main areas of cooperation are on the roles of permafrost on water and carbon balances, and data assimilation

Data assimilation

Applications of data assimilation arise in many fields of geosciences, perhaps most importantly in weather forecasting and hydrology. Data assimilation proceeds by analysis cycles...

and modelling.

Beginning in 1995 the IPA and the International Geographical Union (IGU) developed an Agreement of Cooperation, thus making IPA an affiliate of the IGU. The current IGU collaboration is within its Commission on Cold Regions Environments.

Coordination of activities on permafrost, soils and periglacial environments of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands is a joint programme with an Expert Group of the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR).

Activities related to glaciers and permafrost hazards in the high mountains (GAPHAZ) are a joint activity with the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) and its newly designated Commission for the Cryospheric Sciences.

The topic of carbon sources and sinks in cold regions soils (cryosols) and permafrost is a joint program with the Global Carbon Project (GPC) and the joint working group on Cryosol of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS).

Recent and Future Activities

IPA is planning to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the International Polar Year (IPY) by participating in the 2007-2009 IPY with four coordinated projects. The Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) proposes to obtain a ‘snapshot’ of permafrost temperatures throughout Planet Earth during the period 2007-2008. Another objective of TSP is to establish a permanent International Network of Permafrost Observatories (INPO) within the framework of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P). The three other IPY projects are concerned with Antarctic and sub-Antarctic Permafrost, Periglacial and Soil Environments (ANTPAS) and with the Arctic Circum-Polar Coastal Observatory Network (ACCO-Net) and Carbon Pools in Permafrost Regions (CAPP), and revised regional permafrost maps of Central Asia and the Nordic region. For updated news about IPA activities linked to IPY, see the IPA website http://www.geo.uio.no/IPA/IPAandIPYmain%20.htm.

The IPA plans to participate in the International Year of Planet Earth and the themes related to climate, hazards, and soils.

Several regional permafrost and soils conferences were held and are planned, including:

• The First European Conference on Permafrost (EUCOP I) in Rome (Italy), in 2001;

• The Second European Conference on Permafrost (EUCOP II) in Potsdam (Germany), in June 2005;

• The Fourth International Conference on Cryopedology, was held in Arkhangelsk (Russia), in August 2005;

• The Asian Conference on Permafrost convenes in Lanzhou (China), in early August 2006 with a field excursion to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau;

• The Ninth International Conference on Permafrost (NICOP) will be held in early summer 2008 in Fairbanks

University of Alaska Fairbanks

The University of Alaska Fairbanks, located in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska System, and is abbreviated as Alaska or UAF....

(U.S.A.).

External links

International Permafrost Association (IPA)

Organisations:

Information about Permafrost:

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Objectives

Organization and Structure

Publication and Information

Major activities

Recent and Future Activities

See also

External links