Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) Workshop

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Global climate change has the potential to produce serious impacts on natural and human systems in permafrost regions. The Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) program is concerned with observing the response of the active layer and near-surface permafrost to climate change at multi-decade timescales, and is one of two major international observation networks devoted to permafrost. Nowat the end of its first decade, the CALM network incorporates more than 100 sites involving field scientists from 15 investigating countries in both hemispheres. This project will conduct a workshop designed to analyze the rich database obtained from the observational network, evaluate active-layer models forapplication under climate-change scenarios, review existing CALM analytical methodologies and protocols, discuss future data formatting, submission, and archive protocols, review the relation of CALM to other international programs, discuss the role of CALM at the International Permafrost Conference in July 2003, and the future of the CALM program. Because widespread, systematic changes in the thickness of the active layer could have profound effects on the flux of greenhouse gases and on the human infrastructure in cold regions, it is critical that observation and analysis procedures be optimized. The proposed workshop will bring together permafrost scientists with workers in closely related areas, many of whom have divergent but complementary skills. A thorough examination of data from the major CALM sites will permit assessment of the overall performance of the network and its components. Theworkshop will also facilitate evaluation of the effectiveness of observation strategies andsampling designs.